By Paul K. 

Have you ever heard of motor tics? If not, they are impulses to do a movement, for example to roll your neck. If you try to stop it, it will become unbearable to not do the movement. I have motor tics. Motor tics are worse than most people think: it creates a horrible feeling that is indescribable unless you satisfy it. There is not much information on tics, but often you will have to try to have as few tics as possible in 20 minutes to try to stop it, which we did. So this is how I dealt with my motor tics.

I learned I had tics as well as OCD during the summer before we were going to fly to Connecticut. Honestly, it wasn’t that surprising. I had suspected I had OCD before since I always thought it sounded like me when people talked about it, but I didn’t suspect motor tics. The tics came before the OCD, and I was neck rolling and scrunching up my nose. But before I knew it, we were heading to Connecticut. 

My parents didn’t know how to handle it, and we needed help, so we got a therapist. It took a long time before our first meeting and during that time, the tics became unbearable. I couldn’t go ten seconds without doing a tic and it became tiring and exhausting. Our first meeting finally came and I was so nervous while we were waiting for the Zoom meeting to start. The therapist logged on and said, “Can you hear me?” through a crackly microphone. We nodded and started talking about what had been happening. I immediately knew I didn’t like her since she was like a robot just spitting out words, and it didn’t feel good to talk to her. Nonetheless, we continued for the full dreadful forty-five minutes. The first meeting was just talking about how I was doing, but she still mentioned two strategies to try. The first was to find something else to do when a tic comes up to compete it, and the other is to do as few tics as possible in twenty minutes. I thought the meeting would never be over but it finally was. My mom asked, “How was it?” and I responded, “I hated it." I told her how I didn’t like the therapist but I knew it would be a while until we could get a new therapist. The competing response didn’t work so we tried the other option. The first 20 minutes, I didn’t do so well. I had 64 tics. The next time I tried really hard and I got 23! I was very happy but it didn’t get better. I became reluctant to do the 20 minutes and dreaded them. It was painful to keep in the tics. I got lower scores and the tics got better but it never went away. The feeling didn’t change either, it was begging to come out and and releasing a horrible feeling if not. It was finally time to go home and we got a new therapist. When she asked how my tics were doing I realized I had barely been doing any! Just a few here and there but at that moment I felt happy and that was what mattered. 

When I look back at this moment in my life, I feel proud. I don’t feel sad that I had to suffer, but I feel proud that I got through it. I am happy that my family helped me along the journey, but it comes down to you whether you will give up and suffer or try and be happy. I of course wish I didn’t have motor tics,  but sometimes we have to accept the reality and thrive in it.

To learn more about OCD, watch the following video: https://www.ocdkidsmovie.com/

Source: Unstuck: An OCD Kids Movie

By Aaron B. 

And we set off for the 4,967 foot hike ahead of us. It was spring break of 2020 and I was in Sedona, Arizona. My family stood in the parking lot of  Cathedral Rock, the 90ish minute hike ahead of us. In order to start our long hike, we had to cross a small, dried up river bed to get to the foot of the towering mound of stone. 

We started to walk up the flatter part of Cathedral Rock until we finally reached a cairn with a sign that said “Summit Trail.” I said, “Look! It’s huge!” When we reached around 150 feet high, we stopped for some water and pictures because my mom just can’t seem to get enough of them. That’s when we all realized that we had to leave mom behind because she killed her knees a while ago. It only got steeper from there on so, yeah. As we proceeded without mom, I said, “It’s getting prettier and prettier as we go further up!” I took some pictures for my mom with my small, blue camera every now and then. After some more pictures, I turned back and yelled, “Look how high up we are!” At that point, we had almost reached the apex of our hike at Cathedral Rock! When me, my dad, and sister made it to the top, all I could hear was my heart pounding in my chest. When I looked up, I saw a beautiful landscape untouched by humans sitting in front of us! I saw a small group of people carving their names into one of the large pillars on top, so slowly walked over, grabbed a stone, and started carving my name into the pillar. My sister soon joined me. We took a few more pictures before heading back down to mom. Apparently, while we were hiking, my mother was making some new friends back down at the start of the steep part. As we made our way down the rocky mountain, there were a few areas that we got to slide down! The areas were smooth so it was fun to slide down them. When we reunited with mom, we started going back to the parking lot talking about what happened. On the way down, my sister and I said in unison, “OWW!!” as we both rolled our ankles.

I was super proud of myself afterward because of how hard the hike was. I was very nervous at the beginning of the hike but got more and more confident as I went up. So if someone is trying to do something courageous, then they should face it head on and try their best!