My Personal Journey with Essential Tremors

In this episode, I share my personal struggle with essential tremors, a neurological condition that causes uncontrollable shaking. I express how this condition impacts my daily life, even to the extent of not being able to crack an egg without shaking or risking its destruction. I've worked hard researching about this disorder, and I've uncovered some shocking truths along the way.

I also delve into how my tremors can escalate during stressful situations, such as delivering hard news or demanding tasks which you'd think I should comfortably handle, given my extensive experience in the roles. Not knowing what was happening, I found myself resorting to leaving voicemails instead of facing people, even if it meant shirking my responsibilities.

Drawing from several scenarios in my life, from managing a Subway sandwich to excelling in a restaurant consulting, I expose the constant experiences of shaking and helplessness that overwhelm me even during simple tasks. Anxiety became a part of my life, disrupting my work, my engagements, and my overall quality of life.

On a powerful note, I recount my experience during a Congressional debate where crippling bouts of shaking and inability to speak invaded my reality, staring at a camera with no idea of what was happening. The bewilderment that ensued was staggering, not because of humiliation but due to the completely unexplainable state I found myself in constantly.

Breaking free from skepticism myself and others could have about the realness of anxiety and other similar conditions, I finally sought medical help. Through trial and error, I found a medication that brought relief, and the inexplicable shaking episodes that cost me sleep for days on end have since seized.

While I'm still working on managing my condition and the persistent shaking, I'm grateful for the progress made so far. My sincere hope is that no one has to go through such an ordeal alone or wait too long, like I did, to get some help. Reach out and let's fight this together.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
So many of you know, I suffer from something called essential tremors.
What this basically means is that I shake.
I can show you when I hold something up, I shake. Oh, my hand looks really weird there. Wow.

(00:21):
That's the green screen. Okay, there you go.
So I shake right now. Not so much. I'm on medication.
Communication when I try to hold things smaller
things I shake that's actually not bad at
all if you're looking on on
the screen I shake so much that I can't I can't crack an egg because I will

(00:47):
destroy the egg and so I have to have my wife get out the eggs and do that kind kind of thing.
In recent years, I've done a lot of research on essential tremors. My dad had it.
Some of my siblings have it. Some of my children have it.

(01:10):
And I've been shocked to find out that essential tremors have a lot more to
do with just shaking. Um, they have to do with other aspects of your life.
And, and, and I'll give you example of things that I've done in my life that seemed.

(01:34):
Maybe they seemed lazy. Maybe they seemed inappropriate, not normal.
I'll just I'll give you a couple of examples. So.
I was managing a Subway sandwich in my early 20s and I knew the owner.

(01:58):
And at one point, my wife and I decided that we were going to move to Hawaii.
And I couldn't bring myself to tell the owner that we were going to quit.
The idea of me standing in front of her and giving her this news literally made me shake more.

(02:26):
It took away my breath. I couldn't speak. week.
Some might call it a panic attack.
I didn't know what it was. I
didn't identify that that was happening to me at all. I just didn't know.
And so my recourse was to pick up the phone,

(02:49):
hope she didn't answer the phone, and she didn't, and leave a voicemail that we were leaving.
I hated to do that. I hated it.
But I could not bring myself to communicate that to her because I was shaking

(03:13):
so much and I couldn't breathe.
The same thing happened later on. I was working for a business that was restaurant consulting.
And I decided that I was going to leave this company. Same thing.
This was a friend of mine. I don't think there would have been any conflict

(03:37):
whatsoever if he learned that I was leaving.
I think he would have wished me the best of luck.
But in thinking about it, I just started shaking like you wouldn't believe. I couldn't speak.
And so guess what I did? I called him and left a voicemail.

(03:59):
And in fact, I have probably quit four different times via voicemail.
Maybe five.
And every single time I felt horrible, every single time I felt awful,

(04:23):
like what's wrong with me?
And never knew, never knew.
And it reveals itself in other ways. I was at, you know, when I was with Little
Caesars and we would have Pizza Olympics every year.

(04:45):
And one of the things that I prided myself on was I was the best at everything
when it came to making pizza.
I knew I was the best. I set out to be the best.
And there's a couple of things you do. You have to cut and weigh the dough into
the right size dough balls.

(05:07):
Dominate it. No problem.
Then you have to dress a pizza, you know, sauce, pepperoni, cheese.
No problem. Nailed it.
Then you get to the part where you have to land the pizza.
Now, this should be the easiest part of the entire process. says.

(05:31):
All you do is you take the hook, you put it on the pan, you take the spatula,
you put it under the pizza and you just slide it out onto the box and then you fold the box.
This is something I had done a thousand times easily, easily.

