My therapist has suggested for me to go see a psychiatrist for official evaluations, to better understand where my problems lay and if there's anything that can help in the way of medications. I said my main priority is getting an Aspergers evaluation. She agrees that it's a high priority and really wants me to push for it- but how? How do I do that? I've never been to a psychiatrist before. I have some anxiety issues too, but they're not nearly as disabling as the AS is.

Have any of you ever gotten your diagnosis from a psychiatrist? What kind of things should I expect? What should I bring?

How do you stop from masking your symptoms, from downplaying them? I constantly try to hide everything because I've been judged so much before. I look "past" people because I can't make eye contact, but I could much more comfortably just look at my hands or the ground instead. I stim a lot, but to mask it from others I try to revert it to just more "normal" ones like foot tapping etc, when it's much better for me to rock or hand flap freely. I can't really mask a lot of the other things like not understanding facial expressions/body language, taking things literally or at face value, etc. But I downplay it all by habit, to pretend I'm "fine" when I'm not. :s

I'm nervous to all hell. and I guess now I have a topic for T on wednesday.