Now let me tell you a story. It started two years ago, when I hit my head and got a concussion  . The concussion didn't heal properly, and after 30 days I was left with symptoms like nonstop headaches, sickness, memory loss, mental fog  . My doctor told me that in order to heal my brain, I had to rest it. So I had to avoid everything that caused my symptoms. For me that meant no reading, no writing, no video games, no work or e-mail, no running, no alcohol, no caffeine. In other words -- and I think you see where this is going -- no reason to live. Of course it's meant to be funny, but to be honest, suicidal idea is quite common with traumatic   brain injuries. It happens to one in three, and it happened to me. My brain started telling me: "Jane, you want to die." It said: "You're never going to get better." It said: "The pain will never end." And these voices became so persistent and so persuasive that I started to reasonably fear for my life, which is the time that I said to myself after 34 days -- and I will never forget this moment -- I said, I am either going to kill myself or I'm going to turn this into a game. Now, why a game? I knew from researching the psychology of games for more than a decade that when we play a game -- and this is in the scientific works -- we deal with tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we're more likely to reach out to others for help. And I wanted to bring these gamer characters to my real-life challenge, so I created a role-playing recovery game called Jane the Concussion Killer. The game was that simple: adopt a secret identity, recruit   your allies  , battle the bad guys, activate the power-ups  . But even with a game so simple, within just a couple days of starting to play, that fog of depression and anxiety went away. It just vanished. It felt like a miracle. It wasn't a miracle cure for the headaches or the cognitive   symptoms. Those lasted for more than a year, and it was the hardest year of my life by far. But even when I still had the symptoms, even while I was still in pain, I stopped suffering. Now what happened next with the game surprised me. I put up some blog posts and videos online, explaining how to play. But not everybody has a concussion, obviously, not everyone wants to be "the killer," so I renamed the game SuperBetter. Jane discovered that when playing a game, people usually   _  .
avoid facing challenges become more willing to help others become more creative and responsible feel more optimistic and more open to others' opinions