Re: my diagnosis

I just put this together: my diagnosis can be seen as the external world giving me clear parameters for engagement. This perspective makes it clear why the diagnosis has been so fucking useful for me. Many people have stressed to me that "your diagnosis is not who you are", and that's fine and fair and actually very kind, thank you, but I think that speaks to a passive/receiving perspective -- a perspective in which I am handed a label, and the question is what do "I" do with that. I think that the more useful perspective for me is trained on the giver of that label. Not Dr Oster specifically, but the society that produced that label. When I went to Dr Oster for an evaluation, I was approaching Society At Large and saying, "hey, I feel like you probably have a word for me, in your language, and since I'm not a native speaker of your language, can you have a careful look at me and see what word fits? so that I may know how I fit into the way you think?"

Social expectations and dynamics make for hard mental labor for me -- none of it is intuitive. Having the person on the other end tell me what they make of me, and having them tell me what I may expect of them, dramatically improves the odds of a producing a peaceful and productive dynamic.

Having this diagnosis gives a similar boost to the dynamic I have with Society.

Big deal. And a very, very great relief. :)