Tics
I'd intended for tonight's post to be about my tics. I was going to list them, describe them, and talk about how they make me feel. I decided not to do that. First, it's a little humiliating. Nothing productive can come from listing the involuntary movements and sounds I make. There's not much I can do to control them, and I'm working towards accepting my tics and integrating them into a generally positive self-image. There's also a weirdly voyeuristic quality to listing tics so that someone who isn't a TS patient can read them and be like, "Oh, that's weird." Trust me, I know that turning my head to stare into a light in the middle of a conversation is weird.
Second, and as I've already mentioned in a previous post, tics are only the tip of the iceberg. They are the outward facing aspect of Tourette's. If someone has a problem with my tics or thinks my tics are funny or decides to judge me because of them, then that says a heck of a lot more about that person than it does about me. I think it'd be more constructive to talk about how it feels to tic, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
I'm not googling a definition here, but I believe that to tic means to make an involuntary muscle movement or to make an involuntary noise. I don't mean involuntary like my heartbeat, or my breathing, or the way my body makes minute adjustments to my posture to retain balance while standing. It might be more accurate to say that it's an involuntary action that I'm fully aware of. One of the reasons that I doubted I really had Tourette's was that unlike most people with TS, I rarely have what are called "premonitary urges" before my tics.
When I tic, I'm not usually answering a compulsion. Normally my TS and I are occupying the same brain and functioning side-by-side, if that makes any sense. I can be contentedly reading a book while quietly making noises and raising my eyebrows over and over. There are exceptions, of course. I have a tic that causes me to give people the middle finger with my right hand, and that one feels like my hand is sneezing and boy oh boy, does it ever need to get out. I've usually managed to keep my hand down at my side when I do it, and I always intentionally wiggle the other fingers to mask the fact that I just flipped off another shopper in the grocery store who has inexplicably left his shopping cart perpendicular to the aisle while he looks for something. In that case, I don't actually feel too bad about it. Grocery store etiquette is a big deal for me. I also recently remembered that I had a skipping tic as a little kid where I would skip just one time, and I vividly recall the feeling of needing to skip and the satisfaction I'd have as I felt my feet hit the ground in that familiar rhythm.
My tics are normally here and gone by the time I realize I've had them. If I had to guess, I'd say I average 2-3 per minute. If I'm really absorbed in work or in a book or a tv show or video game, I either tic less or tend not to notice them as much. Winner winner, ticken dinner. I'm working hard at moving past my frustration at ticcing. I have no reason to believe my TS symptoms will go lessen or go away, so I'd better get used to the fact that I'll be doing this for hopefully another 50 years. What I'm really struggling with lately is how my tics interrupt my train of thought and how they are (or how I let them be) a social burden.
I work for a company that sells industrial supplies, and in order to do my job right, I need an obscene level of focus 45 hours a week. It's enough that my co-workers like to mess around and that I'd rather discuss the most recent episode of The Flash or how everyone NEEDS to be watching the Netflix reboot of Voltron. I shouldn't have to contend with a higher-than-usual level of distraction, but alas. If my mouth starts making weird bird noises while I'm working on a complex customer order and I screw it up or if Oh God did that guy see me give him the finger? and i put an order on the wrong truck, I'm effed. I feel like I can never just get lost in my head because I'm always so aware of what my body is doing. Dozens of times a day, I'll be thinking about something, notice and be frustrated by a tic, and immediately after be like "What the hell was I just thinking about? Was it important? Man, I hope it wasn't important." If my brain is a computer's operating system, then I resent the percentage of my RAM that is being taken up by Tourette's. If you're a computer person and that analogy is a little off, I apologize; I can't even get the header on this blog to look nice.
Socially, I know that anxiety about my tics can lead me to avoid interaction. I hate small talk. I fucking hate it. Not because I hate you, small talk partner. I truly care about you and what you have to say about how your work day or what happened at Starbucks that morning or which type of treat your dog prefers. I'm just so aware of and anxious about what my body is doing while we're talking and standing square to each other and you're looking right at me so I KNOW you'll notice if I start ticcing and maybe you'll think it's weird and not want to talk anymore, so now a throwaway conversation about how the guy at the bagel shop put too much butter on your everything bagel becomes for me a claustrophobic, anxiety-filled closet that I just can't wait to get out of.
I feel like when I'm having a conversation, I'm constantly computing risk-versus-reward variables in the background. How well do I know this person? Do I care if she sees me tic? Is this conversation important enough or engaging enough to risk the embarrassment I'll feel if I tic, even if he doesn't notice? I often avoid talking to people, even close relatives, at length because the burden I allow myself to feel sometimes just doesn't seem worth it. There are other social aspects in play here as they relate to a typical presentation of TS, but I'll get into those and how I think they affect me in another post. I guess all I can really do is let the people closest to me know that I have Tourette's (have I mentioned that I mostly haven't done that yet?) and hope that they'll understand some of the extra nonsense I have going on in my head and how it might affect our interactions.
