Why “Getting Out of Pain” Is Often Not Enough

Article Summary

Many people define healing as getting rid of pain, stiffness, stress, or discomfort. While understandable, this creates what Al Wadleigh calls a negative outcome—an outcome defined by what you do not want rather than what you do want. Drawing on ideas from the Feldenkrais Method® and Steve Andreas’ work on negation and category formation, this article explores why the nervous system benefits from clear, positive directions such as ease, comfort, support, freedom, and well-being. When attention shifts from avoiding pain to developing positive sensory experiences, learning becomes easier and change often becomes more meaningful and lasting.

When Pain Becomes the Goal

Many people define healing as “getting out of pain,” but that creates a negative outcome — an outcome defined by what you don’t want rather than what you do want. In this article, Al Wadleigh explores how attention, language, sensation, and category formation influence the nervous system and the experience of pain. Using examples from the Feldenkrais Method®, he shows how developing positive sensory experiences such as ease, comfort, grounding, and freedom of movement gives the nervous system a clearer direction for learning and change.

People often come to me and tell me they want to get out of pain.

They don’t want pain anymore.

So I ask them a simple question:
“What do you want?”
And very often, they don’t know.

Not because they’re confused or unintelligent, but because pain has become such a familiar part of their experience that it becomes difficult to imagine what life would feel like without it.

It’s like that old comfortable sweater that’s really worn out, but you keep on wearing it.

That’s important, because “I don’t want pain” is what I call a negative outcome.

A negative outcome is an outcome defined by the absence of something.

And without a positive outcome — something you can move toward, sense, recognize, and develop — it becomes very difficult to create meaningful change.

The Furniture Store Problem

Imagine walking into a furniture store.

The clerk walks up and asks:
“What can I help you find today?”

And you reply:
“Not a chair.”

The clerk pauses.
“Okay… would you like a table?”

“No. I just don’t want a chair.”
“We have some beautiful beds over here.”
“Nope. I don’t want a chair.”

At some point, the whole conversation starts sounding absurd.

But many people approach healing in exactly this way.

“I don’t want pain.”
“I don’t want stiffness.”
“I don’t want stress.”
“I don’t want tension.”

Okay… so what do you want?

More ease?
More comfort?
More stability?
More freedom in walking?
Better breathing?
A lighter sense of yourself?
More confidence moving through life?

Without a positive direction, the nervous system has very little to organize around.

The Strange Thing About Negative Commands

There’s another interesting thing happening here.

When I said: “Not a chair.”
And: “I just don’t want a chair.”

What happened?
What were you thinking about?
You immediately thought about a chair.
You had to think about a chair in order to not think about a chair.
Your mind first has to represent the thing internally before it can negate it.
To think “not a chair,” you first have to imagine a chair.

So when you continually repeat:
“I don’t want pain,” you repeatedly direct attention toward pain.
And it doesn’t mean people are creating pain by thinking about it.

Pain is real.

But when attention becomes organized almost entirely around avoiding what we don’t want, we lose contact with what we do want to experience.

The nervous system becomes organized around defense instead of discovery.

And the phrase:

“I don’t want pain” becomes a continuous negative suggestion centered on pain itself.

The Problem with “Not”

There’s also something interesting about categories.

The category of “chair” is clear.

You can recognize a chair from far away. There are dining chairs, rocking chairs, beach chairs, office chairs, Adirondack chairs, and beanbag chairs — many different kinds, all recognizable as chairs.

But what belongs in the category of “not a chair”?

Almost everything.

• The sky
• Trees
• A sandwich
• My dog
• Your shoes
• The moon
• A refrigerator
• The hair on your head

It’s an enormous and poorly defined category.

And in a similar way, when we define our outcome only by what we don’t want, we create a very vague direction for ourselves.

“I don’t want pain” literally means anything that is not pain.

• A yellow car is not pain.
• A bird call is not pain.
• The air moving through your nostrils is not pain.

Let’s narrow this down to sensation alone.

• “I don’t want pain” can include:
• The wind on your face.
• Feeling cool water in a creek.
• Slipping on a rock.
• Brushing your hair.
• Holding hands with someone.

We can refine this even further by constraining the examples to positive or neutral sensations:

• Feel the floor support you.
• Freedom in turning.
• Breathing more fully.
• Feeling lighter while walking.
• Moving with ease.

Those are experiences that can be recognized, developed, refined, and learned.

Relearning Positive Sensation

One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that people who have been in pain for a long time lose contact with the qualities of sensation that once drew them forward.

They stop noticing:

• ease
• comfort
• support
• softness
• length
• fluidity
• Finding your balance as you move
• pleasure in movement
• simple well-being

And this is one of the places where the Feldenkrais Method® makes such a profound difference.

Through slow, gentle Awareness Through Movement® lessons and Functional Integration® sessions, people begin rediscovering sensations that had faded into the background.

You begin noticing:

• moments of comfort
• easier breathing
• smoother movement
• greater ease
• clearer balance
• a softer jaw
• freer eyes
• lighter walking
• a more connected sense of yourself

And those experiences matter.

Because as these sensations become clearer, you naturally begin orienting toward them.

Now we can ask a very important question:

“What category of experience are all these qualities examples of?”

By asking this question, we begin creating a new category of experience — or enriching one that already exists.

Possible names for that category might be:

• My comfort
• Easy movement
• Feeling good
• Moving with ease
• Well-being
• Feeling like myself

And once those experiences become familiar, your whole system starts seeking them out.

A Positive Direction Changes Everything

When someone begins noticing comfort, support, ease, or length again, it implies that something is already beginning to reorganize.

Now there is direction.
Now there is a positive outcome.

Not simply:
“I want less pain.”

But:

“I move through life with more ease.”
“I feel stable and comfortable walking.”
“I breathe more freely.”
“I feel more connected to myself.”
“I enjoy moving again.”

That changes everything.

Because now your nervous system has something it can learn toward.

And when people start feeling better and moving better, they naturally want more of those experiences.

That is a very different process. It becomes exploration.

And now you have a new sweater. One you actually want to wear.

And from my experience, this is where the deepest and most lasting changes come from.

Note: Some of the ideas about negation and category in this piece were inspired by the work of Steve Andreas, especially his explorations in Six Blind Elephants Vol. 1 and 2. His work continues to deeply influence how I think about language, perception, sensation, and human experience.