I think we kind of just stumbled upon noticing what I do to try to calm down as my stress levels increase (trace things or some other tactile action) and let ourselves pause in those moments. If the silence goes on too long, T will then do something to break it - sometimes it's a check in, sometimes it's a redirection. I think a lot of that is based on how i have been responding during the silence.

Sometimes the things we do are pretty subtle. I would guess that you probably have some tells or behaviors you do as stress increases. Granted there's always the 0-60 instances that happen so this isn't foolproof. As we were able to slow down that to more like 0-20... then 60 if not caught, we were able to find places and ways to communicate. Sometimes I would say that I don't want to be here anymore (it took a while for her to really grasp that I meant with this topic, mental space and not at session or with her). A few times I asked her to change the topic, and again that took a while for her to realize that I need her to redirect us to a random nothingness topic - like football comment or math thing --- something that engaged me differently.