How Mr. Rogers Modeled Emotional Honesty (and Why It Matters in Recovery)

Issue 113. February 21, 2025 ✨ Higher Power Coaching & Consulting ✨

If you’re never seen the Mr. Rogers movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” with Tom Hanks, I highly recommend it.  It’s a fantastic movie for a variety of reasons. It’s especially poignant for people in 12-step recovery. 

I saw it in the theater back in 2019 when it came out.  I was recently reminded of all the gems from the movie. One thing in particular that he said in the movie, which really struck me was, 

“Death is a human experience. Any human experience is mentionable,
and anything mentionable is manageable.”

What a great line. First, the idea that any human experience is mentionable was news to me when I got into recovery. I learned in my ACA Program that the three main rules of dysfunctional families are Don’t Talk; Don’t Trust; Don’t Feel. That meant in my family, as with many others, we weren’t talking about things that had anything to do with feelings, like death. My mom had twins that died when I was four. One died within minutes and one within hours of birth. I knew that happened, but there was literally never any discussion about it. Ever.

For so much of my life, I got the message that there were all kinds of things that were unmentionable. This was especially true if it related to our family’s dysfunction, mental health issues, bodily functions and physical development, spirituality, feelings, and substance abuse to name a few.

When my brother Pat had a psychotic break at the age of 20, my father told me, “Pat’s in the hospital” but wouldn’t tell me why. I finally said, “Is it physical, mental, emotional???” and my father replied, “The second one” because he couldn’t even say it! That’s how much we honored the “Don’t Talk” rule in my family.

To hear in this movie that anything human is mentionable was amazing! What a gift to give that message to people, especially to children. And then, to bring it a step further he said, “Anything mentionable is manageable.” Whoa!

I cannot help but think of the 12 steps when hearing that. One of the most important parts of going through the 12 steps is that we admit that our lives have become unmanageable. Mr. Rogers said, “If it’s mentionable it’s manageable” which makes the work of recovery seem less daunting. We’ve admitted that there’s a problem, which is the first thing we must do in order to address the problem. By admitting (mentioning) that our lives have become unmanageable, we’re now ready to move into creating a life that is manageable. Later in the steps we “admit to ourselves, another human being, and to our Higher Power the exact nature of our wrongs.” When we mention those things out loud, then they become manageable.

Recovery teaches us that what we admit, we can begin to change. What’s one thing you’re ready to make manageable by speaking it into existence?

Back to Mr. Rogers. The fact that he even brought up death, especially as a beloved children’s TV show host, is astonishing in our society. We don’t deal well with death, mainly because we never talk about it! 

The reporter in the movie asks Mr. Rogers why he deals with heavy topics with children such as war, divorce, death ,and feelings. He said he was trying to help children understand that feelings are normal. No matter how big they are, no matter how unmanageable they might seem, there are ways to make our feelings manageable. As a result of his interactions with Mr. Rogers, the reporter learned that his feelings were manageable as well as how to manage them.

This brings to mind what I learned about getting my spinning thoughts to become manageable: I learned to put them into written form. They became much more manageable because the thoughts were no longer in the form of a loop, they became linear when I wrote them out. That also showed me that they were finite: they had a beginning and an end. That is, they became manageable. When we write, we don’t write the same things over and over again the way we do when we think. By getting out of those thought loops, the feelings that had arisen as a result of the looping thoughts dissipated. They became manageable!

Mr. Rogers demonstrated his philosophy about life in one particular scene of the movie. In the scene, he was filming an episode of his TV show and trying to set up a tent.  He kept having difficulty and was unable to do it after multiple attempts. Later, the reporter asked him why he didn’t have the crew set up the tent before filming. Mr. Rogers said, “Children need to know that even adults make plans that don’t work out.”

During that scene when he was trying to set up the tent but couldn’t, he said, “Mercy.” He didn’t say, “God dammit!” or “F this!” or “This thing is a piece of sh*t!” which is what was modeled in my family. Mr. Rogers said, “Mercy.” 

This makes me think of the phrase, “Lord have mercy on me.” Instead of damning a problem 

or cursing a problem, we can ask for mercy on the problem. I’ve heard it said that you cannot solve a problem by condemning it. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear that until I was in recovery so

I spent my life trying to condemn my problems (and myself and others, for that matter). Instead, we can ask for mercy. When we ask for mercy, we’re more likely to get the help we need from our Higher power. 

This idea that everything human is mentionable, and everything mentionable is manageable, 

 is profound to me on so many levels. It’s worth watching the movie just for that one scene, but there’s so much more in the movie. It makes me wish I watched Mister Rogers when I was little. 

Talk about a man who was happy, joyous, and free! Thank you to Mr. Rogers for helping me see that it IS a beautiful day in the neighborhood. If you haven’t seen “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” I highly recommend it. Watch it with an open heart and notice what resonates with you

To close, I’d like you to think about things in your life that have felt unmentionable. How might saying them out loud, or even writing them down, help you begin to manage them?