Michelle Rial - Maybe This Will Help: How to Feel Better When Things Stay the Same

Copyright 2021 by Michelle Rial.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rial, Michelle, author.
Title: Maybe this will help : how to feel better when things stay the same / Michelle Rial.
Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021008211 | ISBN 9781797211251 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9781797211268 (epub, mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: Pain--Humor. | Anxiety--Humor. | Grief--Humor.
Classification: LCC BF515 .R53 2021 | DDC 152.1/824--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008211

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The following charts were made on shared equipment in a facility that processes wheat, nuts, milk, and feelings. They were made in an aching place, a grieving place, a physically painful placea have-you-tried-an-elimination-diet place.

This book and these charts are about chronic pain and loss and an overactive immune system that continues to attack itself, even as I write this. In it I try to find the formulas for how to go on each day with the least amount of will-it-be-like-this-forever despair.

Its about the little things we do to make the unbearable slightly more bearable, the experiments we do on ourselves to try to find the one thing that really might work this time, the coping mechanisms discovered along the way, and the adjustments we make to keep moving forward.

Ive shared much of my own pain in this book, and I hope you find it helpful for the kinds of pain that you have experienced as well. But by no means is this meant to encompass all painful things, for there is much in the world that I have not and will never experience.

And this is important: There are no cures in this book. Im not trying to sell you a method or a new outlook or a guaranteed-or-your-money-back optionIm only trying to sell you a book. If this book is a scam (I dont think its a scam?), then I hope it looks nice enough on your side table to be a scam with aesthetic value.

Why read it if it does not hold the Number One Cure for Bad Times? Fair question. As Ive lived certain struggles, Ive found myself seeking and craving the company of only those who have had very similar experiences. Sharing these difficult moments with those who get it can keep us going while were digging ourselves out of rock bottom or quicksand bottom or a rock bottom thats made of that sandpapery boulder material thats easy enough to climb but still a significant effort. I want to take the journey with you of doing anything to get better, little by little, from skeptical to gullible and back again. If you laugh along the way? Thats the tart cherry on top.

On this journey I hope to bring lightness to something that can be all-consumingly heavy. I hope to honor the gravity, and by sharing my own experiences, distribute the weight and lighten your load. And I hope it encourages you to tell your story in a way that honors your own journey.

In pain and suffering were constantly readjusting and trying to find even the smallest moments of relief. Sometimes thats physically shifting our postures to see whether yet another position will give us momentary distance from our pain. Other times its finding distractions to interrupt the endless ruminations in our minds. I hope to help you with the latter, and maybe I can manage to shift your emotional posture while reminding you once in a while that youre not alone in your pain. Or your eczema.

Unfortunately, Im not a doctor, oncologist, physical therapist, network chiropractic practitioner, massage therapist, acupuncturist, certified Egoscue instructor, NUCCA chiropractor, osteopath, essential oils representative, psychiatrist, nutritionist, functional medicine doctor, shaman, or emotional-support animal, but Im here to help. I hope.

Besitos,
Michelle

Im the absolute first person to tell you to go to the doctor if you have any type of body pain. I became this person after chronic pain became my new normal due to an untreated neck injury combined with repetitive stress injuries, a not-yet-diagnosed autoimmune disease, and an unboundaried, viscerally precarious full-time freelance position in media.

Its a pain Ive been living with since October 2011. I think about it in rsum terms: 2011present. From the moment it started, its never stopped hurting.

When I later heard my dad was having shoulder painsimilar to the pain Id been having for the last three years, also exacerbated by computer useId already collected all the answers. If I had known what to do at the time of my own injury, everything would be different. But now I had the opportunity to help: I knew exactly what was supposed to be done, and it was still soon enough after his injury to do it.

I already had my once-or-twice-yearly flight planned; I flew across the country with the steadfast energy of someone who hasnt yet fixed something for themselves but somehow knows how to fix it for everyone else. Upon arrival, with a pile of warm arepas on a large plate between us, I probed: Did you go to the doctor? Did they do an MRI? You need an MRI if its not getting better. Did they give you exercises? What are they? And youre doing them?