how were you diagnosed?

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I am waiting on a psych analysis and its sort of killing me being in limbo. I have a diagnosis by interview from a therapist but the therapist I normally see totally disagrees with this for many reasons. Last session she told me that the reason she cannot imagine I may have AS is that I show empathy. I cry for other peoples pain. She is attempting I guess talk therapy with having me name lots of childhood traumas and talking about them. I cry and feel like garbage for days. The only people I trust are the people that have hurt me the most. This makes a lot of sense though because I don't let anyone close to me except family regularly because of all of the terrible endings to friendships where I end up awkward and embarrassed constantly being brought into my mind when I attempt to make connections to people.

You can be on the spectrum somewhere and have empathy.
You do see empathy displayed here, by autistics. Some of them find it more difficult than others. And there is always PDD-NOS (autistic, except for personal differences...like extremely chatty but spoke very late, or excellent empathy, or a social systemizing junkie).

Autism is a communication/processing disorder. So many autistics see others having emotion and have difficulty reading the body and facial languages correctly (or not at all). They have trouble responding appropriately.
I have trouble displaying emotions correctly (I do have them!), so I can be "hard to read". I have to work at being "easily read" like most people do without thinking about it. When I am very upset I don't bother with helping others read me, and it can make a mess of misunderstandings.
When people speak of autistics as a group lacking empathy completely and being sociopath material, I say I think the rate of sociopathy in autistics is maybe close to the same rate as it is in non-autistics...about 1 in 40 persons! (Wow!) Caligula probably didn't care how his victims felt but that did not make him autistic!

If your mom is around, ask her when you started speaking. That can be valuable to know.

I just got my fifth diagnosis on the spectrum. I was first diagnosed about 30 years ago.
My personal recommendation would be to get a professional opinion from a Psychiatrist or MSW Therapist who has seen autistics for years and years. Let them get to know you and listen to that they have to say.

So, now you are nervous...what's your favorite stim? Lol

A WAIS-IV, which is an IQ test, that also tells about other functions of the brain.