ticcing is an adventure

James or Thomas, he/him + neos, side blog for Tourette’s and fnd, I am not a neurologist and can not diagnose you with tics // DNI: pro-ana, use mental disorders/disabilities as adjectives (ex. that's so bipolar), anti self diagnosis, and bigots *this list is not all inclusive and I may change it at any moment*

[abnerkrill]

[image id: expanding brain meme with three levels. the first reads, "support the wga strike to get our shows back into production." the second reads, "support the wga strike for the future health of the whole tv industry." the third reads, "support the wga strike to fight corporate devaluation of art everywhere." end id.]

solidarity with the writers guild of america! learn why the writers are striking in this npr interview and donate to the entertainment community fund here.

[hr-nm-grnd-zr]

Sometimes tourettes be like

Could you stOP BLINKING I'M TRYING TO LOOK AT STUFF!!!

[justicetothestars]

Okay fellow disabled college students/past college students I have a question about how easy accommodations were for you to get! *this is just about getting them! I'm going to probably make some more on other accommodations college students.*

how easy was it?

super easy

easy

a little difficult, but not too bad

fairly difficult

extremely difficult

I didn't purse accommodations because of difficulty

I was denied and never got them or am still trying to get them

I was denied but was eventually able to get them

Voting ended onMar 9, 2023

Please rb! And you can add what you accommodations you have if you want!

[dadbot]

Just in case

[sappire-charizard]

I’m actually going to reblog a thing just because this is really important.

As someone who has epilepsy and used to have several grand mal seizures a day, I’d also like to add that “offer help” can range anywhere from keeping the person calm to explaining to them where they are and what they were doing to even just telling them they should sit and rest for a while longer (lack or coordination is common, and it can be hard to walk straight or see clearly).

It’s okay for them to take up to a half hour to fully regain their bearings and sort out what they were doing prior to the seizure. Just answer any questions calmly and be there for support.

If they come around and you start to panic or shake them or ask them what the heck is wrong with them they are going to freak out and panic too.

I cannot stress it enough that this is bad.

If someone has a seizure and they come out of it, please. please stay calm. They are likely disoriented and confused, even if it’s only for a minute or two, and you don’t want them panicking on top of that because they can have another seizure as a result.

[felicityredbarrow-blog]

IMPORTANT

[happylittleblogger]

IMPORTANT because last year a kid in my class had a seizure, none of us even knew he was at risk for them either so just cause you don’t think you know anyone doesn’t mean you don’t 

stay safe

[kyuofcosmic]

I have to stress how important it is to time a seizure. If it lasts more than a few minutes, call an ambulance.

DO NOT CALL THE POLICE. I’m dead fucking serious. I had a grand mal in public once and the POLICE were called and imagine coming out of the seizure, feeling like you got smacked in the head with a sack full of bricks, confused, dazed, in desperate need of some sugar to boost low blood pressure and some DIPSHIT has called the police and I was being threatened with being ‘drunk and disorderly’. It took a phone call to my doctors office to get them to back off. The police cannot properly deal with sick people. 

Offer help can be:

assuring person where they are/what time it is

getting them something to drink if they can; seizure burns so much energy and does cause a blood pressure drop

getting them safely to transport or a carer

getting them some dignity like a blanket/towel [loosing control of your bladder and bowels is fucking horrifying]

ensuring they have a way to get home. Someone who has just had a seizure should NEVER DRIVE straight after

calling emergency services if you notice any of these symptoms because they may have stroked out.

Why you shouldn’t put anything in someone’s mouth: they will choke. Yes, they may bite their tongue but I can assure you it’s less traumatic than cracking your jaw on someone’s greasy wallet or choking on a spoon.

DO NOT HOLD ANYONE DOWN. Example: someone pinned my right shoulder mid-seizure a few years back and how I have a permanently displaced and clicking shoulder. Let the person flail around, those muscles are out of control and restraining them does cause more damage to the patient and you.

[clevernessandtics]

Also an important aspect: if a seizure lasts for more that 5 minutes you should call an ambulance unless the person has medical ID that says otherwise.

[clevernessandtics]

I have pretty mild tourette's, I tend to tic only a few times a day. However, I tend to have tics that are more interfering if that makes sense. One example is I have a tic where I'll blink rapidly, close my eyes, or a mix of the two. I tend to have to stop doing what I'm doing (walking, typing, etc) because I cannot see. I think it's interesting that my tics while being mild still interfere with my ability to function day to day.

[tic-loud-tic-proud]

Kind of a personal post but whatever.

I started this blog in 2017, as a young girl with recently diagnosed Tourette Syndrome and no community whatsoever. Before TikTok, before fake disorder reddit groups, before there was any awareness on Tourette Syndrome at all. If you tried to search for a Tourettes community on any social media, you were met with misinformation, mockery, and usually just ableism. "Funny Tourette Syndrome Try not to laugh" videos or "What do we want? A cure for Tourettes" memes.

That was except for Tumblr.

The first time I went on Tumblr and found people with TS here, I cried. It was the first time I had ever seen people like me, or even seen my disorder depicted in a way that wasn't cruel. I know, it's super corny.

But 5 years ago, that was all I had. Tumblr was the only place I could talk openly about having TS without being made fun of.

Then, for a small, small, period of time in ~2020, which I now refer to as the golden age of TS awareness, people with Tourette Syndrome started finding community on TikTok. People started educating others, spreading awareness, and building up community like the one I had found here. That was really nice.

