Ted Lasso -- Soccer Coach Extraordinaire -- Or is he?
First of all - watch the show!! It’s fun and touching and……..
Ted seems like a therapist in many ways, but one which is struggling with his transference and counter-transferential issues on a daily basis. He isn’t a know-it-all. In fact, he moves to England to take on something that is really over his head, but he has a willingness to learn and to fail and to give it his best and then some. Seems like a good description of a therapist to me! All this while he appears to be escaping the heartbreak at home: unresolved grief of a failed relationship, yet he tries to find traction on new ground and salvage something from his sorrows.
Like many men (and which can illustrated readily via the Hoberman Sphere), Ted lost his marriage because he didn’t know how to open up emotionally! He lived tight. Some take drugs or drink heavily to open up their core and others just suffer through it until hopefully something gives them the right jolt to break the pattern of eating their emotions and starving their loved ones emotionally.
Every so often he says something pithy that proves to provide a bit of guidance for someone. Even his own melancholy proves useful when it stimulates an honest conversation and people talk to each other with more candor and care than usual. After all, a therapist, like a parent, doesn’t have to be all that far ahead of their client/patient/child/team member to be beneficial, to provide guidance and even some wisdom on occasion. Sometimes just knowing you’re not alone in whatever existential hellhole you believe yourself to be in is helpful and provides some relief and perspective.
Therapeutically, asking a client to watch the show can be useful, especially if you have specific episodes or scenes you want them to visit. Then you can explore what they saw, and didn’t see, and also let the client take the lead. Chances are they’ll discover some things you didn’t notice as well as whatever you had marked along the trail for them to notice.
The average person watches TV and movies primarily for entertainment and haven’t always developed an eye for seeing beyond that. When I worked in Stillwater Prison I got to know the person programming the in-house TV station and had them play movies that I thought carried an important message or raised questions worth ruminating about. I often used film and TV show clips in groups as well to illustrate more complex thoughts and situations without resorting to paragraphs of dry thoughts to try do the same. When doing my Missing Pieces group at the prison, I spent the morning part of the group going over ideas and concepts related to the film we would watch in the afternoon - laying the groundwork. After the film I also provided a worksheet about the film: questions to consider, thoughts to ponder. I think it worked pretty well as I have a considerable number of clients who told me their eyes had opened in a sense, that even with a film they knew well they suddenly saw another level they didn’t know was there, that they realized the artists behind the film actually had a message to import. They were appreciative of opening that eye of the soul rather than continuing to be ‘third eye blind!”
Note: See essay elsewhere on the Najaho’s four levels of understanding stories based on the work of Barre………….
And then there is transference/counter-transference: like the line in one of my favorite Procol Harem songs: by teaching I’ll be taught. Coaching a whole team, immersing in that complexity, may be how one finally begins one’s own journey of healing. There is a hidden mutuality in therapy that can readily be underestimated.
First of all - watch the show!! It’s fun and touching and……..
Ted seems like a therapist in many ways, but one which is struggling with his transference and counter-transferential issues on a daily basis. He isn’t a know-it-all. In fact, he moves to England to take on something that is really over his head, but he has a willingness to learn and to fail and to give it his best and then some. Seems like a good description of a therapist to me! All this while he appears to be escaping the heartbreak at home: unresolved grief of a failed relationship, yet he tries to find traction on new ground and salvage something from his sorrows.
Like many men (and which can illustrated readily via the Hoberman Sphere), Ted lost his marriage because he didn’t know how to open up emotionally! He lived tight. Some take drugs or drink heavily to open up their core and others just suffer through it until hopefully something gives them the right jolt to break the pattern of eating their emotions and starving their loved ones emotionally.
Every so often he says something pithy that proves to provide a bit of guidance for someone. Even his own melancholy proves useful when it stimulates an honest conversation and people talk to each other with more candor and care than usual. After all, a therapist, like a parent, doesn’t have to be all that far ahead of their client/patient/child/team member to be beneficial, to provide guidance and even some wisdom on occasion. Sometimes just knowing you’re not alone in whatever existential hellhole you believe yourself to be in is helpful and provides some relief and perspective.
