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I start a formal evaluation for ASD.

I'm not really nervous, but maybe extremely hyper-focused. It's a good thing I have a full time job and other obligations or I would have been studying ASDs 24/7 for the past few months and then gone in to this with a crazy level of knowledge.

My biggest concern is that the psychologist will have a frozen mind set. I react with extreme negativity to anyone that is rigid in their thinking and condescending in their attitude. If it feels wrong, I could end up just walking out.

What I really want is to spend some time in the beginning discussing in broad strokes why I believe I am on the spectrum. I DON'T want to plunge into a series of neurological tests, have those tests spit out "the answer" and then go on my merry way.

The best outcome would be for me to have enough time to do a complete 'brain dump' as it were, even if it took a few extra sessions, then proceed with the formal testing. This is important to me because a great deal of my initial presentation in a new setting is a learned set of responses and behaviors purposed to masking my inner states of mind. It's going to be a challenge to side step these virtually automatic responses and expose the "real me" because I have worked so hard at trying to fit in to an NT world.

I really want to take this process on my level. I have no fear of abstractions regarding things such as symbolic representations of knowledge and how my mind perceives, processes, and ultimately constructs such representations. In my 52 years of struggles I have constructed a rather detailed, highly interconnected view of reality that is rarely if ever revealed. Too often a therapist views such expounding on such things as an evasion of my core issues. This is not the case. THIS IS MY CORE. This is where I live and breath and everything else I present is nothing more than a way of filtering my output for public consumption. It is critical to me that this core be central to the evaluation.

Sigh.

Any thoughts?

well, you are most probably going to talk to a NT. so i suggest telling him or her, if you do get asked some questions about your functionning, that you are going to answer based on the core of yourself, the time it took for you to analyse it, so that they do not infer that, since noone could come up with such deep analysis at the last moment, you are just making it up on the spot. That would be my main worry, not being believed.