Life's a Twitch

I watched a fascinating programme on Tourette's Syndrome on BBC1 on Friday evening. Give it a watch.

I have Tourette's, though I'm almost embarrassed to say that I have the same, well, syndrome as the two guys (one teenager and one 40ish) in the film. To be clear, I certainly don't say that because TS is anything to be ashamed of, but because mine has never been as severe or as debilitating as theirs. All the same, their expereinces chimed interestingly with mine and made me want to talk a little bit about the thing.

First of all, to clear up some myths, TS does not always involve swearing. In fact, only about 1 in 10 TS sufferers has to deal with that particularly difficult tic (or so I was told only this morning). Also, TS is a lot more common than people think - many people (myself included, these days) have such mild TS that you and possibly even they would never notice.

It's very difficult to draw the line between people who "have it" and those who don't. Many if not most people probably "suffer" from their own little compulsions and I've heard more than one person tell me how they are sometimes tempted to do the unthinkable, such as throw themselves in front of trains/off bridges. We're all a bit twichy, I guess.

The good thing about how widespread the symptoms of TS are is that most people can have some idea what its like to have tics. We've all had itches that scream to be scratched - that's pretty much what its like to need to twitch. It's not completely unconcious, so its not completely impossible to resist, although you try resisting the urge to scratch an itch. Unless you succeed in distracting your mind, you'll find it pretty flipping hard.

My TS has got a hell of a lot better as I've got older, from its inception when I was a kid (I can't really remember how old I was, but I certainly haven't always had it - at least not to my knowledge), when it was pretty galling at times, to now, where its hardly ever a bother, really. I think a huge part of what bother I have had from it, actually, was about other peoples' reactions to my tics, rather than the things themself. Now that I rarely show any physical symptoms (and am not a kid anymore), I don't have to put up with staring or teasing. The teasing was definitely the worst, as it usually is for kids on the receiving end of it for any reason at all.

My thoughts on how the condition actually works are pretty unformed and very ill-informed, so forgive me for any wrongheadedness, but I have a few notions or explanatory notes about the condition. First, I can't get past the thing about the urge to do the unthinkable. I actually think this explains a lot of tics, from swearing in the supermarket to fantasising about jumping in front of trains, or punching insanely nice people in the face - I've had (and successfully resisted) that one too. Once a rogue thought pops into you mind, it's like an itch. That's why I don't tic much anymore - because devilish ideas don't cross my mind, I'm usually thinking of other (normal, hopefully) things. Second, not all (or even most) of the manifestations of TS are physical. TS has links to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Attention Deficit Disorder, amongst other things, the latter of which used to cause me no end of problems at school. I was essentially an average, reasonably bright, sensible kid, but I never, ever finished my work. My teachers, poor souls, used to despair of me. I've never really been able to determine where the boundary is between my TS/ADD and my laziness, but I've never quite got free of that side of it, though, like all the rest, it has faded, or at least got easier to handle (I even have a couple of degrees to my name now, though by the skin of my teeth, I have to admit). The OCD side of it is an enduring mystery to me, largely because it manifests itself in common and inconsistent ways. I'm pretty freakishly clean when it comes to, say, washing up, but I can never really be bothered with cleaning the bathroom, to my long-suffering flatmate's horror.

Ultimately, like a lot of mental/cognitive conditions, TS is pretty mysterious, even to people that have have it all their lives. It's as enduringly fascinating as it is difficult, though, at least to this freak a bladdy nature.