Frozen Shoulder: It Thaws on Its Own, and Forcing It Makes It Worse

Summary

Frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) is largely self-limiting: it moves through freezing, frozen, and thawing phases and resolves over roughly one to three years in most people, so the treatment job is pain control and preserving pain-limited motion while the capsule settles, NOT forcing range — gentle movement within pain limits, analgesia, and an early corticosteroid injection genuinely help the pain window, but the opposite errors are common and costly: aggressive "push through the pain" stretching and manipulation in the painful phase can worsen outcomes ("no pain, no gain" is wrong here)