Notre Dame couple credits TV psychologist for helping them but say TV show distorted their lives

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Everyone you know has dirty laundry.

Now imagine having that dirty laundry put through the wash and spin cycle of the Dr. Phil Show, the great complexities and nuances of your life reduced to 22 highly public minutes.

If you're shuddering at the thought, imagine the quandary Ken Trites and Therese MacKay find themselves in. Since yesterday afternoon they've been living it, and it hasn't been pretty.

And while both freely admit there have been benefits to being on Phil McGraw's popular talk show, Ken and Therese now find themselves struggling to come to terms with the surreal experience.

For heaven's sake, don't ever let yourself be televised. That's the gist of the message Ken and Therese have for others. Both find it hard to fault particular individuals for their unpleasant experience in the glare of the TV lights, but can point to several ways in which the very nature of television has distorted the true nature of their lives.

When the film crew arrived at Therese's home in Notre Dame, about 15 minutes north of Moncton, to shoot some supplemental footage, they had a grocery list of "unscripted" typical household moments they wanted to tape.

Because the story was Ken was a domineering alcoholic, "they wanted to film me going to the fridge and bringing him a beer," Therese said, balking at the idea and denying she would wait on him like that.

Ken freely admits he is an alcoholic, but the script didn't fit the reality of his life. Though alcohol has caused problems in his life, he is not an everyday drinker. To the disappointment of the film crew, "we didn't have any beer in the fridge," Therese recalled with a laugh.

Undaunted, the crew also tried to convince Ken to be filmed sitting on the couch smoking a cigarette, something the couple don't do because of the children in the house.

Missing were all the ways Ken and Therese are fairly ordinary people living ordinary lives -- admittedly while dealing with problems.

Therese says TV just didn't capture the love between them or the true nature of Ken, a man who likes to cook, is handy and considerate and is good with kids. Nor did those 22 minutes capture their routines of going to work each day and having family meals and helping the kids with homework or reading bedtime stories.

Both are worried about the impact all this might have on their work lives and their families and are embarrassed about the results of allowing themsleves to be coaxed onto the show.

Both have found the past 48 hours so stressful they backed out after initially agreeing to appear on a Maritime TV news program last night and stopped answering their phones. They did however agree to talk to a Times & Transcript reporter, who dropped by Therese's tidy and smoke-free home on very short notice last night to chat around the kitchen table.

The "obsessed" woman who couldn't live without her man on yesterday's Dr. Phil doesn't actually live with her man. She and the kids moved out of his home a couple of years back because of his drinking, though they have remained a couple. She says she wanted a healthier environment for her children, who are from her previous marriage. She also said repeatedly last night that if Ken can't get a handle on his addictions, she will leave him for good, sounding much more like a typical mother than a woman prepared to sacrifice all for her boyfriend.

They say it was that departure from Ken's home two years ago that somehow got turned into what the TV show described this way: "Ken threw Theresa, her kids and all their belongings out on the front yard for the entire neighbourhood to see," In fact, they say, it was very much Therese's decision and not something Ken wanted.

Ken's also not sure how what was said to have happened on his front yard "for the entire neighbourhood to see" could have been witnessed at the top of his 300 foot driveway.

So why did they agree to go on the show after Therese's cousin first contacted Dr. Phil's producers?

"It had nothing to do with wanting to be on TV," Therese said.

Rather, they agreed to go because they genuinely thought the famed psychologist could help. Therese does give Phil marks for being sincere and she says the follow-up counselling the show arranged did help her. "All in all, it was okay. It wasn't bad. It was't wonderful." she said.

"I don't regret going," Ken said, "but I regret going because of how things went. They did help me. they gave me that initial push. But I was already getting help here before."

Thanks to the show, Ken did get follow up treatment in Texas, though ironically, a month of being clean was there replaced by being placed on "at least 30 pills" of different kinds each day, prescribed by doctors.

And on the journey to health via Dr. Phil, one must jump aboard the TV train, where everything has a way of jumping off the tracks.

"I wasn't going down there to look like a movie star, but I didn't want to look like this guy who's drunk and an addict who abuses his girlfriend all the time," Ken said. "I went down there because I knew he helped people... I used him, and he used me."

Artifice carried the day, as Therese tells it. "I said I was going to bring some nice clothes to go on the air. They said, 'don't worry, we have wardrobe.' We got there and they weren't as nice as the clothes I had."

Ken said he felt like he was portrayed as a monster.

"I just want some dignity and respect back. Who the hell would want to sit there and take the abuse I took on the show and not be able to get up onstage and explain things that went on."

"All of a sudden he's walking off the stage and it's all over. And I'm thinking to myself why did I come here, for this?"