What is an Interventionist?

What is an Interventionist? The interventionist is the individual who helps identify the appropriate people in the addict’s life who will become an influential part of a recovery team. The team will enable their individual and family to accept treatment and recovery. The interventionist supports, educates, and provides guidance, direction and training, as well as the facilitation of the intervention and aftercare. All members of AIS are Certified Intervention Professionals. We believe that this credential is key in identifying an individual with a high level of training, education, supervised experience and ethics.

An interventionist is a helpful tool for individual, family members, colleague or friend who is resistant to addressing his or her problem. When people are initially resistant and then enter treatment due to an intervention and therapeutic relationship with an interventionist, they and their network do very well due to the support, networking, collaboration and aftercare.

Primary Objectives – One of the objectives of an interventionist is to assist the family and support members confront a person in a non-threatening way and to allow them to see how self-destructive behavior, and how it affects themselves, family and friends. It usually involves several people who have prepared themselves to talk to a person who has been engaging in some sort of self-destructive behavior. In a clear and respectful way, they inform the person of factual information regarding his or her behavior and how it may have affected them. The immediate objective of an interventionist is for the person bent on self-destruction to listen and to accept help from all who care.

It can be challenging to help a loved one struggling with alcoholism, drug problems, eating disorders, prescription drug abuse, compulsive gambling or other destructive behavior. Sometimes a direct, heart-to-heart conversation with the guidance of an interventionist can start the road to recovery. At other times there may be need a more focused approach. Joining forces with others and taking action with an interventionist in a formal intervention process is a necessity. Those who struggle with addictive behaviors and their family/friends are often in denial about their situation and are unwilling to seek treatment. An intervention and interventionist presents all involved a structured supported opportunity to make changes before things get even worse. A professional interventionist is able to plan an intervention that is a planned process involving family and friends and sometimes colleagues, clergy members or others who care about a person struggling with addiction so they become an integral part of the recovery process.

What an Interventionist is not?  We work to meet a client where they are in the process of change to explore the relationship between themselves, their world, and their addiction-related issues. In working closely with people suffering with addiction, we have witnessed countless failed attempts to intervene on someone struggling with addiction. An interventionist is not a moral policeman, a punisher, a judge, or even an advocate.  An interventionist uses an evidence-based approach to enhancing the probability of a successful intervention.   Many misconceptions have developed over what interventions achieve and how they work.

When you engage a Professional Interventionist, the Intervention is:

• Not coercive.
• Not shame-based.
• Not hurtful or angry.
• It is not an ambush or an uncaring attack.
• It is a planned interaction between an individual and a group whose sole purpose is to modify the individual’s dependence on a harmful substance or practice.
• It is a process of invitation, education and preparing family and friends who make the commitment to initiate change in a loved one’s or coworker’s life.
• The goal is to return to healthy, productive living for addicts and their families.
• The truth is that Intervention is a process founded on love and honesty.