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Can you help me think of an unnoticeable facial tic?

Asked by wildpotato (15224points) November 10th, 2009

I have Tourette Syndrome. One of my tics is tapping my teeth together. It’s like chattering, but counted and equalized for all areas of my bite (my teeth don’t all touch at once; I have to bite in different ways to put pressure on each of them in turn).

I deliberately cultivated this tic because it’s fairly unnoticeable, as compared to my old ones: raising my eyebrows, twitching my nose, flapping my tongue inside my open mouth. I need to stop chattering my teeth immediately because I just learned that I grind, and will wear down my teeth pretty quickly despite my new nightguard if I don’t stop the chattering.

Now, the only way I know of to stop a tic without using the dreaded brain meds is to transfer the impulse to tic onto a new twitch, using muscles in and around the same area that the original tic was focused. But I can’t think of a different facial tic that won’t be blatantly noticeable except for ear-wriggling, and I can’t do that.

I really don’t want to have to use brain meds again – they take away a part of myself that I like. I’ve been able to avoid them for years now because I don’t need to supress the impulse to tic if I’m able to transfer my obvious tics to unnoticeable tics – but now I’m worried that I can’t make another impulse-transfer, because I can’t think of anything appropriate to transfer the impulse to.

So, collective, here is my really weird question for you: is there a facial twitch you can think of, not involving teeth, that won’t make people look at me like, “My god, what’s wrong with your face?”

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