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It's most likely that in your accident example, your brain learned and remembered the pain. The specific mechanism, whether it's simply learned nerve pathways, etc., isn't important. Sometimes overly focusing on the physiology of what's going on can be counterproductive.

Physical exercise is fine, as long as you're not doing it because deep down you think that's going to affect your chronic pain. That just reinforces the belief that there's something that needs to physically be addressed to get better. Personal training for the sake of getting stronger, getting a massage because it's relaxing and it feels good- totally fine.

If your body can't bend, don't bend. It's not always necessary to confront your symptoms so dramatically to get better. I happened to challenge my heal pain in the example I gave, but if I would have just gone about my life establishing a stance of authentic indifference about whether or not I had symptoms, the pain would have faded in a few days anyway.

I've found that people usually have more success just working toward ignoring the symptoms (and the corresponding fear) than directly challenging them. Challenging the pain can be a double-edged sword. Remember, the purpose of the pain is to serve as a vessel of preoccupation. When you're aggressively challenging the pain, you're definitely giving it a lot of attention, and if it doesn't recede, often people feel hopelessness or despair. This feeds into the pain cycle, as it undermines the goal of outcome independence.

Alan