Courtney Stodden revealed they were diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome.
The model publicly shared their diagnosis on Sunday, posting an Instagram clip from their infamous 2011 interview with ABC News’ Lara Spencer, which took place after Stodden got married to 51-year-old Doug Hutchinson at age 16.
“They made a moment into a joke… but there was a reason,” Stodden, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, began their lengthy caption.
They continued, “There’s a part of my story no one ever understood. As an adult — i was diagnosed with having suffered from Tourette syndrome… and for most of my childhood i lived with tics i couldn’t control.”
Stodden, 31, explained that their tics included stuttering, eye squinting, mouth movements and muscle tension, as well as seizures when they were younger.
“I never talked about it before… because i was ashamed,” the reality star wrote. “I didn’t want to out myself. I thought it would make me look weird like something was ‘wrong’ with me. So i hid it.”
Stodden elaborated that when their “tics and muscle spasms happened,” they tried to make it look “intentional” and “sexy” to cover up what they were really going through.
But when Stodden did their viral 2011 interview, their “nerves” brought the tics back to the surface.
“That moment people turned into a meme…people thought i was on something,” Stodden recalled. “I wasn’t. There was no alcohol. No pills. Nothing in my system.”
“What you were seeing… was a little girl with Tourette’s under pressure, being watched, trying to hold herself together. My body was reacting in a way i didn’t yet have the words to explain. and instead of being understood…I was laughed at.”
Stodden said that after hiding her Tourette’s syndrome, they are no longer “ashamed” about their diagnosis.
“Because there is nothing shameful about something you never had control over,” they said. “And if you’ve ever been misunderstood for something your body did… you’re not alone.”
Stodden became a tabloid fixture in 2011 after tying the knot with Hutchison, now 65, at age 16 in a rushed Las Vegas ceremony.
The couple separated and reconciled multiple times throughout their relationship before they called it quits in 2017, finalizing their divorce three years later.
In 2022, Stodden exclusively told Page Six that their marriage to the “Green Mile” actor felt like “a conservatorship.”
“It was really difficult to live in that,” they said, “not being able to just be free.”
