Dr. Phil's Moderators Unveiled (Kinda Like Romney's Tax Returns)

I've no good way to explain it, why I've returned to posting occasionally over at Dr. Phil dot com -- except that there are some people who also post there about whom I cannot seem to stop caring.

Man, that sounds stilted.  There are some people there I can't seem to stop caring about.

But I am hated, because I don't disguise my disgust for Phil McGraw and his Brand.  Because I get angry -- really, really angry -- when the "moderators" censor every word, pull posts seemingly at random, have a first trimester barely-there sense of humor, and especially when they underwrite those people whose mental health status is circling the drain.  They encourage people who are frankly delusional and paranoid, instead of intervening or supplying the "best in the world" type of assistance that only a Phil McGraw could.

Anywho... (Did you know that I've recently been introduced to a woman whose real name is Cindy Lou Who?  I kid you not!)  Anywho... several other posters have been miffed by the censorship and have hesitantly spoken up about it.  Yes, I AM criticizing the hesitancy of their "J'accuse..." -- In case you haven't noticed, I'm lately a huge fan of "manning up" and clanging your brass balls, whether you have to purchase them or whether they're organically all yours.  I've had it with temerity.

Temerity kills people.

Go ahead, ask me how I know.  I dare ya.

Oops.  I am transferring the anger that fuels my writing over yonder onto my Gentle Readers here, safe within the daub-and-wattle of Marlinspike Hall (it's mostly stone masonry, actually), here in the Western regions of the Lone Alp, all wrapped up in the phenomenal Tête de Hergé.  Here, where we exhale evil humours out of our nares and inhale the sweet end products of the algae in The Moat.  It is, in fact, the prevalence of our choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic contributions that form a protective ring of basic rarefied sputum around The Manor.  We're still working on the algae.

The four temperaments (Clockwise from top right: choleric; melancholic; sanguine; phlegmatic).

There is probably some rule, maybe even some law, some Terms of Usage bit of blather that should prevent me from republishing the stuff below.  "Ha!"  I say.  "Ha!"  I take the risk for one reason, and one reason alone. One of the moderaters deigned to respond to my moaning, groaning post... and tried to use MOLIERE against moi!  Oh, the joy in MoiLand!

Anyway, this is how twitty, twittified, and ridiculous things are in Phil Territory.  Oh, and would one of you be so kind as to be in charge of collecting money for bail?  Thankyouverymuch. Please note, Lawyers of Doctor Feel, that I have protected all identities but my own.  Also, La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore and her Lover Sven, along with Sven's quite costaud young studly son, Cabana Boy -- they all know where you live.  Yeah, that's right... 

***********************************************************************************************************

Surprise, Surprise

Replied By: X on Oct 5, 2012, 9:53PM

Wow, big surprise, another post disappears..  If you cant post about your feelings, about depression then why have a board on depression????
If the mods feel that somewhere in the post there may be inappropiate things, take it out, I am sure you can edit, but why remove the whole entire post???    And if the post is erased then we should be offered the courtesy of an email (because you have everyones in their profile) explaining why it was inappropriate and erased.

Mary:: Made a post earlier this evening, expressed my sorrow at the loss of your neighbor but big surprise, it disappeared...

Mods, what's going on?

Replied By: Z on Oct 5, 2012, 11:23PM

Posts are disappearing. Is there a glitch in the system or something? While it's understandable that some posts may need to be deleted it is VERY upsetting for some. It makes it very hard to support someone when the posts they write gets deleted.Is it possibly because our board is being featured?


I do get the fact that you want people to stay on topic but when we take the time to type posts only to come back here to find them missing it actually CAUSES depression because it's like we are being told in OUR safe place that what we think is NOT important. Please put yourselves in our place? Please put yourselves in the new people's place? How would you feel if you came here seeking support only to find your post was deleted? How can I help others when I can't see their posts? Depressed people usually cannot stay on one topic at a time. Depressed people give up easily (sad but true). Perhaps if at all possible should you feel the need to delete a post you could reply to the post first to give the poster a chance to edit it before you do? Otherwise we could lose even more members or potential members.You never know what someone who is depressed might do. Er DON'T worry I'm NOT talking about me! I'm just curious because I've seen a couple of posts disappear that were not offensive at all. 

