Four ways to intervene with an addicted loved one we're going to go through each of these
and I'm going to tell you the pros and the cons
for those of you who are new here welcome to put the shovel down I'm Amber Hollingsworth
and you are watching the YouTube channel designed to help you understand the science and psychology
of addiction so you can make strategic decisions and get your life and your family back on
track okay option number one you can continue to do what you're probably already doing which
is trying to reason with your addicted loved one and you may even be doing this while they're
living in your house the issue with this is you've already been trying it for a long time
and probably all that's happening is that you're damaging the relationship that you
have with them both of you are probably building up more and more and more resentments when
you're choosing this option you're probably not making a conscious choice to do this you're
probably just stuck in the cycle of emotionally reacting to what's going on and what can keep
you stuck in this particular option is because you may see little windows of success or little
tiny changes or glimpses of who your loved one use to be and it keeps you sort of stuck
in that cycle the cycle sort of looks something like this they make a big giant mess in their
life and develop this giant problem and you get really upset with them for that and you
get on to them and you tell them why that's crazy and why they need to change and then
you fix the problem for them you bail them out you give them money you solve the problem
for them but you're interacting with them in a way that you're upset with them you're
mad at them they feel like you're trying to control them you feel like they're taking
advantage of you and the cycle just continues that's option number one I think we could
agree probably not a very good option option number two is what I would call like an old
school tough love approach you could make the decision that you are absolutely done
enabling your loved one and usually what that means is cutting them off financially one
hundred percent most of the time that involves making them leave your house and oftentimes
that even means cutting them off emotionally so it's like until you're ready to change
you're on your own and so the thinking here is is that if it gets bad enough the person
will get desperate enough and eventually they'll make the change well sometimes this can work
I'm not saying it never works it definitely can work but sometimes it doesn't work most
of the time the person just gets worse sometimes they will eventually turn that corner and
sometimes they don't I can't tell you how many families we talk to whose child spouse
daughter whatever has been living on the street for a long time no shelter no food no phone
no nothing and they're still choosing to continue to use and so when you're in that situation
it seems quite clear that the tough love approach really isn't working either consequences don't
cure addiction in fact most of the time a ton of consequences can just make it worse
because the person just deals with the aftermath of the messes that they're making by using
more substances in normal situations people will change when the stakes get high enough
but addiction is sort of rewiring the motivational center of your brain which is why normal things
do not motivate people with substance abuse problems to get better now I do believe that
things have to get a little uncomfortable for someone to change if everything's working
great for that person they're not going to change because they don't see the need to
change the scale does need to tip you know it needs to be more uncomfortable than comfortable
but this idea of if things get bad enough this person will stop using if you really
think about it I think that in your heart of hearts you know that this isn't true people
go to prison they lose their freedom they keep using people lose their children they
keep using people lose their homes their jobs their families they keep using now the third
thing that you can do is you could plan an intervention and I'm sure most of you have
like seen the TV show Intervention where you have a trained interventionist come in to
the family usually behind the scenes this interventionist works with the family to get
together this plan of surprise attack on the addicted loved one and so we've all seen it
right the addicted person walks into the room and the whole family sitting there in a big
circle and you know you walked into a trap when that happens so you know when you see
it on TV what you see is that moment where the person walks in the people read letters
and everybody cries and the person agrees to go to treatment well what I need you to
know about that is if you're going to do that then please please hire a trained interventionist
to help you do not try to do that on your own because that kind of situation can go
really bad really quick now I do think that there are some circumstances where that absolutely
is the best thing to do and I'm going to tell you what they are that kind of intervention
is definitely the best thing to do if your loved one is imminently in danger like if
we don't do something now they're probably going to die in the next week or two or three
the thing about this sort of surprise attack is that well I guess there's a couple of problems
really you have to get the family all has to be on the same page everybody every best
friend every family member close enough has to agree to completely cut them off if they
don't go to treatment no talking to them nothing the chances that everybody is going to be
in agreement on that and actually hold to that are actually kind of slim it's hard to
get everybody there lined up and at the same time where they're ready to cut ties if they
have to so you've got that the problem is if there's like Grandma left out there or
best friend left out there who doesn't come into the fold if you've got one outlier in
this issue the person is going to run there and the interventionist sort of null and void
so it's got to be a united front the other thing that can be a bit of a problem with
this sort of old school intervention which is called a Johnson model by the way is that
it can cause a fair amount of trauma to the person with the addiction it's pretty difficult
to find out that every one you know and care about has been plotting and scheming behind
your back and talking about you that's a hard thing to get passed and a lot of times when
people go to treatment that way they spend the first month being really mad about the
intervention in the family most of the time they start to get past that eventually but
if you're only paying for 30 days of treatment and they spend the whole 30 days being mad
then you're really block the treatment process that could be making some good positive difference