Then it changed again. TS became a trend associated with dyed hair, sexy dances, and elaborate makeup. People with coprolalia were once again shunned unless we could be laughed at. I'm sure you all remember the "oodie kids" that mocked people with Tourette Syndrome while hiding behind online anonymity. A certain Tiktoker was accused of faking, and harassed relentlessly, sent death threats, and essentially bullied off the Internet in general (I don't ever condone behavior like that even if it is supposedly proven a person is "faking").

Big YouTubers covered that story. I consider that to be when the golden age ended. All of a sudden it was okay to mock and harass Tourettics again, because "this person could be faking, it's for their own good". Tourettics that had been talking about TS for years were called fakers just for having dyed hair or piercings, because that was associated with "fakers". The majority of popular TS-related tiktokers stopped posting about TS, or stopped posting at all. The few who remained wanted to be seen as legitimate, hence all the "Real person with Tourettes reacts to FAKER" videos we have now. It's still a desperate plea to be accepted by the majority.

We've come full circle. The normal schoolyard bullying I experienced that included name-calling and laughing has evolved into something much worse: being filmed and posted online. I will never know where those videos end up. I will never know whether someone on the other side of the world is laughing at me. I will never know if my friends that see them stand up for me, or if they just scroll past. To me, that's much worse than a kid on the playground shouting slurs at me.

Despite all this newfound "awareness", Tourette Syndrome is still RARE. If you have corpolalia, there is a huge chance that even in TS support groups you will never meet someone else with corpolalia. That's why we find community online. But now that community has been ruined.

In the end Tumblr is still the only place I can talk freely about how TS affects me. But I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful in a few years the faker witch-hunting will be over. I'm hoping then people will leave us alone. But most of all I'm hoping that younger tourettics who aren't being believed by their parents, Tourettic teenagers with dyed hair and piercings, and literally any tourettic going through public school right now can find empathy and acceptance, whether that be online or in real life. I don't want anyone to ever feel how I felt- alone.

[clevernessandtics]

Hello! I am revamping a lot of my side blogs. This one will focus on Tourette’s and FND of course :) I also have started to change names associated with blogs :)

[aevios]

Something I want people to understand is that the line between "invisible disabilities" and "visible disabilities" is blurrier than you may think and a fair amount of the time may have more to do with how much the disabled person in question is willing (or forced/pressured by others or circumstances) to hide their disability and go without supports, accommodations, or aids they may need or benefit from in order to avoid stigma and discrimination, than it is an inherent trait of their specific diagnosis or a direct reflection of the severity of their symptoms.

You can find two people with the same condition and a similar set of symptoms yet one of them is invisibly disabled but the other is not, because one chooses to use a mobility aid because it helps them while the other chooses not to use a mobility aid because of stigma and discrimination or because they simply can't afford or access it (both of which are valid choices by the way, it's your disability u decide what's best for you). The fact that one of them uses a mobility aid doesn't mean that they're more disabled than the other one. In fact functioning wise they may very well be doing better than the one without the mobility aid because they have something to help them avoid exacerbating their symptoms or pain or fatigue as much, whereas the other person is having to push through it all.

That's not to say that there aren't disabilities that are pretty much always visible or pretty much always invisible, but that's not always a hard rule and there's many disabilities that may sometimes be visible and other times be invisible, either between different individuals or even for the same person depending on the day or the situation. Invisible disabilty =/= less disabled, nor is every specific condition or diagnosis easily categorizable as being invisible or visible.

[clevernessandtics]

I want to say that tourette's is a blurry line for me. Of course the symptoms are visible but I don't tic all day.

[clevernessandtics]

The amount of pride and joy I have when I realize that I am 3 days away from being 6 months seizures free is just astronomical.

[the-iron-duck93]

How did you do that?

[clevernessandtics]

I was placed in a mental health inpatient facility, and then put in a residential treatment facility. The most important part for me was managing stress and avoiding triggers. I also had to stop myself from expecting them. I'm over 9 months free currently.

[clevernessandtics]

If someone who had a tic disorder had telekinesis would they have tics that involved their telekinesis.

[captaindibbzy]

Related: it's really fucking stupid that "hypochondriac" is generally taken to mean "someone who wants attention and will lie to get it" not "anxiety disorder" which is what it literally is. It's always played for a laugh.

[headspace-hotel]

same with "psychosomatic illness"

it means "your body is so racked with stress and anxiety that you're becoming physically ill and/or your brain is going to extreme measures to signal to you that something is Terribly Wrong" not "made up illness that is not real"

[natequarter]

"i support queer people," says person who apparently cannot comprehend the idea that identities that seem counterintuitive, contradictory, or jokes are real terms by virtue of being terms that real people use

[natequarter]

sorry that futch pisses you off because you most commonly see it used in the butch-femme scale or that transsexual pisses you off because you're used to hearing it from transphobes or that fagdyke pisses you off because you think slurs are organised by demographic but real people identify as futches and transsexuals and fagdykes and your righteous anger ain't gonna get rid of them

[bonelessenthusiast]

"there's no disability without capitalism" "there's no disability without ableism" wow thanks i didn't realize my chronic pain and brain damage would go away if people stopped hating disabled people.

[junerouclere]

oh to be at an irish pub right now

[clevernessandtics]

So I have Tourette’s after all

[clevernessandtics]

It's been a year! My tics have gotten so much better, I am almost 8 months seizure free, I haven't had FND symptoms since January!!!!

[magnetothemagnificent]

The phrase "I don't see a person's disability, I see their heart" or any variation of that sentence implies that for people who say this, it's hard for them to see a person's humanity when they're disabled. And therefore they have to "look past" the disability just to acknowledge their personhood.

And that is very telling.

[clevernessandtics]

"But you don't look disabled?"

"I know right it's almost like they're called invisible for a reason!"