Anita, Thank you for wise words and the effort you put into communicating with me.

I felt empathy for my mother for ages. Imagine a deer feeling empathy for the mountain lion: oh, poor lion he must be hungry, he needs to eat... Q: How would the deer express that empathy? A: By either offering itself as a meal, or by offering someone else for the lion to eat.

It has been very difficult, feeling sympathy for her. I know it’s wrong and every time I feel it I am the deer.

-Sticking to a daily routine is very important to me, having a new day that is the same as the day before, in regard to what I do, when and where. It keeps me calmer.  Chronic neural over-excitability is very uncomfortable, so we need structure, predictability and routine to keep the excitement down.

It makes a lot of sense. I noticed I enjoy having exact same mornings.

This intolerance for excitement happened when my mother’s excitement (when attacking me) permanently over-excited my neurons (nerve cells), so much so, that they over-fire commands to the muscles to move (causing tics)

I remember days and night when it happened in my case and this process makes a lot of sense now, how I was once calm and perfectly fine and then she started attacking me, same as your mother was attacking you, resulting in tics.

It is shocking to me how destructive it was. I was always told I was too sensitive, I was doing this,  (she specifically told me to stop them) when it was in fact her who caused them.

 I think that you were a breech baby (?) and so was I. You were very (and are?) skinny as a child, and I was very skinny, the skinniest and smallest of my classmates in elementary and junior high.. at the least (I never had to think about gaining weight- no matter how much I ate- before I was close to 40 years old).

Yes, a breech baby and yes I was also and still am skinny. Also another reason to treat me and give me medicines. (She was also skinny in childhood, had small breasts (her biggest complex)

 I thought that when I tic-ed in front of my mother, that I was faking it or exaggerating it … and I felt guilty for it.

I also felt guilty because I knew we (my mother and me) use it against my dad.

As far as vocal tics, I hummed… still do (no coprolalia though, which is saying profanities involuntarily, an infamous part of Tourette’s but not at all necessary for the diagnosis).

I hummed too, but only in my mother’s presence. Weirdly it did not start until 2017/18, around the time she moved back to the place I lived then.  One time when she gave me the usual silent treatment I was sitting in the kitchen alone, (she was in her room but door open) and I just started humming. It came naturally, it just started itself.  I noticed it couple of times later when she was around, even when she was in good mood and we talked normally, I suddenly started humming. It always surprised me where it was coming from. I always thought of it as a kind of protection, shield from her. I started humming writing this (on purpose this time) and remember this feeling. Yes, I was always scared when doing this.

my mother was a very good cook, she used to treat me with tasty foods. I would have easily given up the tasty, fancy food for… a tic-free life.

Well said. My mother brags how she liked buying pretty clothes for me, how she enjoyed it, how cute they were. She would spend last money on pretty dress for me to look pretty, that’s how she cared for me!

 many people around here slip and fall, I did too… it scares me.

I am sorry it happened to you, Anita. I hope winter will be kind to you as well as letting you practice your routine.