Available to stream now on Netflix.Įager to share her game with others, she rebranded it SuperBetter and developed a smartphone app, which she launched in 2012. And even though her physical pain persisted for months, she says she suffered less emotional pain within days.Įver wonder how your mind works? Watch The Mind, Explained, our 5-part miniseries on the workings of the brain. She recruited allies - her sister, her husband - to play along. Being a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, she created a mental game for herself called “Jane the Concussion Slayer.” The object was to recover faster by avoiding “bad guys” that triggered her symptoms (like bright lights) and engaging in “power-ups” that made her feel good (like a walk around the block). I am either going to kill myself, she thought, or I am going to turn this into a game. And her anxiety was definitely a tough challenge. She spent a decade researching the psychology of games, even writing a dissertation on it, so she knew that games can help us face tough challenges with more creativity and optimism. She was suicidal.īut McGonigal had something that set her apart from other anxiety sufferers: She is a game designer. She began to think the pain would never end. She spent months in bed with non-stop headaches, nausea, vertigo, memory loss, and, ultimately, serious anxiety and depression. McGonigal’s problems started when she suffered a concussion in the summer of 2009. That’s how many American adults are affected by anxiety - the most common mental illness in the country - every single year. When Jane McGonigal started feeling anxious as hell 10 years ago, she unwittingly joined a club with 40 million members. Part of Issue #6 of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.
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