Addictions - Online CEUs

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“Addictions: Treating Family Manipulation, Mistrust, and Misdirection”, “Track #12 10 Pre-Intervention Steps Part 1 of 2” - MM

10 Pre-Interventions Steps Part 1 of 2 is an excerpt from the Online Continuing Education Course intended for Social Worker CEUs, Psychologist CEUs, Psychology CEUs, Counselor CEUs, MFT CEUs

The following is a summary of the video related to the CEU course “Addictions: Treating Family Manipulation, Mistrust, and Misdirection”, “Track #12 10 Pre-Intervention Steps Part 1 of 2”. This course is intended for the continuing education of psychologists, social workers, counselors, and MFTs for licensure renewal.
Preparing for structured family intervention requires a lot of time and enthusiasm to learn. There are ten essential steps that I have used with my clients and their families to lay important groundwork for an intervention. These steps while are an important checklist are not meant as a complete training course for leading an intervention.
Step 1: Build a Team
Encourage your client to compile a list of important persons in the addict’s life. Make sure that your client includes people who they think will not participate but are still important. Conversely, make sure your client does not include the following three types of people: people who cannot maintain confidence, people who the addict dislikes or mistrusts, and others suffering from addiction. The team can be a small or large group but I usually encourage around three to eight people.
Step 2: Set Up a Planning Meeting
It is important to set up a meeting to plan with the team to decide how they want to prepare for the intervention. There are two important decisions for the group to make at this meeting. The team should decide if they want to hire a professional or use other reliable resources such as books to choose how the intervention will run. Secondly, the team should choose concrete dates for rehearsals for the intervention and for the actual intervention.
Step 3: Chose a Team Chairperson
The chairperson is the person who will fill the role of spokesperson during the intervention. I recommend that the chairperson is respected and trusted by the addict. This role is usually best filled by someone outside the immediate family and who does not have anxiety or a temper during stressful situations.
Keep in mind that these steps are part of a continuing education course for psychologists, counselors, MFTs, and social workers.
Step 4: Discuss the Negative Consequences
Before the intervention takes place, the team should have a discussion about the negative consequences that addiction has had on the addict, the team, and other family and friends. Being well informed about the problem will help the team during the intervention to remain firm and it is also important to have the addict’s history with addiction so the team can best advise treatment options. When writing a list of the consequences, I encourage clients and the team to remember that they are labeling symptoms of a disease and how it has manifested in all aspects of the addict’s life.
Step 5: List Ways the Team has Unwittingly Enabled the Addiction
The team must also take time, I often encourage teams to do this individually, to list how members of the team have unwittingly enabled the addiction. Along with writing down ways they have enabled in the past, listed specific examples, team members should write what they had hoped these enabling actions would accomplish. This step is important because addicts are more willing to accept help once enabling behavior stops.
This step is often the most difficult for family members because it is difficult to break patterns of enabling. Al-Anon, Nar-Anon, and Families Anonymous are all great resources for family members of clients dealing with addiction.
This video is an excerpt from the CE course “Addictions: Treating Family Manipulation, Mistrust, and Misdirection”, “Track #12 10 Pre-Intervention Steps Part 1 of 2”. This course is designed for psychologists, social workers, MFTs, and counselors looking for continuing education credit.