I have no idea if am going to be making any sense on this or not. This is a very touchy subject, one that has to do with real emotions, emotions which compels and reflects people's behaviors towards certain subjects. I personally think there's no such thing as experts on this subject regardless of all the degrees or names like "councils" they use to qualify themselves. Everyone simply finds a way of dealing with individual pains.
For me, I'll say it's pretty easy to tell when it's over, the pain will simply go away. No matter how long it takes, it should go away, right? But going away isn't like a color fading away from a shirt or something, it requires self willingness to make it go away. I've dealt with pain in the past, just as explained here.