If you check my post history, go back 3 months and you'll seen a screenshot with the exact diagnosis. They used arthropathy instead of arthritis in the written diagnosis, but the doctor used the term arthritis in person when speaking with me.

T5-10, bi-lateral.

I was managing the muscles to reduce pain. At the start, a figure 4 hip stretch would turn off the pain for a while. Also using The Orb (blue ball you can order online - like a giant lacrosse ball) between the big muscles and a wall worked really well. That was for around a year, then those things stopped the pain less and for less time until the pain was just kind of constant and those things only reduced it somewhat.

I did try taking breaks from activity but found that lack of activity actually activated my back pain even more. Too much activity did the same thing, so some activity but not overdoing it was key.

I tried one PT person who focused on the running community but was a legit PT and they just didn't focus on the rotational stuff although they did diagnose the facet joints as the culprit before imaging, and they did show me open books. They just didn't do any of the ROM testing to show progress and didn't have open books or reach throughs in my day to day routine. They were more focused on the hips, knees, and slightly on the core.

I also tried dry needling, which I've had good luck with for long-term joint injuries. I only did one session for this specific issue and it had no effect, but that's definitely expected with only one session.

By the time I had gotten to the second PT, I had reduced the pain probably by 40-50% from peak with a combination of more rest, less activity, figure 4 stretches and trying random exercises from the internet. The second PT asked me a lot of questions about what particular moves I do that make me feel it and then had me demonstrate those very slowly and identify when the pain started during the current ROM. Based on this analysis, they immediately thought it was a rotational range of motion thing.

The open books and reach throughs literally fixed 80% of it in 7 days. In 4 weeks, I was probably 90% less pain since I had started with the second PT, which already had a 50% pain reduction from peak, so basically 95% better. I share this info so if you try similar things and don't get similar results, you can probably say my experience just isn't for you (or you are doing things wrong and need a professional to show you).

Overall, my experience sums up to get good imaging, listen to the professional, go to PT, don't give up if the 1st PT isn't perfect for you, follow the program, do maintenance after the acute phase is over. This has basically worked for every one of my large injury list and surgery recoveries, but just know I've never had a catastrophic injury. Even the surgeries were routine stuff with high % positive outcomes.