Most children have favorite superheroes. For Geovany Martinez, Clinic Director for the Westchester Jewish Community Services (WJCS) Clinic in Yonkers, those superheroes are the doorway into the thoughts and feelings of his young clients. In individual therapy as well as in the Superhero Play Therapy Groups he conducts, Martinez uses characters from pop culture to help young clients, usually between the ages of five to nine, talk about their distress, symptoms, and stories.
Martinez’s office is filled with superhero stickers on the wall and superhero figurines. It’s an environment which invites discussion about beloved superheroes and TV characters. “Hearing someone talk about their favorite figure—sometimes it’s Spiderman, the Hulk, a vampire, and once it was even the Joker—helps me understand his or her way of thinking,” he explains. “Superheroes and villains have their own origin stories and that’s kind of the way I talk to my clients, too. ‘What’s your origin story?’ It’s a way to connect. It provides a shape for them to address challenges they might otherwise have a hard time expressing.”
The Superhero Groups Martinez leads typically run for 13 weeks and have about nine members, all of whom are in therapy at WJCS, either with him or another clinician. “I’ve developed it into a superhero academy,” Martinez explains. He tells participants that “within the next few weeks you will be training in a way to build your tool kit of skills.”
Martinez starts the program by having members develop their own superhero IDs. “They get to pick their own superhero names, nicknames, and ages. “We have multiple weeks of exercises, games, and role playing,” says Martinez, who wears a different superhero T-shirt at each session. “A lot of the lessons are based on how superheroes deal with emotions and how villains deal with emotions.
Practicing mindfulness is an important component of the program. Martinez asks parents to practice deep breathing with their children. “I have a notebook that I give parents, so they know what skill they need to work on with their kids at home.” He also talks with the participants’ therapists. “We’re all work in collaboration to build positive skills.”
Martinez has parents attend a graduation-like ceremony at the end of 13-week session where he gives each child a certificate for passing their training. He also gets feedback from the parents “It’s great to hear them say, I’ve seen my son or daughter progress in this and that way.
Helping children deal with their feelings has never been more important. “Kids are more exposed to distress and trauma lately. If it’ not through the environment, it’s through the TV or tablet. They’re at that age when they absorb so much, and so much information is in their faces. Kids are just feeling more overwhelmed, more distressed, more sensitive, and having too many emotions but can’t know how to figure them out,” Martinez says.
For parents who get “freaked out” because their child seems obsessed with superheroes or vampires,” he says “kids are going to like a lot of things that will change over the years.” Martinez advises taking the time to watch what your child is watching to give you a glimpse into feelings he or she may not be expressing.
He mentions one client who was focused on the Hulk. “The character is one of anger and frustration. A lot of the work we do is about identifying emotions,
doing deep breathing, not overthinking distress, and not assuming that something is negative before it occurs. We work on emotional regulation—really seeing emotions and taking a step back and utilizing the ‘stop sign’ so you don’t automatically react. “