and some people really never get over it I had this happen to someone in my office years
ago and they're still not quite over it Now the fourth option that we're going to talk
about today is called what I call we cal at Hope for Families the Invisible Intervention
and this is the process that we use most often in these types of situations It's really sort
of a 4 part process basically it's not a surprise attack it's more of this gradual process and
I'm going to tell you what the 4 big components of that really are the first probably most
important piece is you begin to slowly reestablish trust and positive relationship with your
loved one because I know that if you've had this addicted loved one there's like all this
animosity and splitting between families and resentments and you don't trust them and they
don't trust you because you're always trying to control them and you've got a lot of tension
between everybody the building trust does this huge thing for you it helps you build
credibility because see what you've been doing is you've been trying to tell this person
what they should do what they shouldn't do how they're all wrong but you have no credibility
with them they don't trust you in fact they're really angry with you most likely and so they
may just do the opposite of what you say just despite you and so when you have no credibility
you cannot begin to tell someone what is a good thing to do counselors learn somewhere
along the way in counselor school or something that the saying is this people don't care
what you know until they know that you care and so what that means is you've got to establish
a relationship first if you skip this step it isn't going to work so step one of the
invisible intervention process is to build a trusting relationship with this person now
that doesn't mean doing everything they want it's trust it's openness honesty non reactiveness
step number two is to dig around in there until you find the motivators that that person
has because everybody has some inside motivation to get better and a lot of times if they're
defensive towards you they're not going to show it to you and that's why you've got to
get them to put those walls down in step number one and once you find those things inside
that maybe those little granules grains where they actually do really want to get better
you're going to find those and you're going to find inside of that person what are the
things stopping them what are they scared of what are they worried about are they worried
their kids are going to get taken away if they talk to someone about addiction are they
worried withdrawal is going to be so horrible and they can't stand it and it's going to
be awful are they worried that life is just going to be horrible and it's not even worth
living without substance what is their fears so you're going to identify those fears and
help to find ways around those road blocks or help them see that actually it won't look
that way maybe it will look this way and when you have that trust in place they're actually
going to listen to that now you're not making them do anything you're just helping them
think differently and simultaneously you're taking those little pieces of motivation we
call that change talk those little things that you hear where you kind of know deep
down inside they want to change and they'll show you this if you've got trust and you
sort of what I call pour water on it it's like pouring water on a seed that you want
to grow and you pull that motivation forward now the third step is really behind the scenes
so while you're doing those first two things behind the scenes you're looking at different
various help options that could be treatment that could be counseling that could be good
books or podcasts that could be support groups or 12 step or church support whatever your
identifying options that you feel like might be good helpful options for your particular
situation now you've got to have these options in place before you do step number 4 so you
can't forget this part you've got to be out there educating yourself and gathering some
resources together because step number four is when they have that moment of clarity when
that door finally opens where they're ready to make a change they're actually ready to
take an active step to do something different then all you have to do is open the door for
them and offer them a solution or you can get them to open the door for themselves basically
you just have to get that door open and then offer them a chance to step through the door
and so everything you've been doing leading up to that has been setting the stage setting
stage and then the time is right you just open the door and they step through it that
is exactly what we do in our office if your loved one was sitting in front of me and they
were still actively using and they were like in denial and didn't want to change that's
exactly what I would do I would do that process no matter how long it took whether it was
weeks, a few months or whatever it was and then usually what happens is I open that door
for someone and I say hey have you thought about this and then this person feels like
oh my gosh like thank you so much you were so helpful like you got me out of a jam man
you like really rescued me at the right moment or whatever they feel like not only is this
easier on you it's easier on them but it's so much more effective because think about
it what do you think the chances of change are from someone whose actually gone through
this process before they ever like make those big giant steps now many of you have heard
me say you don't have to be willing to go to treatment I stand by that I still agree
you could go to treatment totally mad as heck I don't care how you got there leverage by
the law or whatever but the first weeks of treatment you're going to be spending digging
through that if you keep them in there long enough they'll come out the other side of
that and then treatment will begin to take place so I'm not opposed to forcing people
in but if you can get someone ready and then open the door when they step through that
door the treatment process is going to start to take so much faster and the chances of
staying clean and sober longterm are way better when you do it this way you're joining them
you're not enabling them but you're joining them and you're helping them make the decision
to make a big change that's what we call the invisible intervention which is what we do
in our office and we teach this step by step process in our family recovery academy basically
we tell you in detail how to go through each one of those four stages that I just told
you about if you want to know more about that click the link in the description and if you
want to know more about how I actually have those conversations with people in session
then watch this video about building trust