Billie Eilish details her struggle with Tourette's syndrome: ‘Doing everything in my power’
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Billie Eilish has opened up about dealing with her Tourette's syndrome during a recent interview.
The singer sat down for the May 5 episode of Amy Poehler's ‘Good Hang’ podcast, where she talked about the neurodevelopmental disorder — which as per Mayo Clinic, “involves repetitive movements or unwanted sounds (tics) that can't be easily controlled.”
Billie Eilish does 'everything to suppress all of my tics'
Eilish suffers with vocal tics. Mostly they are small noises that she can keep "pretty quiet,” the 24-year-old revealed on the podcast. But sometimes she has to struggle more when few words become tics, especially during interviews.
“When I'm in an interview, I'm doing everything in my power to suppress all of my tics, constantly. And as soon as I leave the room, I have to let them all out,” the ‘CHIHIRO’ hitmaker shared.
For Eilish, her Tourette's syndrome is like “intrusive thoughts, but your mouth has to say them out loud.” But the ‘BIRDS OF A FEATHER’ also revealed that she did not like it when some people assume that her tics are bothersome to her.
Billie Eilish constantly has tics in her knees, elbows and hands
“If I start having a tic attack or whatever, like a lot of tics in a row, ... people are like, 'Are you okay?' You know, this is very much normal,” she added.
Another annoying thing Eilish has to face is when people doubt her Tourette's syndrome because she's not actively displaying tics. But in reality, the Academy awards winning singer constantly has tics in her knees, elbows and hands.
They, however, mostly go unnoticed because Eilish claimed that she’s “doing everything I can to suppress every single tic that's visible, from the top of my head to about right here.”
“And that's, like, how we as people with Tourette's pretty much spend our days,” she noted.
The songwriter also mentioned that not everyone has the privilege “of getting to suppress them, at all, in any way,” and when people don’t understand it is “frustrating.”
Billie Eilish shed light on her body image and eating issues
This came after Eilish frankly spoke about her “toxic relationship” with her body. She told Elle that she “had a lot of eating issues. I remember putting on, like, a big shirt and the relief that I felt. At the same time, it was my love for hip-hop culture and wanting to be a man.”
“This is the misogyny that we all have within us... which is that I didn’t want to be seen as feminine, and therefore weak. It’s not right. I’ve found a good way of not feeling like that,” she added.
