Did you find that your diagnosis helped? I assume I'll have to go private & id like to make sure it's not going to send me down a rabbit hole of expense and feeling bad about stuff.
I was diagnosed by a phycologist I was using for some general therapy, so I guess it's not a formal diagnosis. It cost what the therapy was costing anyway. She is trained in it and I never asked her about that at all, she suggested we go through the tests.
Initially, I found it really hard, like I had failed in some way, something about me is "wrong". And it was on my mind 24 hours a day.
But I think I've got over that now. I find it useful to know, for example, when people think I "take things the wrong way", this isn't me being a "difficult person" as I have often been told, this is because my brain works differently. So instead of spending hours going over in my mind why I responded to something the way I did and surely it was obvious what was meant (it sometimes becomes obvious just after I respond, because of learned behaviour I can see things if I stop for a bit, or see people's reactions) I can now accept that my brain just works that way.
I do take things literally. I over think things.
An example of this - when I was a kid I saw it said on squash bottles "dilute to taste", and I thought this meant that until you diluted it it didn't taste of anything. Which was bewildering. So then I thought it was just an odd way of saying "don't drink undiluted" (replace "taste" with "drink", for example). I was an adult when I realised it means "dilute until it suits your taste preference".
These sorts of things still happen to me. Sometimes people think I'm joking so I get a good reputation for being funny, which is fine. I have a very high masking score so I do cover it up well.
And sometimes I am intentionally funny, using my ability to see things the "other way".
Funnily enough, of people who know me, I'd say they are split about 50/50 on "that makes sense" and "no, I don't see that at all".
It stemmed from a conversation about my mother who is almost without doubt autistic. And there can be a family association.
I was also abused as a child and autistic kids are more likely to be abused (I won't hypothesise as to why). But equally some of my childhood experiences could have left me with other disorders which present similarly to autism, such as attachment disorder (pretty likely from what I know of my early childhood) or CPTSD. It's really impossible to know to be honest.
But the thing I've tried to learn is to give myself a break over it all! I'm doing my best, if people think I'm difficult, they're not good people for me.