These are important responses to Affect storms.

Simmering down techniques include:

1. Drastic, if not dramatic, “stop, stop, stop” interventions ("pressing the pause button") - See Pause and Review.
2. The therapist may even have to stand up and use his/her hands and arms, like a conductor, to ask for momentary silence, saying: “I can see how good you are at getting each other excited – this looks like a well rehearsed act…. How many times have you performed it so far? 10 times, 100 times, 1000 or more times? Is it getting anywhere? Does it help or stop thinking? Let us take a deep breath and think about what happened here and how helpful or useless it may be to have more of the same….”
3. Focusing techniques, such as those hypnotherapy-inspired manouevres suggested by Milton Erickson, may help to create a calm space. It is a deliberate move to block dysfunctional, spiralling and seemingly ‘mindless’ interactions between family members.
4. "prescribing" tight time-frames for each family member to express what needs to be expressed, be that thoughts or feelings. The technique of “60 seconds each” invites turn-taking and enforces temporary listening. Using a stop-watch introduces light-heartedness, particularly if the therapist is the time keeper, inviting each family member to express themselves during the allocated time slot and indicating aloud when “times is up, next please”.
5. The therapist may need to actively change the focus and shift it onto another mentalizing topic.
6. If working with just the parental couple, see: Taking a break, which is an example of the Therapist's use of Self.