• Is your loved one’s latest addiction crisis keeping you up at night?
  • Have you wondered what a professional drug or alcohol intervention would mean to your family?
  • Do you put off learning about intervention because you’re not sure you need it?

After a crisis, you’ve had conversations with your loved one, expressions of concern, and requests. You’ve tried different strategies: confronting, helping, avoiding, or waiting.

Each strategy may have some improvement, for a while. You step back, and hope your loved one can fix the problem. When they appear stable, you feel hopeful. But another problem arises.

Maybe you’re super careful, until you can’t take it anymore. You explode. Confront your loved one. Name the problem. Blame them. An argument results. You may feel hopeless.

You notice that your feelings are often a direct reflection of how your loved one is doing. When your loved one appears unstable, the tension grows. There’s a crisis. You intervene with words that express you concern. Your loved one tells you to chill out. You contain your concern. Then another crisis.

The emotional world of concerned family members can get stuck in this looping pattern.

If the crisis is life threatening, call 911.

Your loved one’s crisis is not your fault, but becomes your responsibility

Our country is blessed with a multitude of substances, all so we can change how we feel. Initially the motivation is pleasure or relief, but may slowly lead to increased risk for the user and problems for those around them.

The brain and the thinking of the user gradually becomes impaired; they don’t see problems. The family does. Impaired thinking of the individual in addiction can spread to infect the thinking of everyone around them. You may feel crazy. You’re not.

In our country, addiction is out of control. About 150 people die of overdose or an alcohol related cause each day. Our standard of care approach to addiction is under resourced and overwhelmed. The statistics are not improving.

Our country’s approach to solving addiction is not enough. The burden falls on families.

Families are burdened with three problems that make reaching out for help difficult:

  • Stigma and shame about addiction still exists in addiction treatment services
  • Mixed messages about addiction confuses options
  • Decisions are often made in an activated state

Families in untenable situations do their best to deal with crisis

It’s ideal if you acknowledge warning signs, get everyone in your family on the same page, and make a conscious decision to take action. However, that may not be easy. It is realistic that your loved one’s current situation guides your response and decision making process. You experience the ups and downs of your loved one’s behavior.

You have options.

The first is the simplest. Do nothing new and learn to live with the situation. But doing nothing new contributes to nothing changing. Second, take action only when it gets bad enough. But navigating the ups and downs of risk without a resource, leaves you vulnerable to the manipulations of addiction. These first two keep you in a looping pattern of nothing changing.

A third option is researching your options to find your best decision.

Crisis and intervention coaching helps

You can make your best decision only when you have researched your options. Ask questions of multiple people, get pros and cons feedback, and weigh your options based on your values. Understand there are potential consequences with every decision. Commit to a plan of action.

In theory it’s simple. In practice, it’s incredibly challenging.

Families are on an emotional rollercoaster doing their best to navigate their loved one’s ups and downs. Physiologically, this internal state compromises your family’s best decision making.

Albert Einstein acknowledges the need to shift perspective in his quote, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when the problem was created.”

Coaching creates conditions for families to follow Einstein’s suggestion

Coaching is designed to help you identify your situation, learn possible options, ask questions and weigh potential consequences. Together we explore potential next steps, potential support people, and what type of support may be most helpful for your particular situation.

You will have access to family specific information about addiction, tools and resources to help you make your best decisions.

The first step to making good decisions is to lower the activation in your nervous system so you have more blood flow to the part of your brain that supports you making best decisions. This video course is a great place to start. https://thefamilyrecoverysolution.com/course/first-step-skill-building-for-success/

Preparedness begins with one person (you), and spreads to multiple people in your family.

But doesn’t my whole family need to be involved in the decision to intervene?

Whether you and your family decide to get coaching to organize a family meeting and plan for your own family intervention, or you hire an interventionist to come in and lead your family through an intervention process, multiple people in the family will be involved.

There are numerous ways to intervene. Each has consequences. Some consequences are unpredictable, while others are predictable. How you and your family intervene will have consequences, not only if or when they reach out for help, but how they feel towards their family for years to come.

One of my early intervention mentors use to say, “one on one addiction always wins.” The further addiction progresses, the more I’ve seen this be accurate. Still, there are options other than keeping silent for years, or calling an interventionist in a panic and expecting an intervention to happen right away.

Coaching will help you understand your options and what is best for your situation.

Maybe you feel that you need an intervention right now

One of the biggest challenges is when addiction has been in the family for years. Many strategies have been tried. None have motivated new behavior. The family gets burned out.

Someone finally is inspired to reach out. They call in a panic.

Know that not all interventionist are the same. There are interventionist who are paid by treatment centers and independent interventionists that are not paid by treatment centers.

If you feel the need to start the intervention process right now and are in the Boulder/Denver area in Colorado see my intervention services here: https://thefamilyrecoverysolution.com/intervention-services/. Contact me at jeff@thefamilyrecoverysolution.com or 720-314-3543

If you are out of the area, please check the Network of Independent Interventionist: http://www.independentinterventionists.com/member-list for a list of interventionists who will travel to your location.

Coaching is a pre-intervention strategy

Ideally, you’re not in a rush to hire an interventionist. You and your family don’t have to go this alone. Coaching may involve:

  • Assessing your family situation and person of concern
  • Assessing potential strategies and intervention approaches
  • Addiction in the family education
  • What family intervention services are most helpful for your situation
  • How to create an intervention plan
  • How to have an intervention
  • How to find an interventionist
  • How to invite family members
  • How to talk with the addicted family member

I know that you can initiate positive change in your family! But it requires taking new action.

Why listen to me?

I grew up in a family that focused only on the addiction (my grandfather) and never talked about the impact (my mother). I’ve lived the consequences of the trickle down of family silence, secrets, and the myopic focus on just one person’s addiction and ideal healing. In the 18 years I’ve been helping families in distress, specifically before, during and after intervention, I have seen this pattern of narrow focus play out in numerous ways. Few solve addiction problems longterm.

Intervening on one person to get them into treatment may or may not get them into longterm recovery. Even if your loved one is successful longterm, it does not guarantee trust and relational healing in the family. An intervention can be an opportunity to begin family healing, by creating new patterns that decrease your family’s vulnerability to addiction, longterm.

For a list of coaching packages: https://go.oncehub.com/jeffcoaching

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