Had my first evaluation since college today

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I'm a little uncomfortable, as the handout he gave me after the session was over listed Autism$peak$ on it. But I need an official Dx because my current supervisor is the kind of person who plays office politics and does all kinds of passive-aggressive stuff that is causing me real problems. I need this on record with HR. My therapist feels I meet the criteria for being on the spectrum, but she doesn't have the right credentials to produce the report, etc. So... "official" evaluation time.

My best friend came in with me to the evaluation room (she also drove me to where it was) because I was overwhelmed. I'd been worrying since last night about it, so my anxiety was "up." My arthritis was also painful and I had a knot in my neck, so I was rubbing my neck and my arms a lot. I had to explain that it was entirely due to the pain, not due to the anxiety.

At first I thought the doctor was telling me I wasn't autistic, that I was just making it all up (which was my worst fear going in), but he wasn't. He pointed out a number of social cues I missed that I didn't even know existed. I was very stressed and anxious; my best friend explained some of what he was seeing so he would know "this is anxiety" and "this is SadPhD."

I reacted in bad ways to raised voices (apparently he was trying to see if I could react to "excitement" and I couldn't - I thought he was angry with me) and I could not figure out what he meant by "social overtures" (or, for that matter, "justifications" or "piling on"). My best friend explained those to me later, but in the moment I was really struggling with social communication.

(Social overtures = nonverbal cues people give to indicate they want to interact; "piling on" = believing the crappy sh!t other people say about me.) Best friend says "justifications" meant "you keep trying to normalize other people's bad behavior toward you in the past, justifying their behavior toward you," although at first I thought the doctor meant "you're trying to excuse your bad behavior by saying it's autism." I'm still not sure what "justification" means in this sense, though. Why is it important or weird that I try to normalize other people's bad behavior toward me in the past? I will ask my best friend more about this when she's rested; right now she's tired and I don't want to bother her.

Other notes:

- I don't know how to give short answers, and it's really hard to stop in the middle of an explanation. It's almost physically painful. Limiting myself to "short answers" was exhausting. I couldn't figure out what the right answer was, and any answer I came up with had at least four or five related pieces, without which I felt like I wasn't giving a good answer. But to Best Friend and the doctor, apparently, it seemed like I was jumping all over the place.

- I really felt derailed, a lot, because I kept not knowing when to stop. And when I was told to stop I felt like I'd done something wrong. A lot.

- I had real trouble figuring out some of what the doctor said, because when I would try to ask for a definition of a term, he seemed to think I was interrupting. I didn't mean to. I just needed to know what he meant.

- I hate the word "potential." It was used to abuse me and I do not react well to it.

- Best Friend says I looked very anxious and afraid by my body language. Okay. I guess I was?

So now the doctor wants to talk to my regular therapist (who recommended that I get this evaluation), and then we'll see what happens after that. I've sent an email to give her permission and connect them up.

So... holding pattern, but I really doubt he's going to find that I'm not autistic. So that's something, right?

I guess there's a lot more I was missing that I didn't even know I was missing. I'm feeling kind of like I did when I first found out about my VIQ/PIQ split (it's big, and the first indicator that I ever had that I was autistic). I'm both relieved (that it's real) and upset (that it's THIS real).

Other, other notes:

He said "You offend people a lot because you don't realize how they are perceiving the way you come across." Yes...

He said "Yes, X is a symptom." One of them was how much I ramble on. Another was missing those damned social cues. So... I do have the symptoms.

At first he seemed disappointed that there wasn't anybody who could give him developmental info about me (like from when I was a baby) but then at the end of the session he didn't seem to think that would be a problem, which confuses me. Why the change?

He seemed to agree with me when I said that I have lots of book knowledge about social interaction (from my degrees) but that I don't have any experiential knowledge because it just doesn't make sense "in the moment."

He had a spot on the bridge of his nose that really was distracting me every time he took off his glasses. It turned out to be a mole (he told me when I asked about it). Then when I tried to finish my thought about it, he said it was "offensive" for me to keep going once he'd said it was a mole (WTF?). Apparently NTs would have said "Oh," and dropped the subject. I don't get that at all!

He did a LOT of big gestures. It was hard to focus on what he was saying because his hands were flying all over the place. I got really stressed out by that, but how do you tell someone "stop gesturing"? I don't even know if he know how much he was doing it. It just felt really threatening and intimidating.