Did you act differently after finding out you had an ASD?

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No.
I'm diagnosed since I was 6, found out when I was about to turn 14 and no, didn't change my life at all. Even if I'd have never been diagnosed, it would have been the same. Even if I would have been diagnosed later, it would have been the same.

I'm still only suspected AS, but it changed my life completely - I've gone from beating myself up about not knowing now to socialise, being different, excluded, etc. to accepting that's the way I am. In fact I went too far the other way, and just stopped trying to be 'normal' at all, which is counterproductive.

Finding the middle ground where I'm happy to be is something I'm still working at.

I am finally free to be me, I feel so much less self conscious knowing what I am all about and that there are others too.
I think the selfconsciousness made me much worse previously.
People comment that I am eccentric however they seem to like it.
Finally I feel like I can express my personality.
For a while I did slightly exaggerate the symptoms and had a friend who pointed it out, he was one of the only people I confided in about the diagnosis. He called me a ret*d as a joke and made fun of my stimming behaviours - he is no longer my friend.
I am making so many more friends now just being me.
So many changes in such a short space of time it feels great

This is a really great thread. I think we're all finding out that our initial reaction to being AS -- whether officially diagnosed or not -- was a shock to our systems. That we ALL felt like we started "putting on" when in reality we were just noticing things that we were always doing but had never noticed.

I sure wish this had been around when I was growing up. My mother has been telling me FOR YEARS that she thought there was something "wrong" with me. People have always treated me like I was made of glass -- not telling off-color jokes around me, not sharing anything that might seem "immoral" (drunk stories, brushes with the law), checking on me all the time, always needing to know where I was and making me check in all the time. I never could understand what all the "babying" was about as I felt "normal", if there is such a thing. But everybody else apparently saw me as an oddball in need of protecting.

I was in therapy when I was 17 (way back in 1977) and all they could come up with was that I had "low self-esteem". Since then, I've looked into bi-polar disorder, social anxiety disorder (this one has actually been diagnosed), OCD, depression...all seem to fit and not fit at all at the same time. Now that I've discovered AS I've stopped looking at other diagnoses. I've found where I belong. It's good to finally understand why I do the things I do and think the way I do. A couple of previous posters said that they no longer feel the need to do things like make eye contact or stop stimming in public. I hope I can get that confident one day.