When Alma suggests that they hearken to his words "with great anxiety even unto pain" we have the words of a man who is intimately familiar with the most intense of repentance processes. Alma knows very well the spiritual pain that can attend the complete restructuring of one's life. While we are never clearly told what ideology Alma adopted while he was rebellious, the long-running temptation of ideas similar to that of the order of the Nehors suggests that Alma may have once believed very similarly to the Ammonihahites. Alma would have tremendous empathy for their process of repentance, even the pain that might be involved in that dramatic of a turnaround.