Seeing a doctor, a diagnosis, make it better or worse?

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Did seeing a doctor and securing a correct diagnosis make it better or worse? Apparently there are a number of persons who feel there was a lot of wasted time and money involved in securing a correct diagnosis and that process was so bumbled that it made things worse in some ways.

Experiences?

Seeing a doctor and getting a diagnosis should be part of a deliberate process where the reasons are your own. I am going for a professional opinion because I need to have that particular piece of knowledge. It's about resolving old issues and giving them the correct context. It won't likely have much immediate affect on my day to day life. But since my own sense of well being is going to be affected, it should help my relationships.

Diagnosis freed me from the lifelong sense of being personally defective. Allowed me to disconnect from believing the things I had always been told about myself, that I was lazy, uncooperative and somehow of generally weak moral character for being me. Just reading about it and making an amateur armchair self diagnosis didn't really do that even though I had no doubt from the first time I read about AS. I needed third party confirmation. Not sure what you mean about getting worse, but as far as how others treat me, that didn't change, but couldn't have got much worse short of being stood up against a wall and shot. As far as my own AS traits, the only change was I don't feel the pressure anymore to pretend to be something I'm not constantly.

I was recently diagnosed and I'm glad I persevered with it. I did it through the NHS here in the UK so there wasn't any financial cost involved although because I come across as quite "normal", it was a struggle convincing the doctor that I wasn't an attention-seeking neurotic girl and getting them to refer me to a specialist.

The Assessment was pretty exhausting in that it was an interview with the psychologist, myself, my husband and my parents (they asked my parents to be present so they could have a an in-depth account of my childhood and my husband for a second opinion on what I'm like now) and went on for just over 4 hours. The psychologist was very understanding and helpful though although by the end of it I was so shattered - I rarely talk to anyone for such a long length of time - that when I came out I had to asked my other half if they'd said whether I has an ASD or not.

For the first few weeks following diagnosis I was absolutely euphoric because I felt like I was finally beginning to understand who I was. But once the euphoria faded I became increasingly depressed as I discovered that there was no quick cure for the parts of AS that I wanted to change.

It's coming up to a year now and I'm coming to terms with it much more (being on this website has certainly helped too in hearing other people's stories and perspectives). I guess what you can ask yourself is what I asked myself while I was considering getting diagnosed; how much do you think it will affect you knowing for certain either way, and how much would you prefer just not knowing?

Hope this helps.