Billie Eilish, on her Tourette syndrome: "People's reaction is to laugh and I always feel offended"

Billie Eilish has spoken on more than one occasion about the illnesses and mental health issues she has had to deal with since her teens.

“She always had band-aids on her wrists.

I would lock myself in the bathroom and harm myself because I thought I deserved it, ”she recounted in her documentary

, premiered in early 2021 on Apple TV +.

In 2018, she revealed that she suffers from Tourette's syndrome, a neurological disorder that can cause repetitive movements and uncontrollable sounds or tics.

Now the 20-year-old performer has wanted to elaborate on what it's like to live with this disorder in a conversation with host David Letterman during his Netflix talk show,

“I am very happy to talk about this,” said the American singer.

“People's most common reaction is to laugh, because they think I'm trying to be funny.

They think it's a funny move and laugh, and I'm always incredibly offended by it."

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The interpreter has said that she was diagnosed with the disorder when she was just 11 years old, after having small physical tics in her childhood, which increased as the years passed.

Although she assures that today her tics have decreased, she says that she still suffers from them.

“I never stop having tics.

The ones I have constantly, throughout the day, are: I move my ear from side to side, I raise my eyebrow, I snap my jaw, I flex my arm, my muscles...”, she has detailed.

“These are things that you would never notice if you were just having a conversation with me, but for me they are exhausting.”

He has also revealed that it is a more common syndrome than is often believed.

"You would never imagine all the people who suffer from it," the singer told Letterman, assuring that some artists have confessed to her that they also suffer from the disorder, but that she was not going to mention them publicly "because they don't want to talk about it."

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Despite living with these symptoms on a daily basis, he assures that when he "focuses" on tasks such as singing or riding a horse, he does not experience tics as much and that, over the years, he has learned to accept his disorder.

“Not that I like it, but I feel like it's a part of me.

I have become friends with him”, reflected the singer.

Eilish first revealed that she had Tourette syndrome in late 2018, after compilation videos of her tics were posted on social media, US magazine

reported .

At that time, the singer was barely 16 years old and she turned to the ephemeral Stories of Instagram to communicate it to her followers, who currently number 103 million.

"I never wanted people to think of Tourette syndrome every time they thought of me," she admitted.

The interpreter continued explaining how she had dealt with the disorder since she was a child.

“I have taught myself ways to suppress my tics and certain techniques to help reduce them when I don't want to be distracted in certain situations,” she wrote.

"I didn't plan to talk about this here, but it has reached a point...".

Far from being offended by the videos, she said she found them "funny".

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Since she rose to fame in 2016 – at the age of 14 – with her single

, Billie Eilish has completely broken with the classic pop star profile that the music industry was used to.

She has never hesitated to speak openly about her battle with anxiety and depression, and the dark side of fame, both in interviews and through her song lyrics.

At 20 years old, she has become one of the great icons of generation Z (those born between the mid-nineties and 2010) and can boast of being the youngest artist to win in the four main award categories. Grammy in the same year, including best song and best album of the year, for

and

, respectively.