What Mister Rogers Tells Your Inner Child

 About three years ago, a lady walked into my office and she was suffering from one of the worst cases of anxiety and depression I had seen. She was almost always in tears. I won't give her real name or her age, but let's call her Sarah. 

Sarah grew up in a relatively (at least on the surface) normal family, but she felt like she was invisible growing up. She felt like she had to pour oil on troubled waters so everyone would get along. She felt like she had to be perfect and she panicked when she couldn't be. She was extremely despondent and had even considered suicide a couple of times in her life.

As she sat with me telling me her present story - an infidelity in her relationship with her (now) husband - she cried. And she cried. 

I started talking about looking after herself. What did she do to have fun? What activities made her feel good? 

She couldn't think of any that she was practicing at the time - and said she "should" do it but couldn't stick with anything long enough to do any good. 

For a while, I empathized with her. Part of me saw someone I know very well who is in my family. Part of me recognized an earlier version of myself. And that's when Mister Rogers popped into my head. I asked if she'd ever heard of him.

She had, but she had never watched his show. After all, Mister Rogers was on USA cable TV. Mr. Dressup and the Friendly Giant were shows that she grew up with.  

From https://www.misterrogers.org/

 

I shared that in a similar time in my life when I felt much like she did, I discovered Fred Rogers' show, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" and I watched it when my kids were small. They loved the puppets and the guests, and they sang the songs with him.  I did too. And I cried. I cried because I wished that I had someone like him growing up to let me know I was okay just the way I was.

So her homework was to watch at least one of his shows per day until we saw each other again.

That was how our therapeutic relationship started.

Reverend Fred Rogers, years after his death, opened the door for us to talk about feelings, how they are normal things, nothing to be scared of (even though they can seem scary). And how every child needs to know this very thing. And if we didn't learn those important things as children, we could go back and teach them to our inner children. The ones we carry with us that learned (perhaps faulty) things about the way life works. The ones who learned to behave in certain ways to survive childhood.  And over time, through the ups and downs and struggles and successes, she began to emerge out of this long, dark tunnel into the light of believing in herself, caring for herself. 

Months went by, and she transformed before my very eyes. She was the one having the insights, doing the healing work. I was just there as a guide. Often I felt like I was just along for the ride and I felt privileged to witness this metamorphosis. 

Today, this same lady is a year away from starting her practicum in her Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology. She comes to see me to help her stay focused on self-care while she is in her studies. But the lady that I saw a couple of weeks ago is a far cry from the scared, sad little girl I saw behind her eyes three years ago. 

She did all the work. And she is reaping the benefits of that work. Confident, beautifully empathic, and an excellent candidate to eventually be a counselling therapist! 

I tell her story because I believe that everyone needs someone in their life like Mister Rogers. Fred Rogers inspired me to bring his message to every client i see: "you are the only one exactly like you, and people can like you for exactly who you are."  

If you haven't seen him for a while, he's on YouTube. Just saying.