The Lasso Way
I have a confession to make.
I don’t watch sports. I never have.
If you would’ve told me last year that one of my favorite shows was going to be a show about Football (the non-American kind), I would’ve laughed in your face.
Then Ted Lasso happened.
It captures well what growth, or what AEDP calls “transformance,” looks like.
If you haven’t watched this show, go watch it first. This is a spoiler-heavy post.
Our main man, Ted Lasso, is a restlessly kind and optimistic—sometimes to his own detriment—coach. These are wonderful qualities. However, in the show they function as defenses that run on autopilot throughout the show. These defenses on autopilot keep him from growing, which is how defenses generally work.
Ted’s dad died by suicide when he was a teenager, and he never reckoned with the loss of his dad. He now has son who lives on another continent from him. Rather than stay in America, he pours himself into his career as a coach, which takes him away from his son. It gives him an escape route away from what would challenge him most towards his greatest personal transformance—fatherhood.
His compulsive helpfulness and positivity, and throwing himself into work as a coach—often showing up as a father figure to the team—are all defenses. The technical term for the latter defense is displacement. Coaching is where he accomplishes what he can’t in his personal life.
Now let’s take a human moment—defenses aren’t always bad. In fact, they are often incredibly adaptive too! There are times where displacement is a good choice. But that is the difference—choice. Ted isn’t choosing the defense. The defense is choosing him, by default and getting in his way as a result.
Personally, I did NOT love that Ted left at the end of season 3. However, from a therapeutic standpoint, it feels the most true, even though it is sad. He wasn’t leaving something bad in favor of something good. He left something great because there was something more important. Pursuing a relationship with his son.
I didn’t want him to leave. I found myself going through it while his friends were saying goodbye—the grief, the annoyance that the show was headed in the direction—and then a realization and felt sense that this was “right.” This show puts you through what it experientially feels like to make hard but right decisions by watching Ted grow and run towards the places that scare him.
Takeaway
Sometimes growth looks like moving away from something that has kept you safe but small. A job. A city. A relationship. A role. The hard thing and the right thing for you are sometimes one and the same.
That’s what transformance looks like. Movement through something difficult towards what matters most.
