Ted Lasso: We shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help
Ted Lasso is a character that has won the hearts of many with his optimistic attitude and witty humor.
However, beneath the surface, he has struggled with mental health issues that have not been easy to overcome. In the series, we see Ted, played by Jason Sudeikis, battling with anxiety, panic attacks, and depression.
Despite his efforts to hide these struggles, they begin to affect his personal and professional life.
One of the factors contributing to Ted’s mental health struggles is his divorce from his wife. Ted still loves his ex-wife and feels a deep sense of loss and loneliness. He tries to cover up his pain with his humour and optimism, but it eventually catches up to him. He begins to have panic attacks that threaten his ability to function.
A major factor contributing to Ted’s mental health issues is his reluctance to seek help. Like many people, Ted tries to deal with his problems on his own. He does not want to burden others with his struggles, and this only exacerbates his issues.
Ted eventually realises that he cannot handle everything on his own, and he seeks out therapy to help him deal with his mental health issues.
Now Ted, or Jason, has taken his message about mental health all the way to the White House, meeting, along with the rest of the show’s cast, with US President Joe Biden.
Ted/Jason said: “It is sincerely an honor to visit the White House and I have the opportunity to speak to the President and to the First Lady about the importance of mental health.
“We all know someone, or have been that someone ourselves actually, that’s struggled, that’s felt isolated, that’s felt anxious, that’s felt alone.
“We shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help ourselves. And that does take a lot, especially when it’s something that has such a negative stigma to it such as mental health.
“I’ve received so many messages from people, because of the panic attacks that Ted has, the way we play them and portray them on the show, even like down to our sound department picking this type of sound. People have been like, ‘I didn’t know what I was dealing with. Then I saw that then you guys gave it a vocabulary’.
“Part of the reason we’re probably asked again by the universe to go through hard things is so that we can tell the tale about it afterwards a little bit and make some positive come out of it.”
