Autism

I'm not surprised to see downvotes on the comments saying you don't need a diagnosis, but I completely agree with them. I googled "neurodivergent therapist" and found a local practice that had an autistic Psychologist who focused on assessments. I reached out to schedule and she said "I guess you could get a diagnosis of high functioning ASD, but why do you want this". I told her I was sure of my self diagnosis but wanted the validation. She said a therapist could do that without me paying thousands for the full assessment. She strongly discouraged me from the process. It was disappointing but after watching countless YouTube videos of people who had gotten their diagnoses, told family/friends, then revisited the subject months or years later, there was a resounding consensus that the diagnosis didn't change anything. There are also drawbacks to an official diagnosis, especially when it comes to emigration and child custody. If you feel disabled by ASD and want to try to get benefits, it would probably be easier and cheaper to go to a regular therapist and get the alphabet soup of diagnoses that we tend to get from those not sufficiently trained in neurodiversity (bipolar, depression, anxiety, OCD, BPD, ODD, etc). I've started receiving helpful accommodations without saying I'm autistic by telling people, I have auditory processing issues, so I need to be somewhere quiet, or telling my boss I burnout really easily and needed to reduce my hours.