Breakthrough Intervention Stratagies: A Complete Guide

This is the ultimate guide for intervening with an addicted loved one. In this video, we are going to cover what types of intervention options. There are the pros and cons of each of these types of interventions, when to use these interventions, and we're also going to cover the cost of each type of intervention and the effectiveness. There is a lot packed into this video. You may even want to grab a pencil and a piece of paper to take some notes for. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Amber Hollingsworth. I'm a master addiction counselor. I've been helping people and families overcome addiction for more than 20 years now. But I'm not just your typical addiction counselor. I've spent the majority of my career working with family systems. So I'm well aware of how addiction affects each individual member of a system. If you're going to get real, lasting change, which is important, because if you're going to get real, lasting change, you have to figure out a way for everyone in the system to get their needs met. Now, let's start out with the type of intervention that most people think about when they think about having an intervention, like the kind they show on the A and E show called intervention. You know, the kind where everybody sits in a circle and they read these letters and they say how much they love the person. But then they also say, if you don't go to treatment, here is the consequence of that. And that consequence usually has to do with pulling back emotionally, logistically, and financially. Now, this type of intervention is called the Johnson model intervention. Now, the first thing I want you to know about this type of intervention is there's a lot more that goes on behind the scenes than what they actually show on the television show intervention. In fact, with the Johnson model, the addiction interventionist actually comes to your home and meets with you, the family member, and the other family members who are going to be involved in this process. And they spend probably about a day or two just with the family planning the whole thing out. The reason I'm telling you this is because it's very important. A lot of people watch the show and they think, okay, I can do this, and then they plan some kind of do it yourself intervention. Please, whatever model you choose, don't do that. That kind of intervention requires a lot of planning. Plan A, plan B, plan C. And there's a lot of direction from the actual professional interventionist. These kinds of things can go awry very quickly, and they can and will blow up in your face. So don't just Try to do this on your own. The key to using a Johnson Model intervention is that you have to have all the key players on board, because everybody's going to kind of form a fence around this person. And it's not necessarily to beat them up or to embarrass them, but it is to say, hey, we're all on the same page here. There's no weak link in this fence. Now, with the Johnson Model intervention, the goal is usually to get someone to go to inpatient treatment, like 30, 60, 90 days of treatment. The other thing about the Johnson model is if you're going to pull this off, you've got to have a treatment center lined up, ready and waiting, because the last thing you want to do is get someone to agree to go and then be scrambling around trying to find the right treatment resource. Now, the success rates or the statistics for Johnson Model interventions really vary depending on where you're looking at those statistics. But you typically find that they're somewhere between 38 and 75% successful. You got to be careful here because you want to know what defines successful. Does that mean that the person went to treatment? Does that mean that the person stayed sober after treatment? If so, how long did they stay sober? These success rate statistics can be a little deceiving. So use your good judgment. When you're looking at these facts now, you might be wondering, well, in what circumstances would I want to use this kind of intervention? I think if your loved one is pretty far gone in addiction, they're in immediate danger of harming themselves or someone else, or they're just hit bottom after bottom. They're spiraling, they're pretty much non functional. The Johnson Model intervention is the way to go, because at this point in the situation, we got to do whatever we can. Someone is in a very dangerous place, and it's gone so far that the person's judgment and ability to put the brakes on it have probably long passed. In my opinion, the Johnson Model intervention is kind of a Hail Mary pass. In fact, this is what you want to do when you've tried a lot of the other things and nothing is working. The reason why you don't want to necessarily start with the Johnson Model intervention? Well, there's actually a couple. The first is if your person is somewhat functional, as in they're still going to work, they're still going to school, they're still doing a fairly good job of taking care of household or activities of daily living, they're going to look at you and think you're being crazy. They're going to think you're overreacting. They're going to minimize their problem and they're going to see it as completely unnecessary. Not only that, but they're probably going to hold some hurt, shame and resentment towards you over this whole intervention process. Because it's pretty hard to take in the fact that everyone that you know and care about has planned and schemed behind your back to call you out on this. You're basically being called out in front of anyone and everyone that you love and care about, which is very uncomfortable, as you might can imagine. But it's that uncomfortableness, it's that emotional pressure that can push someone out of a really bad spiral. There is definitely a time and place for this, but beware that it can be fairly traumatic for the person. And if the person agrees to go, but they really think you were overreacting and that it was uncalled for and not necessarily the chances that they're going to go back to their addictive behavior are really, really high. Now, the price of a Johnson model intervention usually ranges somewhere between 3,000 and $10,000, depending on who you hire, how far they have to travel, how long the whole thing costs. Because you've got to take into consideration that this person, if they in a different state, you're gonna have to pay for their travel, their lodging, their food. If this person is going to accompany your addicted loved one to the treatment center, you're going to also have to pay for that travel expense as well. Now, one of the other benefits that I didn't mention about this method is that it's quick and dirty and fast. Yes, it's going to take a few days, but it's all in. And it either worked or it didn't work. So it's probably the quickest method for getting the job done, which is why I think that it's the best one to use in those dire situation. Now, the second type of intervention I want to tell you about is something called an arise intervention. This is a type of intervention that falls into a category of what we call like an intervention by invitation. Because unlike a Johnson model intervention, arise doesn't surprise the individual with some kind of shock and oh my gosh, we're all here, we're going to read you the letters. In an arise intervention again, you hire a professional interventionist which, who works with you through this whole process. And this process can last days, weeks, months kind of situation. It's a series of meetings that the family has with the