What actually helped (and what was a waste of my time)
- Sophie Compton Carr
- Jul 22
- 2 min read
A few of you have asked what I actually did about my shoulder, beyond “went to lots of appointments and complained.” Fair question. Here’s the honest version.
Didn’t help much: complete rest. I tried the classic thing of just not using it. Wearing it in a sling around the house for a bit, avoiding anything that aggravated it. It felt like the sensible, cautious thing to do. It also made it worse by the time I went back to any kind of movement, it had gotten stiffer and weaker, not better.
Didn’t help: the standard round. GP visit, xray (came back clear, which was reassuring but not exactly useful), a course of physio, a few sports massages. Every one of these people was competent and kind. None of it shifted the actual problem. I think the shoulder just wasn’t ready to respond to any of it yet.
Genuinely helped: acupuncture. I was sceptical, mostly because nothing else had worked and I’d stopped expecting anything to. But something about it got the nervous system to stand down enough that I could actually move the joint again without it seizing. I went into the appointment not being able to mobilise the shoulder at all, and by the end, could touch the back of my neck, get my hand behind my back, able to lift arm up to the side, and in front.
Helped once the acupuncture had done its bit: very small, very boring exercises.
Not big stretches. Not “pushing through it.” Tiny isometric holds basically just gently switching the muscle on without moving the joint at all,done little and often.
It’s the least exciting exercise I’ve ever prescribed anyone, myself included and it’s the thing that’s actually rebuilt the strength.
If there’s a theme here, it’s that the shoulder needed calm before it needed strength. I kept wanting to skip to the strength part because that felt like progress. It wasn’t ready for that yet, and pushing it just set me back.
If you’re going through something similar, I’m genuinely happy to talk it through, not as a substitute for seeing someone properly, but because I know how disorientating it is when the “correct” steps aren’t working and you don’t know what’s actually wrong with the process.
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