Living with Tourettes Syndrome and the difficulties of everyday life.
Thousands of children and teenagers currently live with Tourettes and the tics associated with this disorder. According to one CDC study, 1 out of every 360 kids between the ages of 6-17 living in the US have received a diagnosis of TS. This condition mostly affects boys, as they are 3-5 times more likely to have it than girls. Additionally, kids between the ages of 12-17 are twice likely to have Tourette’s compared to those between the ages of 6-11.
However, the media has portrayed the wrong information about Tourette’s. It often attributes poorly delivered speeches, misspoken sentiments, and offending behavior to Tourette’s Syndrome. One of the best ways to understand what living with Tourette’s feel like is to hear what people with that condition have to say.
Kids and Teenagers Living With Tourettes Syndrome
According to this interview, here’s what people living with Tourette’s Syndrome this syndrome have to say about the condition and their tics.
“Tourette’s can be hilarious, but you can hurt yourself like badly. It can stop you from walking. You know, I still have my entire body weight behind me when my Tourette’s launches me onto the floor. Sometimes I can feel one coming, especially the really loud ones. The ones that feel like there’s some sort of bubbling inside you like waiting to come out. I can sort of tell when they’re coming. But a lot of them are just completely out of the blue. Tourette’s does not care about you. It’s not your friend. It lives inside your head and tells you to do something no normal person in their right mind will ever do.”
“Everyone is so different. My neck twitches and my head jerks. For me that really hurts. I get back problems and all sorts of stuff. Tourette’s is more scary. You never know when it’s gonna happen. So when I was younger, I used to try and suppress my tics a lot because it made me anxious.”
“Some people can be really cruel and say some really horrible things. I have people trying to fold me in. It’s such an invasion of my kinda personal space. For someone to actually be filming me just while I’m sitting down trying to have something to eat. That’s very hard to think back on. The reason why I love being with other people with Tourette’s is because I’m not constantly playing that role. I can completely just let go.”
Conclusion
People living with Tourettes have regular tics. Tics are characterized by repetitive movements or sounds that can not be controlled. For example, they may blink, blurt out certain sounds, or shrug their shoulders uncontrollably. The tics associated with TS can not be stopped. Kids living with this condition struggle every day to live normal lives and sometimes it can be very difficult.
Although we may not fully understand what it means to live with tics, we can do our part by accommodating such ones and not making life harder than it already is for them.
People living with Tourettes need all the love, care, reassurance, and encouragement they can get.
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