The advice to treat symptoms and not worry about labels is generally good. There are some different treatment directions depending on dx, though, especially if you start looking at long-term plans.

My last pdoc would never give me a straight story on whether her recommendations had to do with a dx or symptoms or what, nor was she clear enough or direct enough about the reasons to do what she suggested. If she'd said, "you have to stop drinking because you're bipolar and alcohol is just going to keep making everything worse" then I would have stopped for longer than a month! Instead, I found my moods were lower when I was sober and decided that abstinence had to be the cause - but my moods were probably lower because I'm always miserable in February and March, and I tend to drink a lot more when I'm hypomanic like I was in December and January. Since I quit seeing that pdoc, I'm a lot less confused; it just wasn't a good therapeutic relationship at all.

So I guess what I'm trying to get at is that having a good pdoc/tdoc relationship is important - whether it's a dx or symptoms that are being treated, you should know why you're following some recommendation or other, and what the expected short and long terms benefits should be. I definitely second SunReach's recommendation to read up - whether you identify with the dx or not, knowing more about it helps you feel like you can take more control. In my case, it was only when I started reading up on bipolar that I realized it was definitely an accurate description; many symptoms and behaviors described in books were things I had experienced but never thought to mention because I had no idea they weren't "normal."