I have had many different tics during my life and I expect many more to arrive. Here is a little information on the kind of tics that I experience:
Motor (movement) Tics:
Motor tics are actually how my Tourette’s Syndrome (TS) first started.
My first tic was wrinkling my nose and a mouth opening tic both of which I’ve done probably every 20 seconds for the last 13 years!
I’ve had a pretty large range of motor tics across my life in fact I’ve probably had tics involving every part of my body by now
My day to day motor tics include facial tics, eye rolling, head jerking, flicking my neck, moving my shoulder, punching with my arms, flicking my elbow, every kind of hand movement tics, stomach tics, lots of foot leg and walking tics, so many punching and hitting tics (myself and objects around me) and a very extensive list of muscle tensing tics across my body.
More unusually I’ve also experienced full body tics involving so many different parts of my body all at once.
My most disliked motor tics I’ve experienced was probably when I was really struggling with lots of legs and foot tics which meant walking was super difficult so I spent a while in a wheelchair.
Vocal (noise) Tics:
My very first vocal tics were very small things like clearing my throat, sniffing and repeating syllables or phonic sounds.
I’ve experienced lots of the classic and ‘simple’ vocal tics such as whistling, grunting and making lots of weird and fun sounds.
I didn’t have any word vocal tics for the first few years after being diagnosed. I was about 12 or 13 when I ticced my first word which was ‘Cat’. This stuck around for a long while too!
Since then I’ve had quite the ticcing vocab! Some of the words or phrases that I tic are completely random, some are things that people have said around me that I am repeating which is called echolalia and some words that my brain has subconsciously picked up without me realising.
Here are a few of my favs from over the years:
- “What a calamity”
- “What a joke”
- “Are you havin’ a giggle’”
- “Tigers in teslas eating clementines and jellybeans”
- “Bubbles”
- “Here comes naughty uncle Rory with a beer, ping, he’s got an idea hurrah”
- “Bumblebees at a barn dance playing banjos”
- “Put the kazoo in the microwave”
- “Jellyfish”
- “Have you got any Jelly”
Swearing and obscene tics:
Personally I have never experienced coprolalia.
- Coprolalia = the clinical terms for tics that produce socially unacceptable words eg obscenities and profanities
- Copropraxia = tics where a person uncontrollably performs obscene gestures
Although swearing tics are what people associate most with Tourette’s Syndrome it is actually only 10% of people who have Tourette’s have these types of tics! Therefore it is actually a more uncommon presentation of Tourettes despite how it is so often portrayed in the media.
These tics like all tics can be very hard to experience and can have a large negative impact on a persons life so should never be used as a punchline.
Tic Attacks:
A ‘tic attack’ is a phrase often used to describe bouts of severe, continuous, non-suppressible and disabling tics which can last from anywhere between a couple of minutes to several hours.
Again, not everyone with TS experiences this.
For me I am more likely to have a tic attack if I have been suppressing my tics a lot or if I am burnt out.
It is important to communicate to others what you need when you have a ‘tic attack’ and sometimes making a simple tic attack plan is an easy way to do this.