Picking or Healing?

I have this chronic pain that occurs in the right side of my neck and into my right shoulder blade. Sometimes, usually when I'm not expecting it, the pain delves further down my ribs and into my right hip. Regular massage, chiropractic, walking, and stretching, all help to manage the pain. But sometimes, I'll be sitting watching tv or lying in bed reading, and I'll be pestered by this insistent pain. So I do what people naturally do...I extend one arm uncomfortably and attempt to access the point of pain.
But while I'm doing this, my body is contorting in all sorts of angles that cannot be good for my overall posture. But the pain is so annoying...I just want it to go away! Why can't I just access the area and not have to feel it any more?
But it never goes this way. It feels like a relief for a few seconds. But what I'm doing is in fact just reinforcing the problem. I am mentally and physically recognizing the pain and accentuating it by my self massage. After the self massage, the pain often comes back...but it's worse than it was before!
I liken this to a wound that has scabbed over: sometimes it might still hurt or itch, but for the most part, we know that we need to "leave it alone" so it can heal. We also can apply ointment to speed the process, and perhaps a bandage so we aren't tempted to pick at it. But how often to we try to get that scab off before it's time? It's unsightly, annoying. We pick the scab and then realize the wound was still healing. Now it's going to take even longer for the scab to heal. What were we thinking?
I found myself rubbing my chronic pain this morning. It usually coincides with a thought process that takes a simple situation and "picks" at it, analyzes, and conjectures about it, until the "simple situation" has turned into a stressful one. And this is all my doing. No one asked me to pick at this.
My physical body is usually a good indication of how my thoughts are doing. And obviously, this morning, my thoughts were a bit more in control than I would have liked.
So what can I do?
I can recognize that I am creating these thought patterns. I notice how I am feeling, (in this case, stressed), when I make them. Rather than dwell on this, I have to recognize it and move on.
I turned off the ringer on the phone and did some yoga stretches while listening to some soothing music. Rather than continue to harp on about my pain or my "situations", I disconnected from it. I approached it from a different angle. Because when I am "picking", I am taking a resistant path, and when I "leave it alone" and try another approach, I am going with the flow.
I am confident that this path of least resistance will speed the healing process.
While I am writing this, my neck pain has subsided, and my thoughts have calmed down. Now that is surely a better way to start my morning.