Throughout the first several years of her musical career, Billie Eilish, who was just a kid, tried to hide the fact that she deals with the tic disorder, Tourette syndrome. However, once the various “tic compilations” started making their rounds on the internet, essentially forcing her hand, Eilish revealed in a candid, black-and-white-text-only Instagram post, that she had been diagnosed with Tourette syndrome as a child (via Hollywood Life).
As it turned out, the upshot of Eilish’s letting herself be vulnerable in this way was nothing less than an outpouring of positive reactions from her fans — not just those who suddenly were confronted with the reality that when you poke fun at someone, you may be attacking them right in the place where they are most vulnerable, but also those who, themselves, have been dealing with Tourette syndrome and other tic disorders.
In April 2019, Eilish told Ellen DeGeneres, “a lot of my fans have it, which made me feel kind of more at home with saying it.” In addition, Eilish felt that “there was a connection there. When I said that, there were kids that were posting, like, ‘Oh my god, I’ve always had this, and now she has it, and she’s who I can look up to with it.”