Tourette’s Syndrome & Sensory Processing
Your central nervous system is your body’s command centre and it controls your movements, thoughts and automatic responses. Tourette’s Syndrome is something that affects a person’s central nervous system and causes tics, which are sudden twitches, movements or sounds.
Echolalia is repeating words or phrases and coprolalia is the compulsive use of obscene language.
Vocal tics can be both echolalia and coprolalia.
You might think that Tourettes is all about people swearing but in reality, only 1 in 10 people with Tourettes swear or use bad language.
You will usually notice tics between the ages of 2 – 15, with most people being diagnosed in childhood.
If you have Tourette’s you will have a mixture of physical and vocal tics.
Physical tics are things like jerking your head and shrugging your shoulders and vocal tics are things like clearing your throat or whistling.
It’s hard to tell if a tic is a stim or a stim is a tic because both tics and stims are repetitive movements and sounds. Stims and tics are very similar.
Before I knew about stimming I thought I had Tourettes but now I know more about stimming I know that my tics are part of my ADHD. And some of the things I thought were tics are actually stims!
Tourette’s can be mistaken for other neurological conditions like autism, sensory processing disorder and anxiety. So it can be difficult to know if you have Tourettes or something else. If you do have Tourettes Syndrome you may also have other neurological conditions like ADHD & OCD.
Sensory Processing Difficulties are when the information from your senses to your brain gets mixed up. The information is not processed and organised correctly and you may respond differently.
If you do have sensory processing difficulties you might be oversensitive to sensory information, under sensitive to sensory information or both. And if you have Tourette’s you are more likely to be oversensitive to sensory information and this is linked to tics.
So how can chewing help your Tourettes Syndrome?
If you have Tourette’s you might have sensory difficulties and chewing can be a sensory need. Chewing on something safe like a Chewigem helps.
Chewing also helps to aid concentration, reduce anxiety and regulate our sensory system. So chewing to self-regulate can help to reduce tics as chewing is proven to help us stay calm and focused.
Would you believe that Tourettes Syndrome can be confused or mistaken for bad behaviour?
People with Tourette’s can appear to be disruptive, immature or attention-seeking but these are just neurological symptoms of Tourette’s.
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