SuperBetter

What it does

A major financial loss is one of the most stressful events a human being can experience. Psychologists and psychiatrists have found that a severe financial loss can have almost identical effects to losing a loved one, including feelings of hopelessness, anxiety and even lasting depression. 

This kind of common human trauma is exactly why SuperBetter exists. The app was created by Jane McGonigal, an award-winning video game designer who realised that the same principles that make games engrossing and rewarding could be used to help people suffering from mental or physical illnesses, or struggling with a major loss (including a financial loss). 

McGonigal created SuperBetter in response to her own struggle to overcome a severe concussion that debilitated her for years. She took the principles of gaming – quests, power-ups, baddies – and turned them into a way for people to slowly build their mental and physical resilience and get through each day more easily than the previous one.

Essentially SuperBetter makes you the hero of your own life. You recruit allies, embark on daily quests, battle bad guys (which can be things like “morning traffic”) and collect rewards (power-ups). In the context of a financial loss, this can be things like meeting all your monthly payments, or sticking to a daily budget. 

Millions of people are using SuperBetter to:

– Adopt a new habit, learn or improve a skill, strengthen a relationship, make a physical or athletic breakthrough, complete a meaningful project, or pursue a lifelong dream.

– Beat depression, overcome anxiety, manage stress, cope with chronic pain, heal from physical injury, or recover from post-traumatic stress.

– Overcome a life challenge like finding a new job, surviving divorce, dealing with a career or school setback, or grieving a loss.

– Help others – therapists refer SuperBetter to patients and educators bring the method to campuses and classrooms to build student resilience and social-emotional learning.

How it helps

The most common reaction to a major financial loss is a sense of hopelessness and anxiety. Your entire world has been disrupted and things you once took for granted are now gone. It can be a struggle just to get through each day without breaking down or wanting to run away.

Enter SuperBetter, which turns your daily chores and struggles into your own version of the 12 tasks of Hercules. By breaking down your day into achievable “quests”, and giving you constant feedback and rewards, the app keeps you focussed and motivated. It helps you to take big, scary problems like legal cases or bankruptcy and break them down into things you can do each day to move forward and get your finances back on track. 

Rather than healing by instruction, SuperBetter is healing by action. It keeps you moving forward and that can make each day easier than the previous one. Even when you have setbacks, SuperBetter is there to remind you that all heroes go through these kinds of trials. 

Conclusion

Even if you’ve never heard of “gamification”, never played video games and never plan to, SuperBetter will work for you. There’s something inherently appealing to all humans about seeing our lives as a heroic tale with quests to solve and baddies to defeat. Each little quest gives you the courage to try the next thing. It turns the struggle to get through a day into a series of achievements. It might sound silly, but the results speak for themselves. 

In a way SuperBetter is a kind of trick – it distracts you from your own suffering and focusses you on doing the next thing. It’s the kind of thing that seems like it shouldn’t work, but it just does. Trick or not, SuperBetter has been with me through some very hard times. I can’t recommend it strongly enough.

What other users say

“This app, if you actively use it, will be a lifesaver. I’ve been using it for years off and on. It helps put you in the right frame of mind to take on anything. Chronic Pain, family issues. It went from a bedridden dysfunctional disabled person with a pure negative attitude and absolute hopelessness to someone who was more positive, could deal with my pain and responsibilities and even started helping my own families issues as a true mother and wife. My relationships improved, the pain levels were more manageable and slightly less frequent. Nothing externally changed. My perspective changed and things slowly got better. I wouldn’t say I’m a superbetter person but definitely a better more functional one. 

The other thing I liked about it. Is that it’s customizable. You can created your own aspects of “the game”. Also, treating it like a game made it fun. Say you are an alcoholic and want to put the 12 step program element in your challenges, if they don’t already have a pack for it. You can make one specific for you. Also, being a person with chronic migraines I was able to put in my triggers and plan how to deal with them. I would recommend this application for anyone. Even if you just want a superbetter life than you already have.” – rackygrl

What the experts say

“The nature of smartphone interventions does appear to position them as an ideal self‐management tool for those with less severe levels of depression. The observed effects indicate that these interventions are well‐placed for delivering low‐intensity treatment within a stepped‐care approach, or even prevention of mild‐to‐moderate depression among the millions of people affected by subclinical symptoms… In conclusion, the evidence to date indicates that mental health interventions delivered via smartphone devices can reduce depressive symptoms.” 

– The efficacy of smartphone‐based mental health interventions for depressive symptoms: a meta‐analysis of randomized controlled trials; Joseph Firth  John Torous Jennifer Nicholas Rebekah Carney Abhishek Pratap Simon Rosenbaum Jerome Sarris