interventionist and the addicted loved One is present. In fact, everything is transparent in an Arise model, which is kind of nice. Everything's on the up and up. There's no surprises, there's no secret behind your back meetings. Everybody is all above board. You basically say to the person, hey, we're going to be meeting as a family to talk about this. We'd love for you to join us. That kind of puts the person in a position to be like, no, I'm not coming. And know that everyone's going to talk behind their back and they don't have input or to show up. And it's really a series of conversations around not just the addiction problem, but the whole family system. So one of the nice things about the Arise model is that it kind of looks at the whole system history, what things have led up to this, all the different roles and functions of all the people in the system and how everybody needs to work towards recovery. So this one's going to take a while longer. But the good things are that there's no surprise or shock behind your back. And it also involves the whole system. And everybody has a part to play, not just in making this addictive person change, but in changing the whole system. Now, the Arise model intervention boasts some pretty good statistics. If you look on their website, you're going to see that they report about 83% of people enter addiction treatment within the first three weeks and more than 90% enter treatment within the first six months. But beware, because this is a little bit misleading. When they say treatment, they don't necessarily mean inpatient treatment like 30, 60 or 90 days. It could mean they go to a meeting or they are. They go to a counseling session or something like that. But any kind of form of reaching out, getting some help, taking some steps towards change, there is a really high chance that the addicted person will take some kind of steps towards that process. Now, this type of intervention is going to cost you between probably about $4,000 and $18,000. And that usually does include some aftercare, meaning after the person agrees to get help, they're still working with the family and the individual to make sure things stay on track for a certain period of time. Now, there are a lot of things I really like about the Arise model. I love the fact that everybody's involved, that everybody's held accountable for their own piece of the system and that it's not as much finger pointing. The addictive person, like, you're the only problem here and you need to change. It's okay, the whole system, we all need to do our part. We all need to change. But I do think that dealing with a whole system at one time can be a little bit, in my opinion, slow and laborious. In my experience of working with families and addicted individuals, I do love the idea of working with the whole system. But putting everybody in the same room, or even zoom room, even if it's a virtual meeting, all at one time, can be tenuous. I end up spending most of my time balancing everybody's needs, making sure nobody's feelings get hurt, trying to pull certain people forward. Basically what I call, like, classroom management and feeling management, which for me feels like a very slow process. I can talk much, much more directly if I'm just talking to the family member or if I'm just talking to the addictive person. And I find that the other person can talk much, much more directly with me if it's just them, either the family member or the addicted person. So while we like to see the whole family, we like to do it separately. In fact, we call it lawyering. We give the family member their own advocate and the person who's trying to overcome an addiction their own advocate. That way, everybody has a place to talk about it. But we are still working on an overall family recovery model, which leads me to the invisible intervention. That is the intervention process that we founded at Hope for Families. The reason it's called the invisible intervention, because it typically happens behind the scenes, as in the addicted person, they don't get set up for some kind of surprise. They're not invited to uncomfortable conversations with counselors. They're not invited to some kind of uncomfortable family session. Basically, in the invisible intervention, it's an online program where we teach you all the skills that we use to get people out of denial and into recovery. We teach you exactly what to say, when to say it, how to find that person's core motivators, what's going to be the thing most likely to get them to change, how to find leverage if you need leverage, when to push, when to hold, when to be nice, when to be tough, all the things. Now, the benefits of this type of intervention are that by the time it's finished, you. You as a family member will have gained so many skills, not just for dealing with your addicted loved one, but just for dealing with life, for managing your relationships in a more healthy way, for having better boundaries. And these skills are completely transferable for helping anyone that you know or care about who's trying to make any change or who needs to make any change in their life. But the Invisible intervention doesn't work overnight, as in you're not going to sign up for the invisible intervention today and your loved one enters some kind of giant treatment center tomorrow. It's going to take some time, but you will almost immediately, within a week, see some big changes in your interaction with your loved one about how they interact with you. They're going to be a lot more positive, their attitude towards you is going to be a lot better. It's going to change the dynamic very quickly, and that dynamic is going to improve over the course of time. The whole goal is to get you out of the bad guy role so that the addictive person can stop seeing you as the problem and which is going to open their eyes to what is actually the problem. Not only do we teach you all of the actual counseling skills, all the skills that I would use if I were talking to your loved one, but you also learn the craft method, which has a two to three times higher success rate than the other intervention models. And you're going to learn motivational interviewing, which is the most successful counselor intervention techniques. The other great thing about the invisible intervention is because you can do it in your own home at your own pace. Now, I personally feel like the invisible intervention method is best used if the addicted person lives in the house with you. It can be used if the person doesn't live with you, but you do need to have regular communication and contact with the person. So if you're trying to help someone who's maybe homeless, or you haven't talked to in six months, or you very rarely talk to, this might not be the method for you. And I think the invisible intervention technique works best if your loved one is still somewhat functional, as in still either going to school, going to work, taking care of household duties, they still have some control over the other aspects of their life. They may be dropping the ball a lot, they may not be doing it perfectly, but they still are functioning. This means that they still have some decision making capacity when it comes to this addiction. Now, the methods we teach are great methods no matter what, but if your loved one is still somewhat functional, you'll get faster results. If you're watching this video on YouTube and you want to learn more about these interventions, I'm going to put the link to each type of intervention intervention in the description below. Or you can just hit the button that says learn more.