"what's going on?" is a good question      

Replied By: profderien on Oct 6, 2012, 7:59AM - In reply to Z

i join (once again) voices with mary and joyce -- moderation seems almost like a game, a catch-as-catch-can kind of endeavor.


on the one hand, there is the impression that the moderators are overwhelmed with work.  i imagine they are, since it has been decided that every word, every inference, every emotion, every vent needs to be vetted by... whomever these moderators are.  so occasionally, we write something, it appears, then disappears, we bark and complain, and then, "poof" -- it reappears.  because the mods are so weighed down with the work of censorship.


on the other hand, there is what i *know*.  when i am critical, i don't get published.  when i am too direct, i don't get published.  should i suggest that the mods/drphil are coddling some mentally ill people who need help instead of coddling?  shazaam!  my posts are in the outer atmosphere.  should i simper, kiss butt, write a poem, light a candle?  no problem!


but this is a place for people with problems.  so stop censoring the problems, they're real!  it is kind of funny, since you have, in the past, let people go on and on for months, even years, scamming other support group participants with sob stories that the moderators apparently ate up with relish.. i would refer you to a post about that on the old chronic pain board, but that board has been eliminated. (if people would just buy all of frank lawlis' books, get tested for heavy metals, there would be no chronic pain, right?)

the users can tell who is real and who is not, and eventually can work it out amongst themselves -- better than can the moderators?  why?  because we have an investment.  these are our stories here, this is our life splayed out on the screen.  dr. phil is not the one taking any risks, we are.

so... yeah, the mods are busy with the busy work of vetting every written word -- which at the very least is a waste of their talents.  and yeah... they are engaged in senseless censorship.


i am posting this at 10:59 am, my time.  let's see how long before it's pulled.


"the truth? you can't handle the truth..."

Moderation

Replied By: Y on Oct 6, 2012, 8:12AM - In reply to profderien

Emoting anger and rage might "feel good" in the short term, however, developing more constructive tools and skill sets might be more helpful in navigating life.
In the 17th Century, Moliere advocated the philosophy of moderation which is as pertinent today as then.
There is a marvelous place for anger and rage...it is called Therapy.

View Replies

"Oh how fine it is to know a thing or two!" -- Molière      

Replied By: profderien on Oct 6, 2012, 8:43AM - In reply to Y

it speaks!  thank you, moderator.

emoting, emoting..what possible role could that have on this site, do ya think?  have you noticed the leitmotif running through most of your adherents' lives -- that of not having enough money to buy the tools you so blithely suggest?  might that not explain the instense begging that breaks out like smallpox from time to time?  for make-overs, for money to get to hospitals, money to keep the internet available for access to helpful sites like... this one.

"constructive tools and skills" -- as far as i can see, the ones that you are advocating fall under the rubric of 'sublimation.'  or is dr. phil wishing us all to be subsumed by some skinnerian device, and our rewards and disincentives come through whether or not the moderators will publish our over the top emoting or our oppressed/suppressed pollyanna acts?

i gotta give you the brass balls award, male or female, for mentioning molière to me.  give Le Médecin malgré lui a read.  and no, molière was not exactly an advocate for moderation... or at least, he was about as much as was rabelais.

i've had therapy. it was great.  they tell me i don't need any more.  but if you don't want me to emote anger and rage, kindly delineate what it is okay to emote.  i mean, heck, if i suppress that, won't that morph into depression and grief...?

in reply to moderator's comment:

"Emoting anger and rage might "feel good" in the short term, however, developing more constructive tools and skill sets might be more helpful in navigating life.
In the 17th Century, Moliere advocated the philosophy of moderation which is as pertinent today as then.
There is a marvelous place for anger and rage...it is called Therapy."

