Batman has always been a symbol of fear and justice. In Batman Begins, we see the man behind the mask. Shaped by childhood trauma after witnessing his parents’ death, Bruce Wayne confronts the fears that once controlled him, training himself to face what terrifies him most. At the same time, he lives in two worlds, public and private.
How do his struggles with trauma, fear, and dual identity mirror our own efforts to face what frightens us?
I do a lot of work with mediaI look at pop culture, TV shows, video games, movies, you name it, and kind of put them on the couch looking at what we can learn and what are the psychological themes or why characters might be driven to do what they do. I had a chance to consult on the Batman Arkham Shadow video game and add psychological depth to the characters there.
The team that put that game out, Camouflaj, they got VR game of the year, and they really wanted to do this in a good way, looking at how can these characters, how can we understand them in a way that makes them accessible to us and we’re doing this in an accurate way and really adding to the storylines. They’ve done a good job with that, and I really enjoyed looking at characters that way because people can look at mental health and not be scared by it. It can start a conversation.
Batman is a great place to start.
Batman is a well known universally figure. Bruce Wayne as a child was very scared one day when he fell into a well. We look at Christopher Nolan’s first Batman movie. Young Bruce Wayne fell into a well and was terrified that these bats were flying all over the caves that the well let down into. He was really terrified by this, really traumatized. In that storyline, later the family went to the opera. Bruce was very scared in the dark and wanted to leave. Leaving the opera early, his parents were murdered by Joe Chill in Crime Alley. After this experience, Bruce lived with a feeling of shame, a feeling of guilt and a feeling of fear that he had caused this and that he should have been braver.
I think everybody can relate to having had some trauma or tragedy or something in their lives that has really altered how they live their life. I also think many people have had moments of feeling like they were scared and maybe they caused a problem for people. There is a lot of themes that we can relate to with Batman.
Batman’s always wearing a mask in some way. When he’s Batman, he’s wearing this cowl that covers his face and it secures his identity and it hides who he is. As Bruce Wayne, he’s almost hiding who he is as Batman. He’s this playboy figure that’s out with tons of money, social and kind of brags a lot, but that’s not who he is either. He’s almost always hiding something unless he’s on his own in the Batcave or with Alfred.
That’s something people can relate to also. We have these ways of hiding ourselves, presenting ourselves in one way, but that’s not really what’s there. We see that a lot with social media, the lives that we construct, we curate and what we show other people. That’s often a different life than the life we have and we’re dealing with on our own.
How does his journey show his courage in confronting those things?
Going back to the storyline of him falling into that bat cave and really being terrified, over time he, in a cognitive behavioral therapy way and an exposure therapy, he exposed himself to this fear. There’s a scene in Batman Begins where he’s had that fall, and then later as an adult he goes back into that well and the bats just swirl around him and he might be terrified, he might be fearful, but he stands there and he’s just letting it happen.
He eventually says, “I want other people to feel the dread that I’ve felt.” He has taken this fear. He’s gotten to a point where he’s become resilient and he’s exposed himself to this. He’s not necessarily scared by it. He recognizes in some ways that it will always be scary when he thinks about being a kid and falling into that well. But he harnesses this fear and moves forward with it and shows that resilience. That’s something we all either want to do ourselves or have done it different ways, whether that’s realizing something really difficult in our lives and being scared by it and moving forward with it. There are just so many different ways that we see ourselves in this character.
What is Exposure Therapy?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a way of looking at what we might refer to as negative thoughts or behaviors that don’t serve us very well. It might be automatic thoughts we have about ourselves being unlovable, being terrible, all kinds of things that we just continue to go back to in our minds. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps us get away from those thoughts or maybe change them and understand that there’s a different way to think. Exposure Therapy is often part of cognitive behavioral therapy.
You are exposing yourself to something that might make you anxious and you continue to expose yourself to it until that anxiety level comes down. You start and make what’s called a hierarchy of fears almost like a pyramid and at the bottom might be something that makes you a little bit anxious but you feel like you could handle exposing yourself to it and you list all these things till the top point has the thing that is the scariest.
One other thing that’s important to know when you ask about cognitive behavioral therapy and trauma in particular, Batman’s had a lot of trauma, including the death of his parents. People will often ask me, how do I get rid of this feeling? How do I get away from it? And I will tell them, I don’t think we should look at how you leave this behind. This will always be a very sad part of your life. It will always be painful to think about, but how do we move along with it? And that’s what Batman has done. He’s moved along with that fear, with that trauma, and it drives him in a way to do what he does. That’s one thing that’s important to know about this too.
When people can realize, it’s OK to feel bad about this, I shouldn’t feel differently or maybe I can learn to move along with this. It can be really freeing.
Please note we’re not diagnosing but using familiar stories to talk about real mental health experiences. There is help available if you need. Check out our list of trusted partners for non emergent mental health support.
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