A year ago, I wrote about the shadow aspect of “Ted Lasso” in this post. I argued that the character of Nate Shelley had taken on the role of scapegoat or “sin eater,” the one who bears the shadow for the entire group. As usually happens to people who take on this role, Nate eventually had to leave the group, leave Richmond Football Club. I wondered how the shadow would be handled by the writers with Nate gone–would the mantle pass to another member of the team, or what?

The writers of the show did better than that in Season 3. We saw how Ted and Coach Beard and the management of the team were creating an atmosphere of trust and mutual reliance that, eventually, led the team to many victories. But instead of one person becoming the sin eater, every single person involved with the team learned how to face up to their own shadow side, their own demons.

Our demons, our baggage if you like, become more and more obvious the closer we grow to other people. When we first meet someone we like, we tend to be on our best behavior, and so are they, and we see each other as the best versions of our selves. (Some even argue that we see each other as who we really are without our baggage: the people we were meant to be.) But we can’t keep it up. The longer we are around each other, the more our own fears and insecurities gain traction. If care is not taken, eventually the relationship can devolve to the worst versions of our selves interacting. (I know a couple who once accused each other of “acting just like your mom/your dad”–and then burst out laughing at the idea of his dad and her mom EVER being in a relationship together. And went to counseling.)

Unless we are conscious that it’s our fears and insecurities driving our reactions, we usually blame the other person for “making” us feel that way. We may even leave the relationship in hopes of finding someone else who won’t “make” us feel those bad feelings. Which never works, because we take those feelings with us.

Nate blames Ted when his own demons arise. Ted has given him an undreamt-of opportunity and he has seized it with both hands, but he’s always on the alert for signs that people are laughing at him or don’t consider him important. And of course he finds them. We always see what we look to see. So Nate eventually leaves Richmond and goes to work for Rupert Mannion, the ex-husband of Richmond’s owner Rebecca. Rupert is wealthy and seems generous; he gives Nate an expensive car and takes him to gatherings of the rich and powerful. But Nate comes to see that Rupert doesn’t like him for himself, only for the use Rupert can make of him. When Rupert makes it clear that he wants to control even Nate’s personal life, Nate quits his job and sinks into a deep depression, which only lifts when he finally has an honest conversation with his father.

Nate’s relationship with his father has been at the bottom of Nate’s issues all along. There’s a reason why counselors usually want to talk about one’s parents–as Ted Lasso says, “Boy, I love meeting people’s moms. It’s like reading an instruction manual as to why they’re nuts.” In Nate’s case, he was deprived of the love and approval of his father from an early age. When this happens, it leaves a hole in the psyche, an aching need that can launch us on a perpetual quest for love and approval from others. But the lack of adequate love and approval from a parent in early life cannot be “cured” or made up for by others later in life–or by money, or by food, or by alcohol–no matter how many chances we give those people or things, they will disappoint. The void inside that was not filled early on by adequate parenting can only be filled in adulthood by ourselves.

Parental love teaches us how to love ourselves. We internalize the lessons from parents as inner voices; when we get enough love as children, we have an inner voice that says “I am lovable”–and then, when others extend love to us, we believe it, we can trust it. If we didn’t learn how to do this as children, the only persons who can teach us how to do it as adults is ourselves. WE have to keep saying “I am lovable” until we believe it. And that is a long and difficult task. It’s similar to how difficult it is to become fluent in a second language as an adult, as compared to the ease with which we speak the language we learned at our mothers’ knees. It takes a lot of practice.

Most of us try instead to get someone else to teach us how to feel loved. We look to them to fill the void, to make us feel lovable. But very few people can be as constantly loving and reassuring as a really loving parent is to a tiny tot. And even if they are, we can only believe what others tell us if the inner voice agrees. (Just as insults only hurt if part of us agrees with them.) So if we don’t already have the loving inner voice, no amount of reassurance will work. And when these others inevitably fail, we feel even more unlovable. Then we often blame the most recent person who “made” us feel that we weren’t lovable. Nate hates Ted simply because Ted became a father figure to Nate, and Nate hoped this new father would cure him of his feelings of inadequacy. But Ted didn’t. He couldn’t.

Nate comes to realize that he needs to work on himself if he’s ever to get free of those demons. He learns how to accept the sincere love and liking that he’s being offered by his girlfriend, his mother, and–finally–his father, who confesses to Nate about his own fears and inadequacies that kept him from open expression of love and support for his son. (This shit is handed down in families, and as they say, it can take three generations of working on it to fix it.)

Because this is television, Nate and his father heal their relationship with one good conversation. Nate combats his own need to feel powerful and respected by working as a cleaner at his girlfriend’s restaurant and finds that he doesn’t need the approbation of others after all. He also starts to make amends toward people he stepped on during his meteoric rise, particularly the kid who replaced him as “kit man” at his old team. It’s a sign that his self-esteem is rising when he can admit his own faults and atone for them, for that takes inner strength.

Nate is not the only person going through this journey. Ted himself is battling the demons that force him to “put on a happy face” and pretend everything is fine when it’s not. He’s kept such a tight lid on them that they can only get his attention by erupting as as panic attacks, and that’s another true thing–the more we suppress our demons, the more energy they accumulate until they are able to erupt in ways that we can’t ignore. Jamie Tartt, the ace striker of the team, has a father who was not just unloving, he was actively abusive, and Jamie has compensated by treated others with contempt. But as all the team grows closer, his walls break down and he ends up sobbing in the arms of Roy Kent, his childhood hero. Roy also has his demons. So does Coach Beard, so does Rebecca, so does Higgins, the director of operations, and so do all the other players.

Ted Lasso begins his tenure as coach by telling the team that he believes in them. He demonstrates this faith over and over, not just with words by with actions, including drills on the field that require the players to work together and anticipate each other and do “the thing that needs doing in the situation.” Each player’s demons surface as they learn how to be interdependent, and the team hires a counselor to help them through that. Ted and the other coaches also hold regular “Diamond Dog” sessions where they offer support to each other’s struggles–sessions which usually feature confessions about failures to do the right thing, with absolution granted by the group. Upstairs, Rebecca and Keeley, the team’s PR woman, are doing the same in girl talk sessions (sometimes joined by Ted and Higgins). After a couple of years of working in this atmosphere of trust and support, the players and the managers start to learn to trust and believe in themselves.

And that is when the magic happens.