*************************************************************************

Actually, hmmmm.  I've no idea if the person to whom I was responding was a moderator or not.  Oh, well, I got to emote all over the page (it'll be hours of cleaning for some poor crew working at or below minimum wage....).

Speaking of which, I'd best at least put our small apartment here in the East Wing in some sort of order before I get hauled off to debtor's prison for "stealing from DrPhil.com's website."

It's been fun... Try to carry on without me.  Go Joey!  Go Hannah!  Go Kate!  Go Ashley!  Oh, dear God, I was not cut out for incarceration.  I'm much too pretty.

Dr. Phil's Moderators: Keeping a Good Woman Down

Because I feel about as far away from "cute" right now as it is possible to be, I won't write "Foctor Dill" or some other adorable way to say "Doctor Phil" without saying "Doctor Phil."

Like sometimes I call him "the big bald guy." Go ahead, take a minute or two to chuckle.

I've been trying to write a post on the DrPhil.com message board dedicated to "Depression and Grief" support, only to be slapped down and censored repeatedly by the moderators.

My crime?  Trying to organize a very small, infinitely minute movement to raise taxi money for a "member" of the forum who has an actively dying husband at home, no money, a family that takes the term "dysfunctional" to new heights -- mostly due to inherited drug and alcohol dependency, and emotional/physical/sexual abuse.

I had given up on her.

Then, as I checked into this place to see how she was doing -- for one never stops caring, once one starts, no matter the twists and turns of that caring -- I watched her stand up straight, live right, and try with superhuman strength to pass on to her children and grandchildren a new paradigm.

She also gets my humor, and most of my odd allusions, and that stokes my ego.

One of the things she is doing, beyond nursing this man whom she has never really loved in a Hallmark way, with whom she has passed whole days without speaking, and who only now seems to understand her fidelity, is raising one of her sister's children -- essentially since birth.

This child shouldn't have had a snowball's chance in Hell to even see Success outlined on a far horizon.  Instead, she's been raised with strong values, has made superior academic achievements, and wants, like all such kids, to be a doctor.  I know this like I know anything -- she is going to have a tough time, because there comes those days when being "good" by opposing all that is clearly "bad" morphs into situations that are much less clear, not public, lacking cheerleaders, lacking obvious down sides.  But she's going to make it, and she is going to make her Moms very proud.

Her other children are also caught up in the evolution she has both invented and just been caught up in by the grace of the graces.  Already grown, closer to the dysfunction than this adopted young high schooler, better schooled in sly graft, in the Big Whine, in ducking responsibility as I define it (the definitive frame), mired to the upper thighs in a history of bad choices, and no choices -- it would be easy to say "Let's exclude them from this happy summation."

But let's not.  One has three young sons, each with problems, and is dependent, not just on every entitlement intiative ever envisioned, but also dependent on her mother.  She is kind, desperate for love, fiercely loyal, confused, and trying to change, as she watches her mother embrace change, and its challenges.  She's a great mom, and wants to be more.

The other daughter suffers from badly diagnosed mental illness -- or has learned to feign it -- and needs mental health treatment and an infusion of intense, triple-powered self-worth.  She's an untapped person -- I almost want to croon, in old radio style:  "who knows what wealth lurks within..."

This woman has a sister whose only shot at drug and alcohol rehabilitation comes from her not infrequent incarcerations.  She's done what women do who are addicted and has the children to prove it -- though none of them have had her guiding hand as they grew, being instead scattered among fathers, grandparents, and that famous "village" that raises such children.

This woman had a father who treated her like trash, a mother who either did not care or was too beat down to intervene... NO.  No, I don't buy that -- never have, never will, when it comes to mothers.  It's always a choice -- and I think in this case, her mother was just relieved that she had a stand-in for some of the abuse being doled out by a mean, twisted husband and father.

