Topic : 11/06 Dr. Phil's Get Real Retreat, Part 2

I'm coming to the party a week late, so I have two weeks of homework to complete this week. 

Can anyone give me more information on what is meant by the "deadness" in my life?  Other than my love life (by choice) I have no ideas.  Same question for the "bitch-list".  Can I really rant about clam shell packaging?

I have been on a path to change my ways for as long as I can remember. I am 24 and feel like the people on the show each have a characteristic that I can identify with. I think one of my biggest problems (That I can clearly see) is that I have low self-esteem. But not only that, I am suicidal but on meds, I am a pessimist, a perfectionsist, I am a control freak, I am selfish, I'm borderline alcoholic, I hate everyone and everything including myself, emotionally and verbally abusive. I am angry, I feel alone. . .  The list goes on and on. I can't afford therapy even though I'm suppose to be in a program with my perscription. My family all live far away, I feel I have no support other than my boyfriend. I have no friends I can count on, I have relationship issues, family issues, I can't control my emotions, I can't control my thoughts. I am lazy, but even when i am motivated, I don't have the tools to change the things in my life that I want to. My parents were very uninvolved inmy life and I resent them for more things than I can count.

I began reading Dr Phil's book 'Self Matters' but I stopped because when I got to the point where it was time to start digging into the past and remembering the key moments in my life that have caused me to be this way, I couldn't go on. My mind shut down, mental block... I'm not lazy, I just can't get through the exercises without help. I can't remember what my first bad or good memory. I've tried so hard to bury the bad that I am incapable of reconnecting.

I've been fighting for years and I feel some improvment, but not enough to change my desire to leave this world.

I want to get involved in the show because I am desperate and at the point of trying anything.

My biggest problem is knowing where to start, and i am hoping that this show will help me.

 As I watched Dr.Phils show today I related myself to a few topics. The main issue that leans on me the most is I was abused by my father he was mentally cruel and verbally abusive and sometimes would hit me. My mother stood by and watched all of this happen to us kids. She spent most of her time trying to make up for what happened to each of us. Us meaning my two older brothers.My mother has felt gulity and still does. She ought to and sometimes I still find myself being very angrey with her after my father had passed away with cancer. My mother thought by spoiling us and giving us what we wanted would make up for my dads wrong doings. I never remember my father telling me that he loved me. Each one of us kids have our own opion about my father because he treated us differently my brothers and I dont have a bond as brothers and sisters do. My middle brother pretty much well stays away from us. He has two boys one I barely know and the other one was just born in Aug I've not yet met. Infact my brother has only met my second child twice in his life. I could go on about all the bad things that has happened to us but i really dont feel like dwelling in my past it will only make me feel depressed. I lived half of my life in a abusive lifestyle and I no longer live that life. I have a wonderful husband and a toddler and a baby on the way lifes to short to remember what happened.  But i do still feel like I could use a little more help to patch some wonds that arent all the way healed.

Dr. Phil and people in the retreat,

   I watch this show and wonder how many times I have felt exactly like so many of these people in the retreat. I'm not here to judge anyone for I too have so much in common with so many of them. I am an angry person inside. I do my best to hide it from those around me. I am a single mother of 3, they are the ones that have truly had to suffer because of my anger. I know what it's like to unleash on my own children (mentally not physically).  I also have had an affair with a married man several years ago. I finally ended it when I realized just how much I was hurting someone else. His wife found out and called me. Until then, I just didn't see her as a part of him. I have also been a drug user years ago, I lost a lot because of it. So here I am, I hide behind trying to control people and I'm not really a perfectionist but I do have to have a lot things done just right. My kids call me O.C.D. I was abandoned by my mother at the age of 3, she left my brother and me with our alcoholic father. We were very quickly retrieved by social services. We spent a couple of years in foster care and then were adopted by our paternal grandmother. I guess this somehow gave me feelings of little or no self worth. I always felt very unimportant. I sought love in all wrong places.

I saw the program today and thought it was interesting to see people get up in public and expressing only ONE issue they wanted/needed help with.  My mother left my older brother, younger brother, our dad and myself when I was 2 years old.  My father had an above average IQ but had dropped out of school in the 8th grade.  He was 40 when he married his 17 year old bride (our mother).  I believe they were both heavy drinkers.  When I was almost 8 years old, my brothers and I had to move into a children's home where we lived until I was 12.  We were allowed to move back in with our father in order to help take care of him (80% brain damage during surgery on his damaged liver).  My brothers and I met our mother for the first time (since leaving) the day of our father's funeral.  It was around Christmas and she wanted to give us presents.  Mine was a pair of Dockers pants that had a waist of 42 (I wore a 31 at the time) and a XXX sweater (I wore mediums and larges).  My brother's gifts were similarly mis-sized.  I haven't heard from her since that day and the only time I've seen her was while I was sitting in my car, waiting for my older brother (who was living with her) to come out...so I could take him to rehab.  Apparently she really enjoys partying with him, and from what I understand, that boy sure does like and know how to party.  Once every few years while growing up, she would call the house while very intoxicated and our father would FORCE my brothers and myself to talk to her. 

As far as the tv show goes, I enjoy watching the show but all the while, in some small fashion, laughing at the "problems".  My childhood?...for the most part I felt happy and always protected, if nothing else.