Emotions, the weather and 'We've got cows'

Today I had an interesting experience working with a 50+ woman with PTSD/GAD secondary to horrid childhood and marital abuse.

I was using Russ Harris' emotions are like the weather metaphor, including a mindful walk to experience today's weather. While debriefing the exercise we talked about how weather shows up and how futile it is to stand and curse the weather. Actually for her it is not futile - cursing the (real) weather is a form of emotional regulation and mostly soothes her, as long as she then connects with her values and engages with life. Sometimes this engagement means "staying inside" - forsaking some important activities while pursuing other "indoor activities" until the storm passes. But sometimes it means putting on wet weather gear and braving the cold, getting soaked to the bone while doing something more important (for her - feeding the animals).

We then compared this with how she handles the emotional weather. Two of her "storms" were memories and thoughts regarding mother - whom we labelled "Cyclone V...." and her stepfather "Tornado T..." The process of labelling them as such brought instant defusion. Running with the tornado theme, I asked her if she liked the movie Twister and she broke into a big grin and before I could say it she said "We've got cows".

As we explored it a bit further, she realised her experience of anxiety and trauma memories was very much like the scene from Twister - dodging cows, trucks and trees, getting scared out of your wits while pursuing your values.

When I told her I thought she'd invented a new therapeutic technique that might help others as well as herself, she literally glowed.

So she's going away to practice noticing the weather, labelling Cyclone V and Tornado T when they turn up and defusing via "we've got cows".

Ironic that the speaker of the lines was a therapist :-)

What other ways do you fol use the weather metaphor and popular culture?