When her father died a few years ago, this woman shocked the Dr. Phil community with statements of forgiveness and claims of missing the man.  What the ultimate, real truth will be in her heart regarding her father will be, I cannot imagine.  Right now, all I can say is that I understand the initial reaction she went through, which was one of benign disinterest, because that's where I am following the recent death of my own progenitor.

She makes frequent claims about being a forgiving person who holds no grudges, but these statements are often sandwiched between venomous expressions of hate.  Thank God, she's human, after all!  I say that because Fred is convinced she is nothing but a con artist, as he and I have both been had by internet cons more times than either of us will honestly admit to.

Her mother is alive, and living in the same Section 8 apartment housing that she and one of her daughters -- oh, and an addicted brother, too -- inhabit.  They're on different floors but from the descriptions she offers, it sounds like one big hang out.  For some reason, at times, I picture an ant farm -- by which I mean no disrespect.  It's just the image that pops up -- tunneling, rushing, going back and forth, and nowhere.

She worked until -- in what was possibly one of her worst decisions -- the day she decided she was disabled and could not work anymore.  Rather than follow some regulatory and self-protective measures for leaving work due to disability, she just... quit.  That choice, as bad as it was, seems to have led her down a path of self-examination that not many of us have the courage to take.  Now she is at that phase where the pains of arthritis, fibromyalgia, degenerative disk disease are showing her what disability is all about -- stuff you cannot fix, pain for which there is really no treatment.  It pisses her off, as she is convinced that the doctors and the medical establishment are holding out on her, treating her differently.  Sometime soon, she'll stop wanting more tests, more drugs to try, more specialized doctors to discover.  Like I said, she's human, and becoming more normal week by week.

So her husband, the other half of a loveless union, has end stage lung cancer and is installed in a hospital bed in their tiny apartment.  He gets up to go to the bathroom and to smoke.  He is also schizophrenic.

She is loyal, and tender-hearted.  She wants to care for him, though she is equally obsessed with paying for the disposal of his dead body.  She and her immediates have no car, it's hot, her back and legs hurt like heck, she has dozens of things to do to keep the simmering dysfunction of her ant-farmed family under control so that this man can die in a state resembling peace.  Hospice is helping but not, it sounds like, as much as they ought.

She writes well and some of the effectiveness of her story of poverty comes from its straightforward presentation.  In a few sentences, she shares the experience of walking with bags of dirty laundry to the laundromat, her old mother coming along to stop by the bank, doing as much shopping as she can for "household supplies."  It was very hot outside, her back and legs causing severe pain.

My sin, apparently, is proposing that the "support" community use PayPal as a kind of Lenten depository, as none of us are dripping gold, either.   The only example I could come up with involved my suffering the loss of the several Diet Ginger Ales that I imbibe daily -- which would provide a few bucks a week that could go into my Lenten Doctor Phil Taxi Fund for this lady.

Probably the moderators, who don't like me, of course, because I don't like them, or their bathetic boss, are upholding some rule against fundraising.  It'd be nice if they'd let me know, but they'd rather just slice and dice most anything I try to post.

If this is a fundraising proposal, it's a sad one.  A few bucks from a few people who can ill afford to give them -- who are always the people who end up being the heart and soul of giving.  This Depression and Grief Support board supported by Phil McGraw is her community, which is why I address the proposal to them.  They want to help, or so I suppose.

She or her daughter need only set up a PayPal account of their own, and have a way to receive the funds -- a bank account, say.  Or a check-cashing joint?  Or Western Union?  Something... I think she could easily figure that out.

It's just for taxi money, for this group of women trying to survive, and simultaneously care for a dying, schizophrenic, vet who has a chance to form loving relationships in the last weeks and months of his sad and fumbling life -- a priceless gift for his step-children and grandchildren, and for this woman, struggling to keep everyone on the right path, a path she has always known, somehow, without anyone to guide or help her.

I would simply like to keep her encouraged.  And yeah, I would also like to see this Dr. Phil community do something besides stew in its own inabilities.  That includes the Moderators.