You’ve had the massage. You’ve done the exercises. You’ve seen the physio, the chiropractor, maybe even the consultant. And for a while, things felt better.
Then it came back.
Maybe it took a few days. Maybe a few weeks. But that familiar ache, that stiffness, that sharp catch when you move a certain way — it’s back. Again.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. It’s one of the most common frustrations I hear from people who walk through my door. They’ve tried everything. They’ve spent hundreds, sometimes thousands, on treatment. And they’re still in pain.
The question isn’t whether you’ve been trying hard enough. You have. The question is whether anyone has actually found the real reason your pain exists in the first place.
The Problem with Chasing Symptoms
Most pain treatment follows a familiar pattern. You tell someone where it hurts. They treat that area. You feel better for a while. Then the pain returns, and the cycle repeats.
This is symptom-based treatment. It addresses what you feel, not why you feel it.
Think of it like a smoke alarm going off in your house. The noise is annoying, so you take the battery out. Problem solved — until the fire spreads. The alarm wasn’t the problem. It was trying to tell you something.
Pain works the same way. It’s a signal from your nervous system that something needs attention. Treating the painful area without understanding why it’s painful is like silencing the alarm without checking for fire.
This is why your back pain keeps coming back despite regular massage. This is why your shoulder still catches even though you’ve been doing your rotator cuff exercises for months. The treatment is aimed at the wrong target.
Why the Painful Area Isn’t Always the Problem
Your body is interconnected in ways that aren’t always obvious. A problem in one area can create symptoms somewhere else entirely.
Here are some examples I see regularly:
Chronic neck tension that stems from dysfunction in the feet, changing how you balance and forcing your neck muscles to overwork. No amount of neck massage will fix this because the neck isn’t the problem.
Lower back pain that originates from an old ankle sprain, altering your gait and creating compensatory strain through your hips and spine. The back is the victim, not the culprit.
Shoulder pain that traces back to a jaw issue, affecting the neurological control of the shoulder muscles. The shoulder looks like the problem on a scan, but the real issue is nowhere near it.
These connections aren’t random. They follow predictable neurological patterns. But if no one looks for them, no one finds them.
Your Nervous System Runs the Show
Everything in your body — every muscle, every joint, every pain signal — is controlled by your nervous system. It decides which muscles should be tense and which should be relaxed. It determines how your joints move and how stable they feel. It controls the volume dial on your pain.
When something goes wrong at the neurological level, your body compensates. Muscles tighten up to protect an area the nervous system perceives as vulnerable. Joints lose their full range because the brain is limiting movement to avoid perceived danger. Pain persists because the nervous system hasn’t received the information it needs to switch off the alarm.
This is why treatments that only address muscles and joints often provide temporary relief at best. They’re working downstream of the real problem. To create lasting change, you have to work with the nervous system directly.
What Lasting Relief Actually Requires
Permanent resolution of pain requires finding and addressing the root cause, not just managing the symptoms. This means asking different questions.
Instead of asking “where does it hurt?”, the question becomes “why is your nervous system creating this pain response?”
Instead of treating the area that hurts, the approach involves assessing the whole body to find what’s actually driving the problem.
Instead of prescribing generic exercises, the focus is on identifying the specific dysfunction that’s unique to you.
This is a fundamentally different approach to treatment. It takes longer in the short term because the assessment is thorough. But it creates results that last because it addresses what’s actually wrong.
Signs Your Treatment Is Missing the Root Cause
How do you know if your current treatment is addressing symptoms rather than causes? Here are some common signs:
You feel better immediately after treatment but the relief doesn’t last. This suggests the treatment is providing temporary change without addressing why the problem exists.
You’ve been doing the same exercises for months without significant progress. If exercises were going to fix the problem, they would have by now. Something is being missed.
The same area keeps getting injured or flaring up. Recurrent problems in the same spot indicate an underlying issue that hasn’t been resolved.
Treatment makes logical sense but isn’t working. You can have the perfect diagnosis on paper, but if the treatment isn’t creating lasting change, the diagnosis may be incomplete.
Your pain has spread or moved to new areas over time. This often indicates compensation patterns developing as your body works around an unresolved problem.
None of these signs mean you’ve done anything wrong. They simply indicate that the approach being taken isn’t addressing the full picture.
A Different Way Forward
There is another way. It involves looking at your body as an integrated system rather than a collection of separate parts. It means assessing neurological function, not just structural anatomy. It requires finding the cause before deciding on the treatment.
This approach isn’t faster. The first session involves thorough assessment rather than jumping straight to treatment. But it’s more effective because the treatment that follows is targeted at what’s actually wrong.
People who have been stuck in the cycle of recurring pain for years often find resolution within a handful of sessions when the real cause is finally identified. Not because they weren’t trying before, but because no one had looked in the right place.
What This Means for You
If your pain keeps coming back, it’s not because you’re broken. It’s not because you haven’t tried hard enough. It’s because something has been missed.
The pattern of temporary relief followed by recurrence is not inevitable. It’s a sign that the root cause hasn’t been found yet.
When you’re ready for a different approach — one that looks for causes rather than chasing symptoms — that’s exactly what we offer at Breakthrough Pain & Performance.