Hiding My Tics

My very first tic, at least that I can remember, was a simple sniff. I was in 4^th grade and would sniff all the time. I can only imagine how irritating this was to those around me. I remember one specific incident when an adult snapped at me, “Why don’t you just blow your nose?” As if it was that simple. This adult didn’t know any better and neither did I. This interaction did teach me a valuable lesson; certain behaviors are linked to social norms. If you are sniffing you must have to blow your nose.

It was from this I found an ally in cold and allergy season. My sniffing didn’t stand out as much, I was normal. Cold and allergy season would pass and my tic would stand out again. It was about a year after I started sniffing that new tics started surfacing. These tics were facial tics and a head jerking tic. The facial tics were easy enough to hide but the head jerking was not. What is a young kid looking to fit in to do? What I did was grew my hair out. With longer hair my head jerking tic looked like I was attempting to get the hair out of my eyes.

The longer hair worked for a while but the head jerking got so bad concerns about injury lead to a haircut. Cut the hair and there goes the need to jerk my head. While that isn’t how Tourette Syndrome works. Now I was a short haired, head jerking, and sniffing spectacle. At this point I hadn’t been diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome. I was just a boy who picked up habits easily.

It was shortly after the haircut that I went to see a neurologist and was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome. The diagnosis helped because at least I knew what was going on, as much as an 11 year can. I grew my hair back out to help hide the head jerking or at least to give it an explanation. Cold and allergy season were still my favorite times of the year. This went on for a few years before I really started to focus on other people’s behaviors.

There wasn’t a sudden shift in my behavior but over time I started to notice a lot of people stretching or cracking their neck. If normal people stretch or crack their neck then I would mimic them and stretch or crack my neck. Whenever I would feel the need to jerk my head I would stretch my neck instead. By replacing a tic with another more socially acceptable movement I slowly modified my tics and learned to control them (to a certain extant). I have recently learned this is called Comprehensive Behavioral Intervention for Tics (CBIT). I still haven’t learned much about CBIT but it sounds like what I was doing naturally as a survival skill. This new skill helped me modify my tics to more normal movements that I saw others doing.

A second strategy I picked up was another of observation. I watched people to see when they weren’t watching me. Anytime they weren’t looking at me I would tic. Timing was the only issue with this strategy as some tics took longer than others. Every once in a while someone would look back mid tic. After years of people watching I have learned how and when to tic to hide my tics.

This is one thing I would like people to know about my Tourette’s.