My marriage counselor shared that he also struggles with anxiety (he said "an anxiety disorder" without specifying, but I suspect generalized anxiety, from how he's talked about things). At first, it really helped me trust him more, feeling he truly understood that part of me (and not just from stuff in psychology textbooks). But later on...it felt like he tended to blame my anxiety for many issues in our marriage and acted like I just needed to be less sensitive. So it almost felt like, because he'd learned to deal with his anxiety, then why can't I just learn to deal with mine? So I think it can go either way, really...

And I know, not from him telling me--from ex-T telling me, that my T also has a child on the spectrum. But since he hasn't talked about that experience at all and seems unwilling to, because it could potentially negatively affect me, I don't think it's had much effect. At first, had a bit of a negative effect before I told him I knew that, as it made me feel weird talking about stuff with my D, like about possibly pursuing biomed treatments (because that can be a fairly controversial issue in the community). I felt better once I told him I knew, and he agreed that T shouldn't have told me. I said I wanted to ask more questions about his son, but just asked his age, which he answered. I told him part of me wanted to know if he was higher functioning (like my D) or lower functioning, but that I also realized it could affect how I talked about D to him, so I wasn't going to ask him that. In the back of my mind, I still feel he understands more (compared to a parent who hadn't dealt with that) when I talk about struggles with D, even though he doesn't share that.