This afternoon I kept snapping my fingers together, repeatedly and simultaneously, on both hands.
Doing this gave me a jolt, not because of the physical sensation but because it recalled the familiar movement of a long-forgotten motor tic.
By my current standards it was fairly subtle – a tic affectionately known by my friends as ‘Crab Hands’ long before anyone knew I had Tourettes.
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Catwings says:
i’ve started a tic recently of finger-snapping, but in the way that Ali G used to do, rather than normal snapping, but i can only do it one hand. Both hands do the tic but only one hand feels ‘right’ after so i spend a bit of time after each tic trying to get the other hand to feel right.
this has reminded me i wanted to ask – how severe was your ts before your diagnosis? because i know you weren’t diagnosed until relatively late and that your tics have become more severe with age, but in which order?
Touretteshero says:
Hi Catwings. In answer to your question, my tics were fairly severe before my diagnosis. They’d been getting gradually more extreme throughought my early twenties. I put off getting a formal diagnosis because I’d managed so long without one. In the end I was in the situation of having very noticeable tics but no diagnosis with which to explain them.