I Have Autistic Tics
They make me tick
I have autistic tics. I just learned to internalise them more. Swallowing emotional crises as a kid helps you master that. I then regurgitated them in my thirties and got poorly for a while due to concealment.
Tics are not uncommon in autistic children. I was an undiagnosed child in the ’80s, something I’m grateful for now. I’m certain confirmed autism would have led me to an even worse fate at the hands of the educational system then. My school left me no pun intended to tick along. I hardly ever attended due to sensory overload. That, of course, ensued multiple visits from attendance inspectors and more drama.
I self-taught myself so much in school and to date. I’m aware of my control-freak nature about having self-control over self-teaching myself — a good and bad thing on some levels. I reckon it’s because I had dopamine imbalances as a kid. My teachers could not attend to my deep need to learn and get answers. My chemical imbalance possibly found sanctuary in my tics. I began to get my dopamine from twitching, blinking, throat clearing, and grunting. I would reward myself with this repetition to counterbalance my dopamine deficits.
I am thinking out loud here now as an autistic expert on myself. I don’t know if there is a rationale for my behaviour in other autistics bar my intuitive headspace here now as I’m in flow typing my impromptu post. I am trying to verbalise my childhood to put it in context as a 46-year-old adult child.
To me, it makes sense as dopamine is associated with the following:
Movement
Memory
Pleasurable reward
Motivation
Behaviour and cognition
Attention
Sleep and arousal
Mood
Learning
Interesting.
As a kid, I also had interfering family members (don’t we all) who tried to parent my parents parenting of me. My parents were beautiful. They did their best with what they had. My dad helped me a lot in my diagnosis with his memory at 81, thankfully serving him well. He recalls my nervous tics. He said he would let me work my way in and out of them. Pretty much as he did with me most of my life. He never ostracised me for them.
I remember a family member who traumatised me. They would criticise me incessantly for my grunting, eye twitching, erratic head tilting and muttering words under my breath. I think they were the equivalent human form of inhumane ABA conversion therapy.
And so I learned my desire to rectify my chemical imbalance as a child was wrong, and I was a simpleton, and it had to be stopped. I developed mastery in muting myself and my beautiful erraticness. The power of a child’s mind is remarkable. I distracted myself with numbers and colours to make connections and seek more dopamine.
I don’t internalise my tics as much now, but they did settle as I balanced out my dopamine, perhaps. My husband tells me I twitch a lot while sleeping, and they come from the core of my body. That’s okay. They are a core part of me.
So is my autism.
