Research or special interest?

As I’m sure you’ve heard before a compulsion is any way to soothe the anxiety. It could be checking, a ritual, etc. It looks like what you are engaging in is a compulsion to soothe your obsession with certainty which all of us with OCD crave. The fact that you did 3 screening tests instead of just waiting for a licensed professional to give you an evaluation looks like urgency and therefore OCD coated. Use your non engagement responses, I will deal with the fact that I have autism if and when I’m formally diagnosed, anything is possible etc.

This is a common thing in OCD. Maybe not specifically about autism, but about many different conditions in general. “What if I have xyz” is and has always been my main issue with OCD. What brings me out of it though is to remember that labels for mental health or neurodivergence are just there to identify buckets of symptoms for health care practitioners and the general public. If you do have those buckets of symptoms, then maybe you do have autism. But what these labels don’t do is define who you are, what your life is going to entail, how you respond to said condition, etc. When I think about it this way, it makes labels seem way less important, powerful, or scary than they can be. Thinking about it this way also helps me avoid the situation that we see all over the internet. A lot of people get diagnosed with something and then limit themselves. “I can’t do this because I am diagnosed with xyz.” Again, these conditions are all just buckets of symptoms. If seeking a diagnosis will be helpful in helping you to cope with difficulties in everyday life, then maybe it’s worth pursuing. But if it’s going to put you mentally in a box, cause you to limit yourself, or make you feel like something is fundamentally wrong with you, then getting a diagnosis would be more harmful than helpful.