For people struggling with timetable to recovery

For the folks who are struggling with recovery, and a timetable for your healing, Dr. Melissa Farmer does a great job of explaining how and why this healing can take some time for many people.
The longer we have pain (3 months or more) the deeper the neural pathways are formed. This is a normal, and natural function of the body.
However it then begins to effect the mind and emotions. This is beyond any of the personality or stress patterns you had BEFORE your chronic pain.
She provides hope that over time, you can reverse the chronic pain by retraining your brain. You have to retrain it to stop the constant signals of fear and pain, to help reroute the thoughts that don't allow you to process emotions and to send mental and emotional signals to the body that you can move once again in a NORMAL pattern. Not just move, but move normally and freely, without compensating and guarding (which, in a chronic state, we don't even realize we do most of the time.)
I think it is the best explanation of why the pain can hang around that I have heard.
Most of all she stresses that this is not your fault! Your brain is designed to do the things it is doing! It's just gotten stuck doing the same thing over and over again. Your job is to break the patterns and cycles so you can move beyond your current state.
All of this has been proven by science.
Dr. Farmer is a guest on TMS Roundtable with Dr. Tovah and ISDTP therapist Rose Hoey