Submitted by MelissaOrlov on 03/30/2009.
This show with Dr. Hallowell has been taped but we do not know the air date. It is not the week of May 4th, as previously thought. We will post the air date here when we are given it, or you can go to the Dr. Phil Show web site each weekend for a list of the upcoming week's show topics. Thanks for your patience on this - t.v. often works this way! Comments for this post are disabled as of May 3.
Comments
WhattaRide
Submitted by Mac (not verified) on
WOW!
Submitted by Cherokee Rose on
God bless you, man. I wish I had some good advice to give but I am just starting down this path (married to my ADD husband since 2005 and he was just dianosed last year) and I feel like I am just hanging on by a thread!!! I was only (3) years old when you started on your path. I have a lot of respect for you. Please tell us more. How do you cope? What makes you stay? Is there still love in your relationship? I feel a lot of anger and resentment towards my husband but also pity and compassion...but not romantic love. I am very lonely in this world and feel like no one understands. I guess you could say I have agape love that make me stay only because I promised to love "for richer or for poorer, through SICKNESS and in health, 'til death due us part." I have been dead now for 5 years. I have lost who I was. I am now an angry, bitter person. Other people would not tell you that about me -- they see a smiling, friendly person on the outside but on the inside I am dead inside.
I have a son who is the light of my life. He will be 2 years old on May 1st. I am going to med. school and working 2 jobs while trying to support my family (my husband doesn't work). My dream is to be able to support us in 6 years so we don't have to struggle so much. How long can you live with someone as your spouse if you no longer love them? Is it better or worse for your children?
I would love to hear more about your life experiences.
God bless you.
Re: Wow!
Submitted by David (not verified) on
RE: Wow
Submitted by Cherokee Rose on
David,
Thank you for the reply. The problem now seems to be more with me and my attitude rather than my ADD spouse. My husband is trying to make things better. He doesn't have a job because he can't seem to keep one, not because he hasn't tried. I am not sure what will help me with my attitude. We now have to file for bankrupcy because of bills he just "forgot" about that supposedly he had taken care of. My car was repo'd not once but TWICE!!! Now that I finally know what is going on with him and have started taking over the finances and bills, there is just so much resentment inside that I am having a hard time getting over that. We also have difficulty communicating with one another. I am VERY patient with him, repeat things he says back to him to confirm what he has said to me, but it doesn't seem to do any good. He gets angry very easily, leaves LARGE amounts of information out when communicating and therefore gets frustrated because he thinks everyone else is stupid for not understanding what he is trying to say. He is actually on a stimulant right now which has helped him somewhat, but it just isn't enough. What also helps him is acupuncuture but we don't have the money to get the treatments (I am studying to be an Oriental medicine physician currently so my student discount helps some). We hardly have enough money to eat, so another $30 for acupuncture -- we just don't have it right now. He is now at home taking care of my son. He is a great dad but I have to remind him a lot about things when it comes to taking care of the baby. I also don't like him to drive much (especially with my son in the car) since he has a bad driving record. All of this anxiety has caused me to just not like him very much and I can't imagine doing this for the rest of my life.
We are going to go to the CHADD meetings sometime next week since I think they are free. Counceling is our last resort right now. We can't afford counceling but we also can't afford NOT to have it. I make $300.00 a WEEK at a part-time job and also have a side business where I can bring in up to $300.00 extra a month. It just isn't enough. I am now researching if I could survive as a single mom off of student loans while I finish my masters and doctorate degrees in case we divorce. Even though I am no longer in love with my husband, I don't want a divorce but I also don't want my son to grow up seeing mommy and daddy in emotional anguish. I don't know the answer to this is. It's not his fault he is the way he is and it breaks my heart not being able to fix this.
Re: Wow!
Submitted by David on
I'd heard from an aunt, who died some years ago, well into her eighties, that such and such grandmother had married a full-booded Cherokee. In the Deep-South of circa 1890?, it was considered quite risque!
I really don't know what to say, 'cause to be frank; everything you've said, is so...familiar. I feel for you, I do. I understand exactly what you are saying in regards to having these lingering resentments and what they signify. Your husband doesn't really comprehend that you have deep-seated resentments and he'd be astounded if he could sense their magnitude, or rather, depth. He'll be distraught and confused when he sees that your resentment and bitterness go unabated, even well after he has finally got it and has started making changes - deep changes - attempting the kind of restructuring of one's core...something that only happens when a person realises that they love someone and its finally dawned on them. He won't understand that bitterness and resentment take a life of their own and just as he begins to become what he should've been all along, you'll be gone. Even if you are still physicall there, you'll still not see any of it - not because you are bad or wrong...its just human nature. The way things work.
People think, and ADDers are the worst sort to think that everything is virtually eternal, but its not. The windows for things like getting crushes; falling in love; driving for an hour after a long day's work - just to spend your last dime on a date and coming back home at 2 am feeling on top of the world, got to be up at 6am, but its just fine; eating some fellows face at a nightclub because he tried to dance with her ( and you've never been a fighter before ); having that long, hot shag on the floor - finally!; the trip to Maui on your honeymoon and all the things you did; the list goes on and on - the windows are in fact, very narrow and only occur in their own season. They add up as the sum of a life. The things, actions, inactions, lies, dissapointments that eat away at all of those leave a hole and none of us realise it.
Once they are gone, they are gone.
I was gonna say, I wish I could shake your husband and say ' hey buddy, wake up !'
But on second thought, maybe its just as well that he doesn't.
======================
There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course.
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
-Carl Jung
Cherokee Rose
Submitted by Nerdmom920 on
Take care of yourself, take care of your son, take care of your finances. Don't waste any unnecessary energy on your husband right now. You have to buckle down and deal with you, and once you feel secure, then you can give more energy to him.
Let him know what your priorities are, and then stick to them. He can't get better until he really sees where he is and where he should be. Be the example that he strives to be.
Imagine for a second that you couldn't see the color red, even though everyone around you swore up and down that the color red existed, but you didn't see it because you were wearing glasses that filtered out the color red. Imagine that no one told you that your glasses filtered out the color red, and then one day, you changed glasses, or you decided to take them off and low and behold you finally saw the color red. This is what I think it must be for a person with ADHD. They work and work and work, and one day they take off those glasses and see what you have been talking about this entire time. The ADD is not his fault, but he does have to work to get rid of those glasses.
No time for this
Submitted by FabTemp on
I'd love to participate, cameras, interviews, edits, make-up, television and all. I'm so enraged by my husband's behavior that I truly feel I need to make SOME sense of the hell that has been my life for ten years. If I rage on television in front of a psychologist who is there to keep it at even keel, maybe someone out there can benefit from my pain and NOT have to live like I have for the past 10 years. Maybe it could be the prompt to get someone into counseling. Maybe it would be the prompt that someone like me - minus ten years - needs to hear so she just leaves for good before her husband's behavior destroys the best years of her life.
But, having once worked in documentary/reality television, I know how disruptive taping can be - especially when the subject is an interviewed subject and the entire topic of the segment or show. I'm in school. My husband is in school. We live in NY. We have a 2 year old with no one to watch him. I just can't do it.
I hope that someone out there who is as angry and fed up as I am answers this subject call and makes it to a segment. Maybe she can help people out there when I can't.
Dr Phil show
Submitted by Steph on
Anyone know when this show is supposed to air?