By Christina Mathieson, LMFT #115093, founder of My Mental Climb.
Two prestige TV shows have done more for the cultural normalization of therapy in the last few years than a decade of public-health campaigns. Ted Lasso showed a high-achieving man dropping into therapy because of unprocessed grief and persistent panic attacks, and treated it as a serious, dignified piece of his arc. Shrinking turned the camera on the therapist himself and humanized the profession in a way mainstream TV almost never does.
This post is a clinician's read on what these shows actually got right, where they take artistic license, and why the visibility matters even when the depiction isn't perfect.
What Ted Lasso Got Right
The most important thing Ted Lasso did was show a confident, competent, well-loved man genuinely struggling with anxiety and grief, and going to therapy because of it. Therapy wasn't framed as a punchline or a sign of failure but as what high-functioning people do when something underneath is asking for attention.
Specifically, the show got these clinical pieces right:
- Panic attacks happen to people who otherwise look fine. Ted's panic attacks land in moments of high pressure and slowly build through the season. The depiction is accurate, including the body-level activation, the disorientation, and the embarrassment.
- Grief is layered. Ted's grief about his father's death is decades old, and it's still operative in his daily life. The show portrays this without rushing it, which is how grief actually works.
- The therapeutic alliance matters more than the technique. Ted's initial resistance to therapist Dr. Sharon Fieldstone gives way to genuine work because of how the relationship develops, not because of any specific intervention. This matches what the research consistently shows about what predicts therapy outcomes.
- Therapists can be direct. Dr. Sharon doesn't perform a soft, validating archetype; she challenges Ted in ways that move the work forward. Real clinical work, especially with high-functioning clients, often requires this.
What Shrinking Got Right
Shrinking takes the more unusual route of centering the therapist's own life, with three clinicians (Jimmy, Dr. Paul Rhodes, and Gabby) navigating their own grief, illness, and personal histories alongside their work.
Things this show got right:
- Therapists are humans with their own stuff. The show pushes back against the all-knowing-guru archetype that Hollywood has been using for decades. Real therapists have their own grief, their own marriages, their own diagnoses, their own messy moments. Holding that complexity while showing up for clients is part of the actual work.
- Therapy is not a place where the therapist always knows what's best. Dr. Paul Rhodes (Harrison Ford's character) repeatedly demonstrates the kind of measured, curious presence that effective therapy actually requires, asking more than he tells.
- Tools that work outside the session. Dr. Rhodes's "15-minute rule," where the client is invited to fully feel emotions for 15 minutes a day in a contained way, is loosely based on real grief and emotion-processing practices. The principle (give difficult feelings dedicated space rather than letting them flood the day) is sound.
- Mental health concerns coexist with thriving lives. Several characters are clearly working through real material while also having jobs, relationships, and lives that are mostly going well. This is closer to the reality of mental health than the Hollywood "rock bottom" archetype.
Where Both Shows Take Artistic License
Real therapy is, in honest moments, slower and quieter than what TV shows depict. A few specific divergences worth calling out:
The Shrinking boundary breaches. Jimmy's character makes choices throughout the show, including showing up at clients' homes, intervening in their personal lives, and disclosing far more about himself than would be standard. The show acknowledges this is unconventional through Dr. Rhodes's commentary, but a viewer should not take it as a model of how therapy works. These breaches would be ethics violations in real practice.
The pacing of breakthroughs. Both shows compress what would in real life be many sessions of slow work into single dramatic moments. Real therapy has those moments occasionally, but the bulk of the work is gradual and often boring. The catharsis-per-minute on TV is much higher than the catharsis-per-minute in actual practice.
The visibility of the therapist's response. TV therapists deliver pithy, well-formed observations almost every session. Real therapists do this much less often. Most of what we do is hold space, ask questions, notice patterns, and trust that the client will do the bulk of the meaning-making.
Why This Visibility Matters Anyway
Even with the artistic license, what these shows have done for therapy access is significant. Cultural barriers to mental health treatment have always been partly about unfamiliarity. People resist things they can't picture. Watching a beloved character go to therapy and benefit from it makes the experience imaginable in a way no clinical paper or PSA can.
Public-figure disclosure has worked the same way (covered in our earlier piece on celebrity EMDR endorsements). Between celebrity accounts and prestige TV, the cultural picture of therapy has shifted faster in the last several years than at any point in the prior decades.
What's emerged is a public that increasingly understands therapy as something successful, functional, well-resourced people use to deal with real material, not as a last resort or a sign of brokenness.
What These Shows Don't Show (and What Real Work Actually Looks Like)
The honest counterweight to the cultural normalization is that real therapy is harder and slower than TV implies. A few things worth knowing if your picture of therapy comes mostly from what you've seen on screen:
- The work is often quiet for stretches before anything dramatic happens
- A single insight rarely changes a long-standing pattern; the change comes from many small noticings over time
- Boundaries, ethics, and the structure of the relationship are non-negotiable, even when the show portrays a therapist crossing them
- Real therapy involves between-session work (homework, reading, practice) that TV doesn't usually depict
If anything, these caveats are the most important thing to take from this kind of cultural moment: the visibility is good, the depiction is partially accurate, and the actual work is more disciplined and less dramatic than what's on screen.
If you're thinking about therapy and want to start, book a free 15-minute consult and we'll talk about what you're working on.
Related from My Mental Climb: Why Is 'Off Campus' Hitting So Hard? · Individual therapy · What the celebrity EMDR wave tells us about trauma treatment
Common questions
- Is Shrinking an accurate portrayal of therapy?
- Partly: Shrinking gets some real grief-processing principles right and its 15-minute rule loosely reflects established emotion-regulation practice, but its central premise, a therapist who inserts himself into clients' personal lives, depicts ethics violations rather than real practice. The show signals through another character that these choices are unconventional and problematic.
- What did Ted Lasso get right about therapy?
- Ted Lasso depicts realistic features of the therapeutic relationship and how panic attacks actually unfold, and it portrays therapy as serious, dignified work rather than a punchline. It takes dramatic license with pacing, but the core picture of a man recognizing his own struggle and seeking help is close to reality.
- Should I expect dramatic breakthroughs in real therapy?
- Occasionally yes, but most of the time no, because real therapy is mostly cumulative, many small recognitions that add up to a meaningful shift over weeks or months. The single-session breakthroughs that television depicts do happen, but they are rarer than the highlight reel suggests.
- Can therapy actually help with anxiety and panic like Ted's?
- Yes, anxiety with panic attacks is one of the most treatable presentations in therapy, especially when it has roots in unprocessed grief or trauma. A combination of CBT for the cognitive layer, EMDR when trauma is present, and relational work is close to current best practice.
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Last clinically reviewed: by Christina Mathieson, LMFT #115093.
