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Thanks everyone.
What my T's would say is that in the aftermath I've let my anxiety get the best of me, hence focusing on the little "mental drills" and his comments about "it will probably hurt you......(that you do so well at explaining yourself and seeming so bright) instead of the bigger picture, which is that, as a few mentioned, in the end he did seem to understand me and recognize that maybe my performance in those ways didn't mean I don't suffer.
In working on my anxiety, we're going over how I grab onto anything negative--even a molehill--and make a mountain out of it, catastrophizing and obsessing about it despite what the big picture is. But I do worry, depending on what he put on paper about his interpretation, about the ways I came across as better than I really am due to some particularly high functioning parts of me. I have suffered impairment of my mental functioning, just not the kind that will affect such simple (to me) drills and brief questions. If I'd been asked deeper, more probing questions I would've displayed some of my impairment more clearly. Which is profound in intellectual ways. I thought about dumbing down my performance, trying to be more confused and less articulate, screwing up some of the number things and Presidents drill, but, as Perna stated, that's fraud, so I didn't.
I'm glad I gave him the spiel my T recommended I give about how I make a better first impression sometimes that belies my problems. It also occurred to me post-hoc that in the past 14 months, I've gone through so many mental health interview/assessments (before him 3 diff pdocs, 8 or 9 therapists, including the masters-levels ones as intakes for things last year) that I know what to say, how to explain myself well after all that practice. Wish I'd had the insight to make that point to him.
On the "avolitional" word use, I did that at my T's recommendation as a way to explain what was going on to the interviewer in a clear way. I didn't know the word 2 days earlier. And for whomever it was, a word isn't a "big" word when it's a common part of the lingua franca for the people involved. As Strunk and White would support, better to use one word than 20 to make the exact same point, which is why people use jargon or "big words" most of the time, and a pdoc should certainly be familiar with avolitional as a word common/concept to the profession. People call things "big words" to belittle when they're threatened by the use of it, and he certainly got caught flat-footed not knowing the meaning of it. The label he used to substitute for the word after I tried to explain is nearly the opposite conceptually in the use of it in the field. That suggestion of hers backfired.
Anyway, I am wary about what will happen for the general reason that out of all the assessments I've gone through, this was the least thorough and revealed less about my--positive and negative--of any I've EVER had in 25 years.
But hopefully, as it seems, he did express some understanding that the things that seemed impressive about me didn't necessarily speak so broadly and meaningfully to overshadow my struggling. There was some sympathy for me, too. I know I'll obsess over the few things, but working with my T's hopefully will help me worry less about them and focus on the forest.
Appreciate the feedback.
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out of my mind, left behind
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