(05:52):
But because I was in the lead and this was like the final event and everybody was gathered around me.
Something took over. And I started shaking like you would not believe.
Violent shaking. I mean, violent.

(06:15):
To where I couldn't get the pizza out of the pan.
I couldn't even get a hold of it. I couldn't get the spatula under it.
I couldn't land the pizza. I couldn't fold the box.
Something that I have done a thousand times.
And you might say, Jay, everybody gets nervous.

(06:37):
When I'm in front of people like that, I don't get nervous. I don't.
I could speak in front of a thousand people.
Now, if it's one-on-one, I can get nervous. With a stranger,
I certainly get nervous.
But I could not for the life of me get that stupid pizza out of the pan and

(07:00):
I dropped it on the floor.
Dropped it. I mean, what the hell?
I have done this a thousand times, and I can't get a pizza out of a pan.
Did I think about it? No. I thought maybe I'm just nervous, whatever.
These types of episodes have happened my entire life.

(07:26):
They happened when I worked at KSL, And I knew that I was going to have a,
I don't know if the word is adversarial.
I was going to have an adversarial meeting with my program director.
We were never totally adversarial. We were always respectful to each other,

(07:49):
but we disagreed on a lot of things.
And I knew that this was going to be a meeting where we disagreed.
The minute I sat down I started shaking shaking uh I couldn't speak it was like

(08:09):
he's it was like I was crying I had no voice my head is shaking I'm sweating wedding.
I had no problem talking to this man.
I am not somebody who typically has a problem talking to somebody about difficult things.

(08:30):
Any of you that know me, who have watched me on talk radio for 25 years,
you know that the hallmark of what I do do is talk about difficult things.
And I would have on guests and talk about difficult things.
But here I am in my program director's office, almost weeping, almost weeping.

(08:59):
And then the most recent one I can think about was, you know, I ran for Congress,
and had to debate, and it was a great honor.
I couldn't believe that I was in a presidential debate, not presidential.
I was in a congressional debate with three other candidates,

(09:22):
and I was vying for the Republican nominee.
Who gets to do that, right?
And in the first debate, I am golden.
I mean, I just feel like I nailed my answers. I just walked away feeling like,
man, you nailed that. And everybody told me you nailed that.

(09:45):
So then the second debate comes along, and I start out the second debate fine.
And then all of a sudden, it takes over.
The shaking, the inability to speak, it all comes in violently,
just violently out of nowhere.

(10:10):
This is not nerves. This is something else that I have never experienced before.
And I walked away from that debate and I apologized for my team.
And I'm like, I'm like, I'm sorry.
In fact, it was so bad that one of the other candidates handed me a glass of

(10:33):
water because he knew that my voice was was dry.
My mouth was dry and I couldn't for the life of me get the water into my face.
I'm holding it with both hands and I'm shaking it, trying to get it to my mouth. and the camera is on me.

(10:55):
And I had no idea what was going on. None. None.
And you know, it was weird as I didn't even think there was something wrong with me.
I didn't even think there was something there. And for all of you out there
who think, oh, come on, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

(11:16):
This anxiety, this stuff is not real.
Look, all I can tell you is what I've been through.
That's all I can tell you.
Finally, at the encouragement of my wife, I went to see a doctor.
And after trying several medications, finally.

(11:41):
I started to find something. I started to find some solutions.
Um, I used to get to the point where I would start shaking so much and I would
get spun up so much that I could not come down for days. I couldn't sleep for days.

(12:01):
There was nothing that started it.
It wasn't like, Like it wasn't like this thing that, uh, you know,
uh, some problem at work or something else took over.
Wasn't like any of that. Um, but he gave me some medication.
I don't want to share medications over the air because they're different from,

(12:25):
for everybody else, but he gave me a couple of things and I have not had one
of those episodes since.
And what a miracle that is for me.
I have still had other issues. Obviously, you see, I still shake and we're still working on that.

(12:47):
Unfortunately, the shaking will continue.
The shaking comes with a leveling of anxiety.
I'm already an introvert. I already don't like being around people.
Um, so that's something that is hard for me, but I, I guess the moral of this story is.

(13:11):
Um, you don't have to fight it alone. Don't wait until you're 55 years old to
try and figure these things out.
Yeah. You may be going through just normal nervousness, you know,
maybe that's a possibility.
But in my case i i got to the point where i couldn't function,

(13:34):
and and i'm back away
from that now i i can function and i'm grateful but again still have work to
do still have work to do so my friends that's uh that's the story for the day
please Please leave your comments and suggestions and experiences.

(13:56):
I'd love to hear from you.