Intervention: Reaching Out To The Ones You Love
Intervention is a powerful experience for both addicts and their families. It’s simultaneously the most difficult and most rewarding experience for a family to experience. Many families struggle with addiction for years and years before finding themselves at a point where they’re willing to change the nature of their relationships to the addict in their family. Most families have trouble recognizing the nature of the compulsive behavior, whether it manifests itself in drinking, drugging, gambling, mood disorders, eating disorders, or sexual compulsivity. Addicts themselves are masters at covering up their addictions, through lying, manipulating, cheating, stealing, and basically covering their behavior the best ways they know how.
A suffering addict has trouble recognizing the consequences of their actions on the people who love and care about them. Often, they are seen as very selfish and don’t seem to care about the opinions of others. This is frequently not the case.
Addicts that have come to the point of the need of an intervention have often built up a wall of defense in order to justify the outlandish behavior they are participating in to continue feeding their addiction. This often causes undue harm, almost like shrapnel in a battle, not just affecting one’s self, but also all of the people who love and care about the addict. It’s very tough for the addict themselves to recognize the damage they are doing to their loved ones.
Intervention can be a viable way to reach someone who may not be receptive to the idea of getting help on their own. With the help of trained professionals, families are able to see remarkable changes within their family system, and hopefully in the behaviors and choices of the addict in the family as well.
The compulsive nature of the addict’s behaviors don’t often allow them the ability to think clearly around the choices they are making, especially when they’re engaging in such deep self-harming behaviors that they’re affecting not only themselves but the people around them. When the hurt for the family gets too deep, and it seems nothing can be done for their loved one, then it’s time to turn to intervention as the solution.
Families often struggle with making this choice. As I said in the outset, it is simultaneously the hardest and most loving thing a family can do for a loved one struggling with compulsive behaviors.
An intervention involves setting appropriate, livable boundaries around one’s addiction, and with those changes in place, allowing the family to approach the addict in a controlled environment and let him or her know that we as a family are no longer willing to live this way. A family with addiction as the center point is often in a constant state of chaos, simply moving from one crisis to another. The goal of intervention is to move from the crisis into the solution. With help from a trained intervention specialist, families can see amazing change in just a short amount of time. In approximately 9 out of 10 cases, the addict makes the choice to accept help and seek treatment for their compulsive behavior.
So why would a family NOT do this? Such a tough decision seems like it should be an easy one. Why wouldn’t you want to go to any lengths to help a family member in crisis? Many objections crop up when the family makes that first decision to ask for help. They may ask themselves, is this too soon? Have we done all we can on our own? Is it worth spending the money for an intervention and treatment on someone who has been adamantly refusing help, or even acknowledging there is a problem?
Sometimes families get so caught up in their own denial that they’re unable to admit the nature of the problem that they have called to ask for help about. They may start to question their intentions: are we really helping? The answer always is, of course you are helping. By changing the nature of your behavior, as a family, you are letting the person struggling with compulsive behaviors make their own decisions and choices, without enabling behaviors from the family.
It’s not ok for a family to continue paying the bills of an addict who spends all of his or her money on crack cocaine. It’s not helping to take the phone calls at 3 AM from the local jail to go and bail out a family member who got arrested for their 3rd DUI. By allowing, and actively participating in these behaviors, we as families are actually protecting our loved ones from their consequences. As it is often seen with people who struggle with addictions and other compulsive behaviors, consequences are a necessary part of getting well.
So how can intervention help? We allow the families to make a choice on how far they are willing to let their loved one go. If families are willing to sit down and talk honestly and openly about their concerns and fears, and let their loved one know that they as a family are no longer willing to watch them hurt themselves are be ok with it. Through setting appropriate boundaries, the families themselves can let their loved one know that they are going to stop their enabling behaviors and only participate in a relationship where the individual who’s struggling is getting help for themselves. The families often put together help for the addict in crisis, allowing them to immediately seek help for their problem. With help from a professional, this can be a process that’s easier for the family rather than the huge struggle it’s been in the past.
A solution is only a phone call away. The first step for getting help is the admission that you, as a family, have done everything you can to get the person you love and care about the help they so desperately need. Bringing in a professional isn’t a weakness, and it isn’t something to be ashamed of. The only thing it can possibly provide is a new point of view on the same problem. The guarantee is that your family WILL get better. Things WILL change. It may not be the result you as a family are expecting going into the process, but the hard truth is this: You CANNOT control the behavior of a loved one, but you CAN change your behavior around your loved one’s behavior. Providing these boundaries can create change, and, in the case of addiction, change is always a good thing.
Michael Ferguson
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Filed under: Treatment
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