Those with tics, why do you want a cure?

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I answered that post <People with tourettes...

Personally, I am against a cure, because I like me who I am. But why would some people want a cure?

I know several people with tourette's, they are all mortifyingly embarrassed about it, esp the vocal tourette's.

Embarrassment is a strong motivator.
Is this your question?

Kind of. I hate my tics as much as anyone else. Vocal tics are the worst.

I guess I'm afraid of negative change on my character rather than not having my tics.

Yes, goshdarnit, I want a cure.

You try twisting your body like a reluctant contortionist and blinking your eyelids like they're stuck in an infinite techno beat...try being forced into a grunting rut that makes you sound like a copulating guinea pig. You try shrieking and squealing at inopportune moments and bopping your arm to a beat that's out of the human range of hearing. Try the nickname "Twitch" on for size. Be dreadfully uncomfortable anytime you see, hear, think the word. Know that you can control it for a quick jaunt into normalcy, then release it in a frenzy of uncontrollable urges. Try to stop your lungs from breathing, your eyes from blinking, and your heart from beating. Oh, and don't forget to be ashamed of all those actions. Then you might understand, just a little bit, what it's like to have Tourette's.

Yes, I want a cure. This is not me...this is an alien controlling a puppet body that wants desperately to be in control of itself. The me you don't see because of my glaringly obvious Tourette's is intelligent, articulate, caring, witty, kind, talented, and lovable.

And they scoff and call me Twitch.

My ticks (I only have a few so no Tourette's diagnosis) are quite distressing.

I'd like to lose the distressing feelings that cause the ticks because then I would feel happier more of the time.

Fortunately I don't get them if I can keep my mind occupied, so I rarely embarrass myself in front of people who aren't used to them. Would probably have to resign sharpish if I got them at work. Actually, thinking about it, I do get them at work, but I channel them into the few that seem quite natural (e.g. putting my hands on my head, rather than shouting the names of the pets of my extended family or listing facts about our dog).

For me, curing tics had almost nothing to do with what other people thought of them.

I had a lot of tics, and I, of my own will and with no help from others, made the most annoying ones go away. (also had some pretty strong OCD going on, causing the tics among other things)

But why did I make them go away? The answer is simple.

I felt like every time I got into them, it was forcing me to stop whatever I was doing, and making me waste a lot of time just doing tics over and over and over and over.....

I got sick of it. Every time I'd go into it, I'd get angry because I knew, in my head, that it was all pointless and achieving me nothing in life. It wasn't even really making me feel better, it was just satisfying the need to do it; or it was just happening and I just was doing them. But it did nothing for me - all it did was take away time that I could be using to be productive in some way, shape, or form.

So one day, literally one moment, I just decided it was worthless, and every time I started going into them, or every time I started doing OCD stuff, I just went "NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO" in my head; this explanation does no justice whatsoever to what was actually going on with my tics, or what was going on in my head, but I hope I am getting the gist of it all across.

Shortly, what was going on, was that I wanted to stop my tics because they were wasting my time - and a lot of my time. It wasn't because of what other people thought (and oh boy did a lot of people think and say a lot of bad things because of them), it was just because I wanted to free up that time to focus it on something else.

I know that not all people who tic can do this, or end up doing what I did, but it worked for me, and it's what happened for me. I started hating it enough that I just forced myself to stop by some miracle.

I don't care about cures for tics, cures for autism, etc. ; but if something that I am doing is annoying -ME-, then I sometimes find a way to force myself to stop.

Reading this thread made me see many things in common between myself and all the people talking about their tics and such. The eye blinking, the stopping-of-the-breathing, the 'moving things to a rhythm/beat out of the range of human hearing' etc. Most of it, I miraculously found a way to stop it, or make it exist in a way that did not hinder me in everyday life. I still do many of these tics, but I've found a way to make them not interfere with my life, somehow.