Life as a Spastic

Hello! I’m Chris, I’m 28 years old and I’m a spastic. I’ve had cerebral palsy from birth due to medical negligence. A disability changes a persons life, but I’ve always been like this; to me, this is normal. The odd spasm here, an ache there, thats just life. I actually feel that dealing with the physical elements of CP relatively easy. There are obviously days or situations where the physical side of life does piss me off, but as you will see in my posts, I will always find ways around physical problems. Its people, policies and systems that seem to make my life difficult, even hell, at times. It baffles me that people and organisations who are created or paid to help me, manage to go out of there way to make my life even more difficult then it already is.

Of course, my life is not dictated by CP. One of the major areas of my life is psychology. I started at A-level and instantly loved the subject. People are different, we really should get used to this. I did my undergrad degree at Royal Holloway, University of London – to me the best University in the world, where I met some incredible people (I’m sure you’ll get to know them in my posts). I did my Masters in Research at the University of Bath, and I’ve stayed on to do a PhD in Clinical Psychology, specialising in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Again, I’m very lucky to find myself being part of a fantastic department, working with some amazing people.

I’ve decided to create a blog for two reasons: to try and give you an insight into life as a spastic with it’s ups or downs. No doubt there will be posts that will upset you, anger you, and make you realise how nasty the human race can be. I assure you, there will be plenty of posts that show how helpful people can be, how funny living with disability can be, and how obscure I can be!

I also hope that individuals will be able to get to know me, the research I’m doing for my PhD, and hopefully throughout my career. When researching in such a sensitive area such as OCD, I am constantly concerned that I will not be sensitive enough to the people that I am keen to try and help because I don’t have any experiences of obsessions or compulsions. Equally, some research can come across quite direct, only focussing on generating data to help me in the academic world. Hopefully, you can see that my research is aimed at trying to help individuals. Experiments are pointless if they are not helping, or actually making individuals worse in the process. If you are interested in my research, please feel free to get in contact. We can chat face to face, on the phone or even Skype, if you wish to discuss anything from life as a spastic to OCD, to individual research studies that I am conducting. I would be more than happy to have a chat about anything you like.

I hope you enjoy my posts 🙂

Chris