Facial tics are repetitive, brief, irregular spasms of facial muscles. They are extremely diverse, but the most usually seen are eye blinking, facial grimacing, mouth twitches, nose wrinkling, squinting as well as throat clearing and grunting. Such tics are usually symptomatic of nervous conditions like Tourette syndrome. They most often occur during childhood and often disappear within some weeks, even if some can last much longer.
The causing factors of facial tics still are poorly understood, but some things are suspected of triggering or worsening the symptoms. Tics may be caused by some nutritional deficiencies like a lack of magnesium, but they may also very often be symptoms of other disorders such as Tourette syndrome, whose causes are thought to be neurological, and, to a certain extent, genetically inherited. Anxiety and stress have also been shown to trigger and greatly increase the tics’ frequency.
Facial tics can be hard to live with particularly for children. Teachers, schoolmates and even sometimes parents, may not understand how difficult it is to try to hold back tics, particularly for a long time period such as for example a class. People will very often ask the child to “stop it”, or may even make fun of him or her because of the tics.
From facial grimaces to eye blinking, tics almost always feel embarrassing and inappropriate for children and adults alike. It is also tiring when one must try to control them constantly. This obsession could cause you to become overly self-critical and you could thus start to lose self-confidence or to develop some sort of social anxiety.
It is although possible to get rid of this embarrassment and to avoid people’s uncomfortable looks. There are ways to considerably reduce, and sometimes totally cure, facial tics, in order to restore your peace of mind and enjoy a fully normal life. You might never have to be concerned anymore about facial grimaces or holding back any of those irritating twitches.
Facial tics are usually not treated or, in some acute cases or when the tics are shown to be caused by Tourette syndrome, patients might be given antipsychotics, which are also given to treat disorders like schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorders. Such drugs were not designed to treat facial tics specifically and may not be efficient all the time.
Furthermore, they are known to have numerous negative side effects both in the short and long run. Insomnia, depression, sexual dysfunction, weight gain and anxiety are only some of the several negative side effects, which are associated with such drugs. Some of them can even aggravate tics over time! But there are however other ways of dealing with facial tics, which are entirely natural and free of negative side effects.
Methods that use hypnosis and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) have been designed specifically for the purpose of treating facial tics. They can help you reduce them over time. To understand why those methods work it is important to know that tics are not a totally physiological condition and are not totally involuntary either. They are a response to an unconscious urge to do the movement of the tic. This desire uncomfortably builds up as you try to hold back from performing the movement. Such urges also grow in both frequency and intensity when the patient feels stress or anxiety or when placed in certain situations.
Facial tics are a way to diminish pressure when you are feeling anxiety or are in stressful conditions. This unconscious association could be treated using NLP and hypnosis because they make it possible to modify the kind of behavior your unconscious provokes when you are placed in certain situations. In severe cases, the therapist will eliminate the facial tic by suggesting the unconscious make you move your toe instead. When the toe twitches it is not apparent or visible to other people. Hypnosis also allows you to become a lot more relaxed overall, so it is a stress relieving experience. It will help you get rid of both the stress and anxiety, which make facial tics worse.
There are many different types of facial tics: nose wrinkling, eye blinking, squinting, mouth twitches, facial grimacing, grunting or throat clearing. If tics have physical causes, there are also as we have seen, very strong emotional factors. Anxiety and stress are certainly the most considerable of these factors. Tics have their roots in the unconscious mind as a response to states of anxiety and stress; using NLP and self-hypnosis you can change this association. Anxiety and stress can also be efficiently fought on the long term with the stress relieving and appeasing techniques of hypnotherapy, which will significantly diminish the occurrence of facial tics.
Alan B. Densky, CH offers facial tic hypnotherapy programs on CDs, as well as his hypnosis facial tics MP3 downloads in English, and Los Tics Nerviosos Faciales en Español.
He also offers a broad assortment of popular titles for all anxiety related symptoms. For enjoyment and instruction visit his Free video hypnotherapy library at his Neuro-VISION self-hypnosis website.
