When Parkinson's Started Affecting My Confidence
Confidence is a strange thing. You don't really notice how much you rely on it until it starts slipping away and even then, it happens so gradually that you can almost convince yourself it isn't happening at all.
That's how it was for me.
There was no single moment I can point to. No day I woke up and thought today is the day Parkinson's took my confidence. It was more like a slow tide going out. A series of small retreats, each one individually manageable, that added up to something much bigger.
When My Voice Started Changing
I spent over 20 years in high-pressure sales. My voice was a tool, something I relied on every single day to lead teams, close deals, build trust with people I'd never met. I was comfortable talking. It came naturally.
Then in 2025, a stutter developed.
At first, it was occasional. A word here and there that wouldn't come out cleanly. I'd push through it, move on, tell myself it was stress or tiredness. But it didn't go away. It got worse. And eventually it reached a point where some days, particularly when I'm stressed or talking about something that matters to me, the words just won't come at all.
I've started choosing silence on those days. Not because I have nothing to say, but because the effort of fighting for every word in public is sometimes more than I'm willing to put myself through. On harder days, my wife steps in and speaks for me when we're out. That's not a small thing to admit. For someone who built a career on communication, handing over your voice, even temporarily, even to someone you trust completely, cuts deep.
What makes it harder is the unpredictability. Some days are fine. Some days I can hold a full conversation without issue. And then a difficult topic comes up, or the pressure rises, and it's like the words get stuck behind a wall I can't find my way around. You can't plan for it. You can't always explain it to people who haven't seen it before.
How I Move and How Others See Me Move
The stutter wasn't the only thing. Parkinson's also changed how I move and with it, how I felt about being seen.
There's a self-consciousness that comes with movement changes that's hard to describe if you haven't experienced it. You become hyperaware of yourself in spaces you used to move through without thinking. A restaurant. A meeting room. A shop. Places where you suddenly feel like people are watching, even when they're not.
For someone who was used to walking into rooms with confidence professionally, physically, that shift in self-perception was significant. It doesn't announce itself loudly. It just quietly changes which rooms you choose to walk into.
What's Helped
Two things, more than anything else.
The first is exercise. Staying physically active has been one of the most reliable ways I've found to feel like myself again. Not because it fixes anything it doesn't but because it gives me something I can control when a lot of other things feel like they're slipping. Movement, for me, has become an act of resistance.
The second is my family. My wife and three kids have become my steadiest anchor. On the days when I choose not to speak, my wife doesn't make it a moment. She just steps in, naturally, without fuss and somehow that makes it easier to bear than any pep talk would. Having people around you who understand the difference between a bad day and a bad life makes a bigger difference than I expected.
Why I'm Writing This
I'm writing this because I know there are people in the Parkinson's community who are experiencing the same things and haven't seen them described honestly. Voice changes. The embarrassment of a stutter in public. The quiet retreat from situations you used to handle without a second thought.
It's real. It matters. And it doesn't mean you're losing it means you're dealing with something genuinely hard.
Confidence, I've learned, doesn't have to mean the absence of struggle. It can just mean showing up anyway. Some days that looks like a full conversation. Some days it looks like walking out the front door when part of you didn't want to.
Either way you're still moving.
And that counts.
— Rob