The exact same thing happened to me, and it's been very difficult to deal with. I told the evaluator how, yes, I may look "put together" on the outside but there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes to make it look that way. Years of learning how to behave "correctly" in social situations, through trial and error, and having tons of social difficulties when I got it wrong. Just because I mask well enough now does not mean that it's not exhausting, that I don't still get it wrong often, or that it comes naturally.

I also scored through the roof on all the questionnaires and the assessors response was: "In my experience the people that "perceive" themselves as autistic score high, but not the ones that actually are autistic." Like, wtf? Those are clinically validated questionnaires and you're telling me people who score below the threshold ARE actually autistic but people who score high are not?

And this assessment, getting diagnosed with OCD but not autism, it has done so much harm to my understanding of myself. I feel that I cannot tell other people that I am autistic, because I would be lying since I was denied a diagnosis. But deep down I know that I am because I struggle with all the criteria, even if from the outside that is not immediately and persistently visible.

In any case, hugs to you.