The rise of Geek Therapy: How sci-fi and fantasy can help us cope

One day, when I was working as a child mental health counselling intern in New York City, I found a Nintendo Wii among some other games in a cupboard. I asked my supervisor if I could start using it for group activities, but she refused.

As an act of rebellion, I went home and decided to start a website just to document why she was wrong about the positive applications of video games and other staples of geek culture. I called it Geek Therapy.

As we celebrate our 10th anniversary, psychologists now regularly use comic books, Dungeons and Dragons (a fantasy tabletop role-playing game), anime and computer games with their patients, and the movement I founded is part of the wonderful model of helping professionals integrate geek culture into their work.

I was inspired by the geek culture work of professors of psychology Lawrence Rubin, Robin Rosenberg, and Patrick O’Connor who regularly bring artifacts of geek culture into their teachings and write books on how it integrates with therapy. In my spare time, I had already been reading about how people were using video games to help people in medicine, but the mental health component was really important to me.

I teach Geek Therapy in three steps. First, I cover Geek Therapy theory, and ask students what their favourite hobbies and interests are. I use examples from the class to fill in the blanks to the core foundation of the idea: "The best way to understand each other, and ourselves, is through the ______ we care about." 

I then proceed to explain the Geek Therapy mindset (how to think Geek Therapy), through concepts that include “don’t yuck my yum” (being open to, accepting, and embracing client interests), “media matters” (even things that may seem trivial to you, like a TV show, movie, or video game, can be important to your client), “take time to reflect” (something meaningful can't be understood without giving it time and attention), and “embrace metaphors” (viewing adversity through a more familiar and comfortable example).

Lastly, I teach how to do Geek Therapy. I teach non-directive forms (letting the client lead), directive (practitioner leads), and collaborative (client and practitioner work together).

One of my favourite stories was working with a boy who liked comic book superheroes. I handed him my iPad which had hundreds of comic books and I just let him look around and choose one. He chose an issue of Green Lantern Corps with multiple versions of the character John Stewart on the cover. The story was about a villain who changed the world around John, which included a change in costume and behaviour.

My client was reading the story and said: “This is how I feel, like I have to be a different person with my mum and my dad.” I don't know how long it would have taken us to reach that insight without that comic book because he was very shy and had barely spoken in sessions before that day. 

I also had another young client who seemed to annoy other counsellors because he was always speaking "nonsense", "gibberish" or making "weird noises." Once I met and observed the child, I realised he was actually reciting Pokémon names. There are 900 Pokémon so far with names like Jigglypuff, Flapple, Lickitung, and Sudowoodo, so you can imagine why no one understood him. Once we embraced Pokémon in our therapy sessions, we used metaphors from the games and television show to reframe events in his life.

For example, viewing school and therapy as stages of evolution, or upcoming events and milestones as adventures and battles. In the games, the Pokémon evolves into various forms; we used that as a metaphor for school and therapy. This was especially useful in helping him understand the value of the people that made up his support system, or team, and how to rely on them for different needs.  

Geek Therapy is a model that integrates evidence-based practices from positive psychology, person-centered therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, drama therapy, narrative therapy, art therapy and play therapy. I do not teach Geek Therapy as foundational, I teach it as complementary; as theory and practice within the context of established psychotherapy principles.

For example, play therapy traditionally uses physical toys and games, but I combine research into video games with play therapy concepts to teach how to use a video game in place of a board game, identifying the same therapeutic principles.

The idea of Geek culture is what seems most innovative to some people, but geek, nerd, fan, Whovian, Potterhead, Trekkie... these are all cultural identities, adopted by groups of people with shared interests and experience. I take those identities, and geek culture, as seriously as I do race, ethnicity, gender, or political affiliation.

I've seen many adoptions of these ideas over our first 10 years. We have an active Facebook group called Geek Therapy Community with more than 3,000 practitioners and members from all over the world.

This type of therapy isn’t only for geeks, it’s for young and old, families and couples who want to use specialised interests outside of “normal” social conformity to promote inclusivity, community, reduce anxiety and depression, and understand who they are through their interests.

As I am a mental health professional, not surprisingly, I believe in getting therapy too. 

I started looking for a new therapist to work with during the first lockdown. I had just moved to Chicago and things were getting quite rough. But before I started my therapy “speed dating”, I already knew I needed someone who used rational emotive behaviour therapy, which I was trained in at Albert Ellis Institute to help people resolve their emotional and behavioural problems. It lends itself very well to the growing field of geek therapy and enables clinicians to utilise some of its therapeutic practices.

So when I saw Star Trek movie posters on the wall in my therapist Andrew’s office, I already felt more comfortable and the anxiety that comes with meeting a new therapist disappeared.

During sessions, he would allow me to use scenarios from films to navigate my emotions. We found a common interest in Doctor Who, Blade Runner and Lord of the Rings, just to name a few, and sometimes the work continued along the line of metaphors, rewriting meaningful storylines and roleplay using characters or mantras projected in the films. It’s what I do with my clients as well.

Doctor Who is my favourite television show. I even listen to the 11th Doctor's theme song, I Am the Doctor, on repeat when I need energy and focus for a difficult task. The first thing my clients see in my office waiting room is a large, framed print of The Pandorica Opens, which according to the show, is a painting by Vincent van Gogh depicting the Doctor's TARDIS exploding.

The Doctor himself, particularly the 11th Doctor, I see as a relatable representation of symptoms of ADHD, my favourite being in the episode The Power of Three. If I want to show people what ADHD sometimes feels like, I show them the scene in which he cleans the house.

As a teenager, I hated that people didn’t understand me. I was born in Puerto Rico, which makes me part of the Hispanic cultural minority within the United States, but the people that I've always identified the most with are the fans of the things I love. Geek Therapy helps you better understand another person’s worldview.

That said, I don’t think sci-fi and comics have more resonance for those with mental health issues than other formats, such as rom-coms, modern fiction, or action movies, because all media matters. Some people love comic books as much as other people love rom-coms. Everyone also has something they resonate with, independent of having mental health issues. 

The Geek Therapy organisation is now celebrating its 10th anniversary. For anyone interested in learning more, we continue to celebrate how geek culture can be used for good by sharing the Geek Therapy model, and similar models, through podcasts, videos, blog posts, community outreach, education, and convention appearances.  

Those of us that use it understand how meaningful the connection can be. You make references, use scenarios and connect with people through the stories that are already meaningful to them. Being a geek used to be a derogatory term – now it is helping us all stay afloat.

As told to Yolanthe Fawehinmi

For more on Geek Therapy click here

Have you turned to your favourite sci-fi and fantasy series during lockdown? Tell us in the comments section below