{"id":471883,"date":"2026-05-06T21:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/471883\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T21:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:26:10","slug":"billie-eilishs-honesty-about-tourette-syndrome-makes-me-feel-seen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/471883\/","title":{"rendered":"Billie Eilish\u2019s Honesty About Tourette Syndrome Makes Me Feel Seen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, Billie Eilish appeared on the \u201cGood Hang with Amy Poehler\u201d podcast<\/a> and for part of their discussion, opened up about her Tourette Syndrome. \u201cI have vocal tics, but luckily for me, and for everyone else, they\u2019re mostly just quiet noises, and I can keep them pretty quiet,\u201d Eilish said.<\/p>\n

Before I was diagnosed with a tic disorder, I assumed Tourette Syndrome was a disorder that made you say inappropriate things. This is partly because pop culture has loudly and obnoxiously misunderstood Tourette Syndrome to fuel controversy and comedy. <\/p>\n

In 2022, Eilish spoke openly about her Tourette with David Letterman, and it was one of the first times I saw someone in mainstream media whose tics resembled mine, where they were subtle head movements and not consistently noticeable. Hearing her helped me see my tics outside the stereotypes that usually shape how we\u2019re perceived.<\/p>\n

Her interview with Poehler was yet another opportunity where I felt some type of nuanced representation in pop culture. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a thing called suppressing, if you\u2019ve ever heard of it,\u201d Eilish said. \u201cAnd you know when I\u2019m in an interview, I\u2019m doing everything in my power to suppress all of my tics, constantly.\u201d <\/p>\n

Like Eilish, I suppress my tics, and they\u2019re almost always in the back of my mind. When I feel a tic coming on, it manifests in a few ways. While some say it feels like an uncontrollable itch, for me it feels like something is crawling inside me trying to find its way out, or heat trying to escape my body, and other times it\u2019s screaming in my brain just begging to be released.<\/p>\n

Since I was a child, my tics have been different than what\u2019s portrayed on screen. While my tics are not swear words or slurs, they are tongue clicks, grunts, sighs, head rolls and nods, fingers moving, limbs tensing all to help relieve how I\u2019m feeling inside. I don\u2019t control how I tic, or which tics I have, and they ebb and flow based on where I am and what the situation is, but I am able to suppress them. <\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I\u2019m on camera, and I\u2019m having a conversation, and I\u2019m trying not to be distracting, I\u2019m doing everything I can to suppress every single tic that\u2019s visible from the top of my head to about right here,\u201d Eilish said, gesturing to her lower torso.<\/p>\n

Similarly to Eilish, I suppress in social settings, where I have to be \u201con\u201d and don\u2019t want to be \u201cdistracting.\u201d Office meetings, out with friends, on a date, I hold them all in until I can safely release them when I\u2019m alone. <\/p>\n

Suppressing is exhausting and oftentimes distracting. I can be on a call, and unfortunately, the urge to tic is so strong I cannot listen or focus to the point where I miss details of a conversation. One benefit of working from home though, is that it has allowed me to express many tics under my desk and no one can tell.<\/p>\n

It is, however, uncomfortable to witness people\u2019s true feelings and ignorance around the condition. I\u2019ve had former colleagues, friends and clients make Tourette jokes or pretend to jester a tic, while unbeknownst to them that they\u2019re also making fun of me. <\/p>\n

Reading the comments in clips of her explaining suppressions, so many generally misunderstood Tourette and denied its existence when it didn\u2019t look like what they thought Tourette was, erasing those with more subtle tics. Erasure like this was what prevented me from getting diagnosed for so long and genuinely made me feel like I was making it up despite me ticcing privately in my room for years.<\/p>\n

These jokes have made me uncomfortable and only encouraged me that suppressing my tics is vital for me to assimilate, keep friendships, jobs and relationships. The vast majority of the people in my life do not know I have a tic disorder, and I intend to keep it that way. <\/p>\n

As Eilish explains, being able to suppress tics is a privilege that I am hyper aware of. And regardless of how severe or mild a person\u2019s experience with Tourette is, they should be believed about what they\u2019re experiencing.<\/p>\n

I hope for a world where Eilish and I can tic freely and not be seen as distractions, or be accused of faking it for attention. Based on the discourse surrounding us this year, we have a lot more work to do. Until then, I\u2019ll keep suppressing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this week, Billie Eilish appeared on the \u201cGood Hang with Amy Poehler\u201d podcast and for part of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[8170,18,117,19,17,337,166307,207097],"class_list":{"0":"post-471883","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-billie-eilish","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-tourette-syndrome","15":"tag-voices-of-disabled-people"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116529750787022759","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}