Facial tics are repetitive, brief, irregular spasms of the face's muscles. They are extremely different, but the most usual ones are eye blinking, facial grimacing, mouth twitches, nose wrinkling, squinting as well as throat clearing and grunting. These tics are often symptomatic of nervous conditions like Tourette syndrome. They traditionally occur during childhood and often disappear within a few weeks, even though some can last much longer.



The causing factors of facial tics are still not fully understood, but a few things are suspected of triggering or worsening the symptoms. Tics can result from some nutritional deficiencies like a magnesium insufficiency, but they are also very often symptoms of other conditions such as Tourette syndrome, whose causes are thought to be neurological, and, to a certain extent, genetically inherited. Stress and anxiety have also been proven to trigger and considerably aggravate the frequency of facial tics.

Facial tics are hard to deal with everyday especially for children. Teachers, schoolmates and sometimes even parents, might not understand how tough it is to hold back the tics, especially for a long period of time such as for instance a class. People will very often ask the child to "stop it", or might even make fun of him or her because of the tics.

From facial grimaces to eye blinking, tics always feel embarrassing and inappropriate for both children and adults. It is also exhausting to have to try to control them all the time. This obsession might cause you to become too self-critical and you might thus start to lose confidence in yourself or to develop some type of social anxiety.

It is nonetheless possible to get rid of this uneasiness and to avoid people's uncomfortable stares. There are ways to significantly diminish, and even sometimes definitely 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 handling any irritating twitches.

Facial tics are usually not treated or, in some severe cases or if the tics are shown to be caused by Tourette syndrome, patients may be prescribed neuroleptics which are also prescribed to treat conditions like schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder or obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Such drugs were not developed to treat facial tics particularly and might not always be efficient.

Furthermore, they are known to have numerous undesirable side effects both in the short and long run. Depression, insomnia, weight gain, sexual dysfunction and anxiety are only a few of the many undesirable side effects which are associated with such drugs. Some of them can even worsen tics over time! But there are however other ways of dealing with facial tics which are entirely natural and free of undesirable side effects.

Methods which utilize hypnosis and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) have been developed particularly for the purpose of treating facial tics. They will help you reduce them over time. To understand why those methods work it is important to know that tics are not an entirely physiological disease and are not fully involuntary either. They are a response to an unconscious impulse to perform the movement of the tic. This urge uncomfortably builds up as you try to hold back from performing the movement. These impulses also increase in both intensity and frequency when the patient is stressed or anxious or when he is placed in a particular situation.

Facial tics are a way to diminish pressure when you are feeling anxious or are facing stressful conditions. Such an unconscious association could be cured using hypnosis and NLP, as they make it possible to change the kind of behavior your unconscious triggers when you are placed in certain situations. In severe cases, the therapist will eliminate the facial tic by suggesting the unconscious have you twitch your toe instead. When you move your toe it is not visible or apparent 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 suppress both the anxiety and stress which aggravate facial tics.

There are all forms of facial tics: nose wrinkling, eye blinking, squinting, mouth twitches, grunting, facial grimacing or throat clearing. Although tics have physiological causes, there are also as we have seen, very strong emotional factors. Stress and anxiety are unquestionably the most considerable of those 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 alter this association. Stress and anxiety can also be effectively fought on the long term with the stress relieving and relaxing methods of hypnotherapy, which will considerably diminish the occurrence of facial tics.