Daily Overview: Wednesday, April 20th

Today was a rest day.

Given that training the brain is a lot like exercising a muscle, I have determined that rest days are essential. It doesn’t seem optimal to burn myself out or lose sleep over it, so here’s to me overriding my stubbornness with common sense.

It’s difficult for me to explain the unusual, stressful circumstances that have befallen me during my neurojourney, but I’ll put it like this:

Pretend someone is actively trying to derail your livelihood with sneaky business fraud..

Actually, that was pretty easy.

I bet you didn’t think my nerdy treatment experiment would be full of plot twists and drama, did you?

Neither did I. 😐

If I may spin this positively; what better time to be taking care of myself than now, when life is pelting me with curve balls? This is serving as a great distraction, if nothing else, but I believe it amounts to much else.

“So, how has training with Mendi affected you so far? Do you feel like it has made any impact on your Tourette Syndrome?”

Well, Me, that’s a good question.

Since beginning this experiment, I have found a massive improvement in my overall ability to simply breathe throughout the day.

I think that brain training has inadvertantly shed light on (and has begun remediating) an entirely unexpected problem, in realizing that… I somehow forgot how to breath? 🤦 Apparently it’s possible.

My abdominal tics may have been making a much larger impact on me over time then I was aware of, conditioning and compelling specific breathing patterns which I must have unconsciously relied on to compensate in response to tics. I believe that these unconscious breathing patterns have caused anxiety, and holding my breath has likely been wildly more frequent than I realized.

That’s an important note and probably the most important so far. Us folks with TS tend to be very tense, physically speaking, for obvious reasons. Actively fighting your own body on a daily basis can be very stressful and physically exhausting- which is something you may have gathered.

Overall YGTSS has not consistently improved or declined. It’s VERY difficult to gauge effectiveness of fNIRS on tics due how early we are into the study, high levels of unprecedented external stimulus affecting the patient, the sudden increase of scheduled working hours for the patient, ect.

I will tell you though…this could be the treatment that works for me.

I don’t say these things lightly. I think it may work and here’s why. I’ve always considered myself to be mentally pliable, in that I can see things from many different perspectives, I am always seeking information that will challenge what I know, and I am unhesitant to change my mind. Unless we’re talking about guiding principles of course.

I am also willing to become absorbed and obsessed with something for as long as it takes until I have it “figured out” and understand it at the highest possible level; beyond what is necessary for me and my purposes. I do this in my career, and I accredit most success I’ve had to this. Rest assured, I will obsessively approach neurofeedback training from every angle and push every limitation until I’ve “cracked the code”. In other words- until it works?

Anyway, I feel that while I have not been able to lower my YGTSS score due to frequency and observational factors required within a YGTSS scale, I will tell you personally that awareness of breathing has made a minor but substantial impact on the AGGRESSIVENESS and DURATION of tics, when they are occuring.

So…YES! Yes, I think that it’s making an impact via increased bodily awareness.

Or maybe it’s the distraction of this blog. Or my diet. See the problem? This is where it gets tricky. I don’t know! No one knows! HOW would I truly KNOW?!

The only way is to keep going.

After a certain point, I will either be able to control my tics more effectively, or I will not. What I haven’t said yet is this: I don’t want to reduce my tics! …I want to annihilate them. I want 100% control back. Wouldn’t you?

Since I’m rambling…

Do you know why we’ve been in an essential standstill on legitimate breakthrough in treatments for the last two decades?

I think it’s because in it’s essence, it doesn’t get more avant garde and less definable than Tourette Syndrome. For example:

People naturally tend to think tics happen when we’re nervous or stressed out, but this is anything but true- across the board. I have tics when I’m eating a sandwich, getting good news, taking a shower, while I’m driving… My trigger stimuli? Practically undefinable.

In summation, weird problems call for weird solutions.

I could have wrapped this up less abruptly but it’s been a long day so goodbye for now.

P.S. These reports are submitted on a one-day delay; if you were wondering. Today is Thursday, but this report is for Wednesday. I’ll never break the 4th wall like this again, but now you know- I’m not perpetually late- this is just my system.