When it comes to living with Cerebral palsy there are several different stigmas that I’m constantly having to debunk as an individual with a disability.
Over the weekend after giving it some thought on what to write about for this week’s blog and this topic occurred to me the five things I wish people knew about cerebral palsy.
I thought this topic would be good because there’s a lot of things that I wish people knew about this condition and if I could bring awareness to it this way then great right?! so let’s get started :
- Cerebral palsy is not contagious-this is a stigma that I have to debunk daily a lot of people have this misconception that if you meet someone with cerebral palsy you can catch it and this is absolutely false and just an ignorant misconception.
- People with CP can still live their lives- I am so sick and tired of trying to debunk this stigma every day yes, people with cerebral palsy have lives and we have the ability to live our lives to the best of our ability despite the obstacles that come our way of course.
- Cerebral palsy get the same amount of awareness as other disabilities such as autism- unfortunately, I wish that this wasn’t a stigma on this list but the sad reality of it is CP does not get as much awareness as autism or muscular dystrophy and we have to fight 10 times harder to get more education and awareness for CP.
- Cerebral Palsy isn’t a disease– this is one of the biggest stigmas is that I constantly have to debunk a lot of people assume that Cerebral palsy some type of disease when it’s not it’s really a condition that affects your bones and mobility but it doesn’t affect your capability of living.
- Last but not least, people with Cerebral palsy don’t have emotions- This stigma is one of the worst stigmas that I’ve ever heard people with Cerebral palsy do have emotions although they may express themselves differently that doesn’t mean we don’t understand what’s going on and can’t express how we feel. Hopefully one day I could write a post that says finally the five things people understand about the CP but until then I hope this post hopes debunk all the stigmas that we constantly have to face as people with disabilities on a day-to-day basis.
