What Do I Need To Know About Planning An Intervention?
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Interventions shouldn’t be thrown together last minute. Addiction is a fatal, chronic, progressive disease; meaning time is of the essence. Once you are going to host an intervention, every single detail needs to be in place. Your interventionist will help you find a treatment center, plan transportation, and orchestrate the intervention. Interventions have different styles and approaches. Your interventionist may want to work with you and your family for a week or two ahead of the intervention to rehearse and finalize the details. After everything is in place and the intervention is finally happening, here are a few more things you need to know:
Encourage everyone in attendance to regulate their stress and stick to the plan.
Once the stage is finally set, and the loved one struggling from addiction is in the room, it’s easy for some members in attendance to feel like it’s their turn to have the spotlight. Addiction and intervention aren’t about keeping score, though some interventionists might ask you to write a list or a letter detailing the many ways your loved one’s addiction has affected you personally. However, with the pressure and the nerves of the moment, it is easy for someone to burst into an emotional display, which runs the risk of upsetting the entire intervention approach. An intervention is to create a calm and stable environment full of effective communication so that the addict in question doesn’t feel bombarded or triggered to run out and use.
Understand that it might not go the way you want it to
Addiction is a thoroughly convincing and persuasive disease. Sitting in a room full of the people closest to you who you intimately trust, you are still convinced that you don’t have a problem. Or, if your loved one does know they have a problem, they might be unwilling to do anything about it and aren’t ready to stop drinking and using. There’s a good chance that they are going to realize that their lives are out of control and treatment is the best option. Unfortunately, there will always be a chance that despite the planning, begging, crying, bargaining, and discussing, they still aren’t interested in sobriety.
Be prepared to stick to your ultimatums.
The use of ultimatums in an intervention setting is controversial because someone under the influence of addiction cannot weigh their consequences- that is part of why their addiction has continued to develop. If your interventionist suggests that you use ultimatums, you need to be prepared to stick to those ultimatums, however severe you make your consequences of being. Otherwise, you send the message that you aren’t serious about your loved one’s addiction being a problem.
Design For Change offers intervention services so that you and your family can get your loved one safely into treatment. Our residential treatment programs can be customized to fit any length of time, including long term treatment. Offering a refuge from addiction, our dedication to sobriety helps our clients change their lives one step at a time, one day at a time, for information on how our programs are changing lives for the better.
