having trouble accepting myself

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I think that I am having trouble recognizing my difficulties and it is causing me a lot of suffering. I still take what I read as literally as I do what someone else says to me, and it gets worse when I'm under stress, which has been every day now. Communication can get very confusing and I have been a lot angrier because of it. Spirituality was helping me for a while but then I started to withdraw from my social activities and am now back to being isolated again. I feel like my difficulties have returned and I feel lost. I don't want to be in denial, I just still have such a hard time accepting what having autism really means in my life. It really doesn't do much for me reading about it in the books or online, and I still tend to think that my life experiences and childhood have been what caused me to be the way that I am. I don't know how I am going to figure out what I need to just accept about myself, and what I can do for myself to keep growing as a person. I'm not comfortable just giving up on myself. I don't think any of the new things I have been trying have helped me much. I hope this gets better and makes more sense to me soon.

It can be very hard and take years for someone to accept themselves...but, I think it's helpful to remember that the difficulties you're facing don't define you. It could be helpful to make a list of things you like about yourself. It might be a good idea to keep that list and read it when you want to.

My personal growth seems to occur in spurts. I can make decent progress for a while, but then it slows or stops for a time. It sometimes helps me to view these as rest periods wherein my psyche has to digest and internalize the prior progress. I try to resist the urge to become discouraged during those times, though I confess I sometimes do.

I do feel the same. Just like you, spirituality also helped me. I want to know ( if you do not mind ) what kind of spirituality helped you ? Zen,Buddhism, meditation ? I also took the solace of spiritualism in my worst times and it helped me a lot. Just the peace and quiet brought about by praying, chanting or lighting incense calms me down.
Coming back to your post, yes I feel exactly like you. It is such a confusing state of mind. Sometimes, when I talk to some interesting people/friends, I feel better. When under stress, I seem to lose my mind but maybe when things are stressful, we need to "open up our minds" or "our stress" to someone willing to listen.Even a phone conversation works. Being alone makes the situation worse.
Sometimes, when the stress is too high, I am not even able to talk to anyone and I isolate myself more. But isolation makes the situation worse.
There is no permanent solution to this but we should talk about this confusion to other people. That day, I was talking about some of my confusions/weird thoughts to a friend and she said that she also has these thoughts. So, I realized that my friend also goes through the same kind of confusion. Maybe it is even normal/natural, people just do not reveal them often. but sharing helps.