Craig kindly shared his story with us, describing his journey with Functional Neurological Disorder and the role Holly played in helping him rebuild his confidence, independence and hope.

It was such a powerful account that, with his permission, we wanted to share it.

If you're living with FND or supporting someone who is, we hope Craig's experience reminds you that recovery and meaningful improvement are possible.

"For the first time, I feel like I'm finally able to live."

Craig shares his journey with Functional Neurological Disorder and how learning to understand his brain changed everything.

It would be fair to describe my difficulties as lifelong and life changing.

Two things sat at the root of it from the very beginning: severe speech problems and what I now know was undiagnosed autism. I received support for my speech, but never for the much broader impact that those difficulties - and the autism - had on the rest of my life.

I want to be clear that what follows is my own understanding rather than a clinical explanation. Through reading, research and my own experiences, I've come to believe that much of what was eventually diagnosed as Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) may have developed because I spent a lifetime operating through maximum conscious effort. I was constantly adapting to a neurotypical world and a neurotypical way of communicating, without the support that would have made that easier.

My sense is that, over time, my brain became locked into that high-effort mode. Rather than doing things automatically, everything required conscious thought. Looking back, it feels less like I lost the ability to function effortlessly and more like I never truly developed it in the first place.

For many years I compensated. I relied on determination, logic and sheer effort, and that carried me surprisingly far. But once adult life arrived - with work, responsibility and increasing demands, that approach simply stopped being sustainable.

Looking back, there was a clear pattern. Every time life demanded more from me, something else had to be sacrificed.

Exercise was the first thing to disappear. My cycling stopped. The gym stopped. Then the crashes began.

Over the next decade I settled into a frustrating cycle of slow recovery followed by another setback. New physical symptoms gradually appeared, including difficulty walking.

At my lowest, standing up, rolling over in bed or simply getting out of a chair could take hours. This wasn't about motivation or feeling low. My body genuinely needed that long to perform tasks most people never think about.

What made it so confusing was the inconsistency.

On one day I could complete a fifty-mile bike ride. On another day I couldn't walk across a room. Working with a personal trainer, I built enough strength to deadlift around 115kg, yet some days I couldn't lift anything at all.

Nothing seemed to make sense.

I now understand, thanks to Holly at PhysioFunction, that my "battery" isn't divided neatly between work, exercise and everything else. It's shared. Energy spent coping with work quietly reduced what was available for everything else. By the time I wanted to exercise, there was often nothing left.

For years I sought help.

Physiotherapy and massage gave genuine short-term relief and helped me manage my symptoms, but they could only ever treat the effects rather than the cause. Meanwhile, my experience of the healthcare system became increasingly frustrating. After years of appointments, unexplained pain, worsening symptoms and no clear plan, I eventually moved to a new GP, was referred to neurology, and finally received a diagnosis of Functional Neurological Disorder through private healthcare.

Within weeks I found PhysioFunction.

What struck me immediately wasn't just Holly's knowledge, it was that she approached my condition completely differently.

When I first arrived, my freezing episodes were so severe that I sometimes crawled across the floor because walking simply wasn't possible. Even standing up from a chair could be overwhelming. Sessions often involved only a very small amount of activity because that was all my nervous system could cope with.

I'd fallen into what Holly described as a "boom and bust" cycle. On good days I tried to make up for lost time by doing everything. The result was inevitable: I would crash and spend days - or sometimes weeks - unable to do very much at all.

The biggest change Holly made wasn't simply giving me exercises.

She helped me understand how my body actually worked.

My instinct was always to compare myself with the person I used to be. If I couldn't go for a long cycle ride, then surely there was no point doing anything.

Holly challenged that completely.

She helped me realise that real progress sometimes meant something as small as slowly moving an arm, practising standing up from a chair or walking for a few minutes. My brain instinctively dismissed these as "not real exercise", but learning to accept those tiny movements as meaningful became the turning point in my recovery.

In many ways, Holly helped me set aside everything I thought I knew about physical fitness and replace it with something entirely different: neurological fitness.

The focus shifted from big achievements to small, repeatable successes.

Our sessions reflected real life. We practised standing from chairs by breaking the movement into manageable stages. We simulated emptying the dishwasher using squats and reaching exercises. We played balloon volleyball to practise changing direction quickly - something that eventually helped me build the confidence to return to badminton and squash.

As I improved, those exercises became more realistic, introducing busy environments and sensory distractions so that my brain could learn to cope outside the clinic as well as inside it.

Perhaps the biggest lesson Holly taught me was the importance of repeatability.

There's a huge difference between doing something once and being able to do it consistently without paying for it afterwards. For years I had judged success by my very best day. Holly taught me instead to judge success by what I could repeat tomorrow.

That simple change transformed everything.

I also learned to understand my crashes.

Previously they had seemed random and impossible to predict. Holly showed me that several small stresses - each insignificant on their own - could combine into a neurological overload. Once I stopped comparing myself with what was "normal" and started observing what was actually happening in my own body, those patterns became much clearer.

Perhaps just as importantly, Holly helped me recognise progress when I couldn't see it myself.

Left to my own devices, I would always push harder. Because of the way my brain works, I tend to think in very black-and-white terms. Small improvements didn't feel like improvements at all.

By measuring simple tasks in a controlled environment; how many times I could stand up from a chair, how consistently I could repeat an exercise - I could finally see that I was improving. Those objective measures gave me confidence that the process was working, even when day-to-day life felt messy and unpredictable.

Today my life looks completely different.

I can work consistent hours again. I can meet friends afterwards or play squash without spending the next week recovering. I can run for short periods. My freezing episodes are now uncommon, and when they do happen, I usually understand what triggered them and how to recover.

The biggest achievement isn't that every symptom has disappeared. It's that I've learned how to manage my condition.

For most of my life, it felt as though I lived under a kind of patchwork quilt. I could have a successful career, or I could be physically fit, or I could enjoy an active social life, but never all at once. To gain one part of life, I always had to sacrifice another.

For the first time, I can hold those things together.

I can work. I can spend time with family and friends. I can play the piano. I've started playing badminton again and I'm gradually bringing cycling and weightlifting back into my life.

The difference is that I'm no longer choosing between them.

I'm balancing them.

I don't feel like I'm simply returning to where I was before. I feel like I'm building something far more sustainable, something that finally has solid foundations.

Perhaps the truest way I can put it is this:

I don't feel like I simply got my life back.

I feel like I'm finally able to live.

Craig

If you would like to make a booking or find out more about our services:

Please call  us on 0800 043 0327 or

Email rehab@physiofunction.co.uk

If you would like to visit our clinic, please just let us know and we can arrange that.

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