“It’s not that bad” — Lisa Ballard Dunlap

People often think of Tourette’s as screaming curse words uncontrollably. As someone with tics that can be mostly disguised as "normal" —sniffling, eye twitching, waving — I understand why people may be surprised at first. However, recently my snorting tic has evolved into a sequence of snorting, waving my right hand, shaking my head, and rolling my eyes. On a good day, I do it once every few hours. On a bad day I do it every 2 minutes with some other tics peppered in between. So when people I interact with everyday say “they can’t even tell” that I have tics, I have a hard time believing they didn’t notice anything. I don’t talk about my tics very often because it is usually not relevant and up until recently I couldn’t clearly explain why I feel the need to tell people. However, the recent worsening of my tics has begun to significantly affect my ability to do things like attend meetings, focus on conversations, and operate in quiet spaces. This isn’t the first time this has happened

People often think of Tourette’s as screaming curse words uncontrollably. As someone with tics that can be mostly disguised as "normal" —sniffling, eye twitching, waving — I understand why people may be surprised at first. However, recently my snorting tic has evolved into a sequence of snorting, waving my right hand, shaking my head, and rolling my eyes. On a good day, I do it once every few hours. On a bad day I do it every 2 minutes with some other tics peppered in between. So when people I interact with everyday say “they can’t even tell” that I have tics, I have a hard time believing they