Second, and as I've already mentioned in a previous post, tics are only the tip of the iceberg. They are the outward facing aspect of Tourette's. If someone has a problem with my tics or thinks my tics are funny or decides to judge me because of them, then that says a heck of a lot more about that person than it does about me. I think it'd be more constructive to talk about how it feels to tic, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
I'm not googling a definition here, but I believe that to tic means to make an involuntary muscle movement or to make an involuntary noise. I don't mean involuntary like my heartbeat, or my breathing, or the way my body makes minute adjustments to my posture to retain balance while standing. It might be more accurate to say that it's an involuntary action that I'm fully aware of. One of the reasons that I doubted I really had Tourette's was that unlike most people with TS, I rarely have what are called "premonitary urges" before my tics.
When I tic, I'm not usually answering a compulsion. Normally my TS and I are occupying the same brain and functioning side-by-side, if that makes any sense. I can be contentedly reading a book while quietly making noises and raising my eyebrows over and over. There are exceptions, of course. I have a tic that causes me to give people the middle finger with my right hand, and that one feels like my hand is sneezing and boy oh boy, does it ever need to get out. I've usually managed to keep my hand down at my side when I do it, and I always intentionally wiggle the other fingers to mask the fact that I just flipped off another shopper in the grocery store who has inexplicably left his shopping cart perpendicular to the aisle while he looks for something. In that case, I don't actually feel too bad about it. Grocery store etiquette is a big deal for me. I also recently remembered that I had a skipping tic as a little kid where I would skip just one time, and I vividly recall the feeling of needing to skip and the satisfaction I'd have as I felt my feet hit the ground in that familiar rhythm.
My tics are normally here and gone by the time I realize I've had them. If I had to guess, I'd say I average 2-3 per minute. If I'm really absorbed in work or in a book or a tv show or video game, I either tic less or tend not to notice them as much. Winner winner, ticken dinner. I'm working hard at moving past my frustration at ticcing. I have no reason to believe my TS symptoms will go lessen or go away, so I'd better get used to the fact that I'll be doing this for hopefully another 50 years. What I'm really struggling with lately is how my tics interrupt my train of thought and how they are (or how I let them be) a social burden.
I work for a company that sells industrial supplies, and in order to do my job right, I need an obscene level of focus 45 hours a week. It's enough that my co-workers like to mess around and that I'd rather discuss the most recent episode of The Flash or how everyone NEEDS to be watching the Netflix reboot of Voltron. I shouldn't have to contend with a higher-than-usual level of distraction, but alas. If my mouth starts making weird bird noises while I'm working on a complex customer order and I screw it up or if Oh God did that guy see me give him the finger? and i put an order on the wrong truck, I'm effed. I feel like I can never just get lost in my head because I'm always so aware of what my body is doing. Dozens of times a day, I'll be thinking about something, notice and be frustrated by a tic, and immediately after be like "What the hell was I just thinking about? Was it important? Man, I hope it wasn't important." If my brain is a computer's operating system, then I resent the percentage of my RAM that is being taken up by Tourette's. If you're a computer person and that analogy is a little off, I apologize; I can't even get the header on this blog to look nice.
Socially, I know that anxiety about my tics can lead me to avoid interaction. I hate small talk. I fucking hate it. Not because I hate you, small talk partner. I truly care about you and what you have to say about how your work day or what happened at Starbucks that morning or which type of treat your dog prefers. I'm just so aware of and anxious about what my body is doing while we're talking and standing square to each other and you're looking right at me so I KNOW you'll notice if I start ticcing and maybe you'll think it's weird and not want to talk anymore, so now a throwaway conversation about how the guy at the bagel shop put too much butter on your everything bagel becomes for me a claustrophobic, anxiety-filled closet that I just can't wait to get out of.
I feel like when I'm having a conversation, I'm constantly computing risk-versus-reward variables in the background. How well do I know this person? Do I care if she sees me tic? Is this conversation important enough or engaging enough to risk the embarrassment I'll feel if I tic, even if he doesn't notice? I often avoid talking to people, even close relatives, at length because the burden I allow myself to feel sometimes just doesn't seem worth it. There are other social aspects in play here as they relate to a typical presentation of TS, but I'll get into those and how I think they affect me in another post. I guess all I can really do is let the people closest to me know that I have Tourette's (have I mentioned that I mostly haven't done that yet?) and hope that they'll understand some of the extra nonsense I have going on in my head and how it might affect our interactions.
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