need help with nervous facial tics

[Guest Jeff]

Sherry, Glad to hear you checked out Feingold and are going to give it a try!! I wish you great success. Once you become a "member", you'll have access to the member's bulletin board. Be sure to log on to that forum. It is a very very active and informative group of parents (mostly Moms) who support each other tremendously and daily. Many of these folks have been following Feingold for years and welcome "newbies" with loads of information. They have shopping lists for various stores (ex: Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Wal-Mart, etc), Corn-syrup free shopping lists, recipes galore posted on the site, and just plain helpful words of wisdom based on years of experience. Don't hesitate to ask any question.

Be prepared for a period of "detox". For some it can last up to several weeks, where your child's symptoms may appear worse than they were before you started eliminating the "bad" stuff. However, once their body detoxes, the difference in your child's behavior and/or tic levels can be amazing. Not everyone goes through a noticeable detox period, but several do. Ours lasted only about 2-3 weeks, but after that the change was remarkable.

I look forward to seeing "SherrySunshine" on the FG board!

Jeff

[Guest Guest]

Shawn

 

You may find this technique helpful.

 

Just find a point straight in front of you and focus on it. Now gradually become aware of what's around it...and let your vision spread out in front of you to the corners of the room, as your eyes continue to look at that point and you become more and more aware of the periphery of your vision. If you stretch out a hand to one side of you, you might find the point on the edge of your vision where you only see that hand when you waggle the fingers. Let your awareness also spread behind you... not suggesting that you bbcan literally see what's behind you, but let your senses of hearing, touch, smell and spatial awareness spread out to the periphery as well...and notice what changes in your physiological state...

 

Normally, in Western society, we use what's known as 'foveal' vision, where we concentrate on one point in front of us and notice all the details about that one point - watching TV, looking at a computer screen, reading, talking to someone - and ignore everything around it.

 

Another kind of vision, 'peripheral' vision, takes in the whole panorama of what's happening in front of us and around us. It uses different light receptors in the retina and different neural pathways in the brain.

 

As you experienced your peripheral vision, you might have noticed certain physiological changes - perhaps a shift in your breathing from higher to lower in the chest,[/b]a relaxation of face and jaw muscles, and maybe later your hands became warm. If you normally have an internal dialogue going on, you might have noticed it was quieter than usual, or stopped altogether.

 

It seems that foveal vision is linked to arousal of the sympathetic nervous system (the part of the 'involuntary' or autonomic nervous system associated with activity, adrenalin and stress) while peripheral vision is linked to parasympathetic arousal (the part of the nervous system associated with relaxation, calmness and healing). In fact, to the extent that you are truly in the peripheral vision state, you can block anxiety or stress; the two states are physiologically incompatible.

 

Your habbit now is to twitch when confronted, hopefully you can replace this habbit with a new one. That being, going into peripheral vision.

 

Once you have mastered the method, Id recomend you enroll in a public speaking group. The members are usually there because they have a fear of public speaking and once you do a few speaches your fear of being wathced should be greatly reduced if not eliminated. I know it seems like a big thing but you and anyone can do it in such a supporting enviorment like Toastmasters.

 

A tick like yours in not serious and just a way of your body releasing tension. Try to be yourself and dont worry what people think of you. Act in front of strangers how you would in front of your friends.

 

Good luck!