Therapeutically, asking a client to watch the show can be useful, especially if you have specific episodes or scenes you want them to visit. Then you can explore what they saw, and didn’t see, and also let the client take the lead. Chances are they’ll discover some things you didn’t notice as well as whatever you had marked along the trail for them to notice.
The average person watches TV and movies primarily for entertainment and haven’t always developed an eye for seeing beyond that. When I worked in Stillwater Prison I got to know the person programming the in-house TV station and had them play movies that I thought carried an important message or raised questions worth ruminating about. I often used film and TV show clips in groups as well to illustrate more complex thoughts and situations without resorting to paragraphs of dry thoughts to try do the same. When doing my Missing Pieces group at the prison, I spent the morning part of the group going over ideas and concepts related to the film we would watch in the afternoon - laying the groundwork. After the film I also provided a worksheet about the film: questions to consider, thoughts to ponder. I think it worked pretty well as I have a considerable number of clients who told me their eyes had opened in a sense, that even with a film they knew well they suddenly saw another level they didn’t know was there, that they realized the artists behind the film actually had a message to import. They were appreciative of opening that eye of the soul rather than continuing to be ‘third eye blind!”
Note: See essay elsewhere on the Najaho’s four levels of understanding stories based on the work of Barre………….
And then there is transference/counter-transference: like the line in one of my favorite Procol Harem songs: by teaching I’ll be taught. Coaching a whole team, immersing in that complexity, may be how one finally begins one’s own journey of healing. There is a hidden mutuality in therapy that can readily be underestimated.
First of all - watch the show!! It’s fun and touching and……..
Ted seems like a therapist in many ways, but one which is struggling with his transference and counter-transferential issues on a daily basis. He isn’t a know-it-all. In fact, he moves to England to take on something that is really over his head, but he has a willingness to learn and to fail and to give it his best and then some. Seems like a good description of a therapist to me! All this while he appears to be escaping the heartbreak at home: unresolved grief of a failed relationship, yet he tries to find traction on new ground and salvage something from his sorrows.
Like many men (and which can illustrated readily via the Hoberman Sphere), Ted lost his marriage because he didn’t know how to open up emotionally! He lived tight. Some take drugs or drink heavily to open up their core and others just suffer through it until hopefully something gives them the right jolt to break the pattern of eating their emotions and starving their loved ones emotionally.
Every so often he says something pithy that proves to provide a bit of guidance for someone. Even his own melancholy proves useful when it stimulates an honest conversation and people talk to each other with more candor and care than usual. After all, a therapist, like a parent, doesn’t have to be all that far ahead of their client/patient/child/team member to be beneficial, to provide guidance and even some wisdom on occasion. Sometimes just knowing you’re not alone in whatever existential hellhole you believe yourself to be in is helpful and provides some relief and perspective.
Therapeutically, asking a client to watch the show can be useful, especially if you have specific episodes or scenes you want them to visit. Then you can explore what they saw, and didn’t see, and also let the client take the lead. Chances are they’ll discover some things you didn’t notice as well as whatever you had marked along the trail for them to notice.
The average person watches TV and movies primarily for entertainment and haven’t always developed an eye for seeing beyond that. When I worked in Stillwater Prison I got to know the person programming the in-house TV station and had them play movies that I thought carried an important message or raised questions worth ruminating about. I often used film and TV show clips in groups as well to illustrate more complex thoughts and situations without resorting to paragraphs of dry thoughts to try do the same. When doing my Missing Pieces group at the prison, I spent the morning part of the group going over ideas and concepts related to the film we would watch in the afternoon - laying the groundwork. After the film I also provided a worksheet about the film: questions to consider, thoughts to ponder. I think it worked pretty well as I have a considerable number of clients who told me their eyes had opened in a sense, that even with a film they knew well they suddenly saw another level they didn’t know was there, that they realized the artists behind the film actually had a message to import. They were appreciative of opening that eye of the soul rather than continuing to be ‘third eye blind!”
Note: See essay elsewhere on the Najaho’s four levels of understanding stories based on the work of Barre………….
And then there is transference/counter-transference: like the line in one of my favorite Procol Harem songs: by teaching I’ll be taught. Coaching a whole team, immersing in that complexity, may be how one finally begins one’s own journey of healing. There is a hidden mutuality in therapy that can readily be underestimated.