I’ve had tics for as long as I can remember. When I was a child it was hard blinking, and sometimes it would move to other parts of my face, but I pretty much always had them. It was worse in private, but very mild to non-existent in public because I always knew there would be judgement if people saw me. But of course if it happened, it was because I couldn’t help it. It’s not like I can control it, but I guess a part of me could.

I always thought the tics were caused by the stress of the abuse from my step father and my sister, and maybe that is true, but I’m 54 now and I still have this issue and I haven’t really been in their lives for the last 20 years or so.

The last 8 years have been really bad, and I’m guessing the next 4 will be not different. I am not in complete control of when I do it or how bad it can get. During the pandemic I somehow decided it was ok, I didn’t have to worry about it because when I was wearing a face mask, my tics were mouth and nose related and the mask covered it up, although you could still see the movement of my mask when I wasn’t in a conversation with someone which would cause the mask to move based on the movement from my mouth from talking.

I’ve learned over the last 54 years that this is 100% stress related, and boy howdy, I have been super stressed lately. My main tic now is my neck and whole head. I’ll tilt and twist my head to the left side. It causes actual pain. The hard eye blinking as a child was kind of painful for my eyes, but this neck thing has caused more pain. A literal pain in my neck.

Today I discovered while watching some music videos that the entire time I was watching, there was not 1 single tic. I actually have noticed if I’m listening to music I’m not focused on negativity and my tics seemed to have disappeared while listening to the music.

The music I’m listening to is the music i listened to as a teenager in the 80’s. I think the music is soothing to my brain which causes my brain to relax and not think about negativity.

During most of my teenage years I had my walkman with me and my headphones were always on my ears and I was listening to music all the time. I had to shut the world out for my sanity and I think I need to start doing that again now that I know it’s keeping my tics at bay. The only difference is I’m using my phone and I don’t need to constantly change the batteries, I just have to plug my phone in, which is nice considering how expensive batteries are these days.

Do you have this issue and have you tried listening to music as therapy?