He’s lived most of his life as the guy you couldn’t help but notice. Marc Elliot estimates that he has “tic-ed” 21 million times in his life. Two weeks ago he stopped.

Mr. Elliot, who was diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome at the age of nine, tours the country speaking to audiences about tolerance and understanding. But Tourette’s isn’t his only hardship. Mr. Elliot was also diagnosed with Hirschsprung’s disease, which left him with only four feet of small intestine (the usual is 19 feet) and no large intestine.

Open about his struggles, Mr. Elliot addressed a gathering at the Chilmark Community Center on July 7.

He said that the past two weeks have been a time of incredible change. “What I didn’t have [before the tics stopped] was anonymity,” he said, recalling being in the grocery store and a friend in the next aisle would yell, “Hi, Marc!” after only hearing him tic. “I have a whole new experience of life now,” he said.

The life-changer, he said, was when he enrolled in a series of classes on joy. “My whole life, I’ve been the most intolerant person of myself,” he said. “When you’re doing it all the time, you don’t even know you’re doing it. We always want to find an answer outside of us,” he said.

He said he knows that his Tourette’s has not gone into remission, but that he can now control it better. He described Tourette’s as an itch; the tics are a way of scratching it.

At the start of the evening, each audience member was handed a card explaining why Mr. Elliot behaves the way he does, a card he has been handing out for most of his life. And then, wearing a broad smile, he announced that this was the second speech that he had given since the tics stopped. Nevertheless, the cards were used as a script of sorts to allow the audience to experience Tourette’s for themselves. Some received cards with a tic written on them and a time for performing. So shouts of “Boring!” “I love you!” and some unprintable words and phrases punctuated the evening which was also tinged with humor and compassion.

“We’ve been learning about tolerance for a really long time, probably dating back to the first day of kindergarten,” Mr. Elliot said. “Tolerance is the bare minimum of how we should treat someone.”

Mr. Elliot shared anecdotes to illustrate the no-doubt countless uncomfortable moments he has had in an array of public places through the years. At times people reacted with compassion upon learning the reason for his outbursts, but for the most part the opposite was true. In one memorable incident while traveling as a high school student, he was kicked off a Greyhound bus in Indianapolis.

In an appeal to the audience for more tolerance, he issued a reminder about how little we actually know about each other, and how oftentimes assumptions about other people and their behavior dictates our response. He admitted that even he makes assumptions about other people.

“Really all I do is I plant a seed for dialogue,” he said about his message of tolerance.

After the presentation, many of the audience members, mostly teenagers and their parents, stayed to speak with Mr. Elliot and thank him.

“I’ll probably carry it with me for a long time,” said Ellie Braelis.

Lissadell Cohen Serrins agreed. “It really went beyond what I thought it was going to be,” she said.