People often speak about unmasking Autism and ADHD traits, but not enough people speak about unlearning tic suppression - the equivalent to unmasking in Tourette’s.
Many of us automatically suppress our tics as soon as we develop them, leading to feelings of tension, difficulty focusing, inauthenticity, shame, and rebounds triggered by the suppression.
Unlearning tic suppression allows people to tic freely - leading to fewer rages, less anxiety, less discomfort, less shame, fewer rebounds, and better focus.
My tics are quite extreme and complex, but despite that, tic suppression is more disabling to me than just letting my tics out...
Tic suppression causes intense discomfort due to the premonitory urges accumulating, it feels like I can’t breathe. It always causes a rebound of tics later on for me (studies say this doesn’t happen but people with severe tics are not included in these studies so they cannot be generalised) and suppression can also trigger dangerous rage attacks.
Instead of being referred to “suppression therapy” (what some UK doctors call ERP for tics) we should instead be given interventions that reduce the intensity of the premonitory urges so that we don’t need to tic so much in the first place, rather than just “getting used to the urge to tic” because people who have been undiagnosed for a long time already know how to suppress and they are used to the urge to tic - and that’s the problem we are trying to avoid.
There should be a therapy specifically dedicated to helping people unlearn tic suppression as well as unmask Autistic and other neurodivergent traits - Some kind of Unmasking Support Service.
When I first developed tics, I would subconsciously / automatically suppress them without even trying, this led to more severe symptoms in the home environment including rage attacks, along with feelings of shame and inauthenticity.
When I moved to secondary school I made the conscious decision to stop suppressing. I did this by increasing my confidence level, making my own TS awareness t-shirt, connecting with other ticcers online, looking at Tourette's empowerment quotes and repeatedly telling myself that if people react negatively it's a reflection of them and not me.
Unlearning tic suppression was one of the best things I did. When I suppress my tics, I feel like I can't breathe, I can't focus, my mood dramatically drops, and my symptoms get worse later on. When I had a work position where I had to be on the phone all day, I would suppress my tics all day and then in the evenings I would have severe tic attacks where I was rolling around on the floor and breaking objects. When I stopped suppressing, these evening attacks stopped.
"Professionals" who say that kids with tics need to learn to voluntarily suppress tics are misguided, because those kids have likely already done so much internal work to stop themselves from suppressing all the time - and these "professionals" just want to erase all of that.
It makes me happy when some people say that their CBIT therapist is helping them unlearn tic suppression, because that's how it should be. The Tourette CBIT foundation on social media pointed out that tic suppression can leave someone unable to focus and some CBIT therapists tell their patients not to suppress - sadly though, too many therapists trust the textbooks and biased studies more that their patients who actually have Tourette's, making kids feel like rebels for ticcing and doing what their body needs to do. Sadly, a lot of psychologists will say that tic suppression isn't painful and that the rebound effect doesn't exist - this goes against the experience of countless people with TS, including myself.
I've known people who would subconsciously suppress all of the time, leading to their misfired signals coming out in another way - as OCD. When they stopped suppressing their OCD got milder. I know people who suppress all day leading to serious injuries in the evening from rebounds of tics, when they don't suppress this doesn't happen. I know people who were told by their neurologist not to suppress as it's dangerous, but sadly the TS field seems to now be dominated by psychologists who gaslight Tourettic people and refuse to believe us when we tell them suppressing harms us. Not all psychologists who specialise in TS are like this, but too many are, so awareness is needed amongst the medical profession - and ideally training would by given by people who actually have TS and have experienced the harm that tic suppression can cause.
