What next? Processing my diagnostic report.........

I'm done with Christmas Cards said:

but I can see them in myself, especially the relief from stress that I get from being absorbed in a hobby, and my dislike of doing things that are outside my routine.

For high functioning people, those criteria are matter of interpretation by an experienced professional. The evidence will not be in your face. It is also a matter of your perception. It is normal that you consider everything about yourself as normal. So it's not as salient conceptually for you if it doesn't cause you trouble. For example, bullying caused me huge distress so I could talk about it, but routines don't cause me distress, so I couldn't talk about this unless Dr asks specific probing questions. I was diagnosed long ago so I can't advise specifically.

Basically think harder about how this criteria for routine, repetitive etc manifests in you. It won't be the stereotypical example of Kanner autism.... it will be part of 'normal', but have autistic underlying mechanism. For example in women they often missed autism exactly for this reason. They now accept that it is not the nature of special interests or even not those restricted blabla they are, but their intensity. Hyperfocus. The huge distress and cost if routines are upset and the workloads for adaptation too high. . In the quote you already developed a few leads, work on them further. What else upsets you? What else do you do to avoid something? Make a list. I suppose you asked others- people always come up with surprising observations.

You can discuss this at ADOS, the doctors can add that. Think also how this criteria could be demonstrated by observable behaviour at ados. If the Drs see autism in ados, that will override any unmet criteria before.

I would say you don't want uncertainty and being left in in limbo in no man's land. Go for the diagnosis. You already identify with it, you meet most criteria. Go after it, otherwise it would cost you processing the lack of. It would create more problems. 

My younger daughter was assessed for autism at 4 and was told to wait until it would become clearer... that meant 5 years without provisions at school which completely broke her. At 9 she got diagnosed. There is no shadow of a doubt now, but all those lost years for her were very damaging. You are not  growing like a child, but basically narrowly missing the dx is really unhelpful. So if you feel autistic, make a list and tell them, go after that criteria and behave at ados.

Thank you TE. This is what concerns me - that I may have failed to demonstrate anything against those remaining criteria because I'm still recovering from 20 years of faking NT behaviour (at great cost). I also found in 2017 that what I thought was a normal level of stress was actually about 9/10 on most peoples' scales. Keeping my stress to a true 3/10 maybe really *does* mean that I don't find that at lunch time the stock in the shop has changed and forced me to deviate from my usual sandwich, bag of crisps and chocolate bar, or that I rub my chest. I start to doubt my own judgement sometimes - trust the clinic's objectivity, or fear the masking effect of, well, masking?

Thank you TE. This is what concerns me - that I may have failed to demonstrate anything against those remaining criteria because I'm still recovering from 20 years of faking NT behaviour (at great cost). I also found in 2017 that what I thought was a normal level of stress was actually about 9/10 on most peoples' scales. Keeping my stress to a true 3/10 maybe really *does* mean that I don't find that at lunch time the stock in the shop has changed and forced me to deviate from my usual sandwich, bag of crisps and chocolate bar, or that I rub my chest. I start to doubt my own judgement sometimes - trust the clinic's objectivity, or fear the masking effect of, well, masking?

Not particularly, but I do get in an absolute tiz if asked to do something at the last minute when I had plans (even plans to do nothing).

I'm done with Christmas Cards said:

at lunch time the stock in the shop has changed and forced me to deviate from my usual sandwich, bag of crisps and chocolate bar, or that I rub my ches

That's right up the street of 'restricted and repetitive behaviours...'

Think of all the stress and all the coping and fall out from coping of small changes like this. If lunch didn't go right, does it sometimes or often affects your meetings, the presentations or social job tasks you have to do right after lunch?