Thanks for the thoughtful reply. You may not be surprised to learn that TS sufferers often also suffer from OCD or other conditions within the same spectrum.
To answer your question, YES, holding my tics in generally does produce a feeling of intense anxiety. This can end up deriving similarly intense levels of anger, frustration, and sometimes even physical outbursts (punching the wall, biting my fists) if allowed to go on long enough. My triggers are almost entirely environmental or stress-related. Believe it or not, one of the best places for me to avoid tics is at the opera. I love music, particularly classical and jazz, which typically require physical discipline and quiet focus, but because I am a musician and composer, I get to a very serene place in these scenarios and therefore have very few tics. Same thing with my work - if I am in vim writing code, I can go hours without tics. But as soon as I hear someone talking about the elections, for instance, I am a completely different person.
Fascinating. Thank you for your detailed response as well!
Indeed, this interested me so much that I just spent the last hour reading up and learning about the comorbidity of TS, OCD, and ADHD. (I have the latter two.) Funny because ADHD doesn't seem related in the way TS and OCD do. I hate to admit, but I was rather ignorant and assumed TS tics were involuntary until your post.
> Same thing with my work - if I am in vim writing code, I can go hours without tics.
Interesting. For me, doing the things I love the most, like coding, are when my OCD is the most intrusive. That wasn't always the case. It was on 24/7 from around 16-22 years of age. But these days, triggers tend to only produce unwanted anger (misophonia) rather than obsessions or compulsions. I ... don't know if that's an improvement or not :/
OCD is an intensely adaptive disorder. Like playing whack-a-mole. Everything about it is constantly changing.
> This can end up deriving similarly intense levels of anger, frustration, and sometimes even physical outbursts (punching the wall, biting my fists) if allowed to go on long enough.
Hmm ... mine mostly just stays in as a non-stop obsession that can last days, weeks, months ... I eventually managed to cope a bit on my side by just telling myself, "if I obsess over this new thing, then I won't be obsessing over that last thing anymore. Either way, there'll be something to obsess over." WAY easier said than done, and I'm close to 20 years into my fight, but yeah.
I certainly get angry, depressed, humiliated, feel helpless, etc whenever I lose to this condition. Have done things in the past like punch myself in the head in frustration, angry at my brain for being so damaged. Which obviously doesn't help at all :P
...
Anyway, thanks for sharing, and for educating me more on TS. I don't mean to sound like I'm throwing out empty platitudes, but I do genuinely hope things will improve for you in the future. Anxiety is hell =(
To answer your question, YES, holding my tics in generally does produce a feeling of intense anxiety. This can end up deriving similarly intense levels of anger, frustration, and sometimes even physical outbursts (punching the wall, biting my fists) if allowed to go on long enough. My triggers are almost entirely environmental or stress-related. Believe it or not, one of the best places for me to avoid tics is at the opera. I love music, particularly classical and jazz, which typically require physical discipline and quiet focus, but because I am a musician and composer, I get to a very serene place in these scenarios and therefore have very few tics. Same thing with my work - if I am in vim writing code, I can go hours without tics. But as soon as I hear someone talking about the elections, for instance, I am a completely different person.