When I started therapy last year I set the following goals:
- To have closure
- To build confidence
- Not to repeat the same mistakes
- To change my relationships by having good communication and strong friendships
I had no idea what I was dealing with. Through therapy I found I was:
- Doing a lot of anticipating for fear of being judged
- Doing a lot of negative self talk
- Saying a lot of “Supposed to’s”
- Having a lot of nightmares
- Having a lot of irrational anxiety for unknown reasons
- Doing a lot of avoiding of conflict by not asking questions
- Not being my self-advocate by not asking for things I want or need or putting my foot down for myself
I chose the workbook Healing the Trauma of Domestic Violence: A Workbook for Women because the chapters spoke exactly to the things I wanted to work on. It covers:
- Self-Advocacy
- Strategies for Letting Go
- How to Stop Negative Self Talk in the chapters “Feel Better by Changing the Way You Talk to Yourself” and “the Power of Nonnegative Thinking”
- How to manage stress by controlling Muscle Tension
- How to get rid of your guilt
- How to get rid of “Supposed to” beliefs
- How to be assertive
- How to overcome fear
- How to identify potential perpetrators
I’m not that far through it, but I already see it gives you some great tools to help you get better, such as a Negative Self-Talk Tracking Form. But, it can be hard to get through it. It is also difficult to deal with PTSD because I often feel very isolated. And I think I know that some of the reasons why I am isolated is because of the behavior I have adapted over the years from being abused.
Now that brings me to SuperBetter!
With SuperBetter you can:
- Identify your goals
- It is probably better for these to be broken down into smaller missions that you can accomplish in a day or week
- Identify your “Bad Guys”
- These are the things I listed above like anticipating or saying a lot of “Supposed to’s”
- Identify your “Power Ups”, the things that make you feel better
- Power Ups can be anything as small as “look at pictures of kittens” to “go for a walk at a park” to as a big as “going to some place new and foreign”, whatever makes you happy and feel empowered or excited about life
- Invite Allies, your close friends and family members, to join you in the game and assign them a mission
- Your Allies can also assign you missions
I already see some immediate benefits here to playing the game.
- It can make getting better fun
- It helps break down isolation
- You are more likely to put the effort in to meet your goals
- You can check in daily or weekly and see immediate results
Here is a story of a person with Crohn’s disease who played a game similar to SuperBetter for more information on how it works: