A template for behavior - a curious observation

Several months ago, my husband sustained a severe injury to his knee while on an early morning jog. As a result, he was unable to bend his knee or use his leg for several weeks. As luck would have it, at this same time he was heavily involved in setting up an ice rink. This required him to be involved in strenuously physical construction activities. His hurt knee was a major obstacle for him. He was in constant pain and had to be ever-vigilant to baby his knee. For instance, in order to fix pipes on the ground, he had to kneel on his good knee with his injured let straightened to his side. When he got up, it was with great care and pain.

Time has passed and his knee has healed. He has run, biked, swam, and is back to normal functioning. Then, a couple of days ago, a bad leak sprung up at the ice rink. My husband had to once again kneel down to make that repair. Here is where things get interesting. He said that as he knelt down to work on the leak, he instinctively straightened his bad leg and winced for the expected pain. When the pain didn't come, he remembered, "oh yeah! My knee is fine!"

When my husband returned to that context where he remembered so much knee pain, he instinctively protected his knee. In any other context (jogging, working in the garage, etc.), he is not reflexively protecting his knee. Only where he spent a large amount of time protecting his knee under a great deal of anxiety did he return to that reflexive behavior.

As a psychology student, of course I find that very, very interesting. I won't lengthen this post to delineate all of the ways this story could be manipulated. I'll just let you imagine....