Pain is a symptom. There's a strong psychological component to pain avoidance which can lead to behaviors that make it worse. Physical therapy isn't going to feel good, but it plays an important role in lots of recovery scenarios, and I think should be more often prescribed after surgeries.
I deal with fibromyalgia pain. When I first developed it, I pretty much avoided doing anything, and really that was the opposite of what I should have done. There's no "recovery" and really no avoiding it; all I ended up doing was letting my physical condition weaken to the point that even normal activities were painful, so I was hurting for two reasons.
Treating the underlying cause of the symptom, and training to avoid behaviors that exacerbate the symptom is the real key.
I deal with fibromyalgia pain. When I first developed it, I pretty much avoided doing anything, and really that was the opposite of what I should have done. There's no "recovery" and really no avoiding it; all I ended up doing was letting my physical condition weaken to the point that even normal activities were painful, so I was hurting for two reasons.
Treating the underlying cause of the symptom, and training to avoid behaviors that exacerbate the symptom is the real key.