Hi englishgarden

It sounds like the psychologist is right on to it and is giving you good advice.and it sounds like you Re doing really well!

As for the physio it sounds to me you share some doubts about the apprpriateness of the approach. Although the dr has advised you to trust your practitioner - and I agree that it is important for the therapy that you can trust the physio, that trust has to be earned by the practitioner. If he/she is dishing out misinformation (which he/ she most certainly is) then personally I would shop around.*

By the way I am not suggesting he is deiberately lying - probably quite sincere about it. But practitioners beieve weird ideas about the body/mind just as patients do. While there remains lots of gaps in our knowledge, through good science we know a lot about how to assess and manage injuries without resorting to fanciful ideas about blocked shoulders and kidneys.*

Just a general comment: the body generally does a fantastic job of repairing itself after soft tissue injuries even without any therapy. The role of physiotherapy is to facilitate those processes and also to counter any compensatory changes that may arise. For example with pain and inflammation certain muscles often become weak so appropriate assessment and strengtheing, we can counter this. Likewise getting fit can be a great way to manage pain, improve self confidence and manage anxiety. But we often need some gidance after injury so we don't interrupt healing by overly stressing repairing tissues. While massage and mobilisation can be helpful at the right place, at the right time, on the whole we have found that taking on a more active approach of getting people going and guiding that resumption of activity is far more helpful, reduces rehab time and reduces psychogical distress.