Valiant Living Podcast
Welcome to the Valiant Living Podcast where we educate, encourage, and empower you towards a life of peace and freedom.
Valiant Living has been restoring lives and families since 2017 by providing multiple levels of care for men and their families. Fully accredited by The Joint Commission, Valiant Living has earned a national reputation as a premier treatment program, offering IOP, PHP, and recovery housing programs for men ages 26 and older. Founder and CEO MIchael Dinneen is a nationally recognized therapeutic expert, speaker, and thought leader in the behavioral health field.
On this podcast you’ll hear from the Valiant team as well as stories of alumni who are living in recovery. If you or someone you love is struggling to overcome addiction or trauma, please call us at (720)-756-7941 or email admissions@valiantliving.com We’d love to have a conversation with you!
Valiant Living Podcast
The Healing Power of Intervention with Stephen Wilkins
What does an effective intervention truly look like? Beyond the dramatic portrayals in television shows lies a thoughtful, compassionate approach that Stephen Wilkins has perfected over more than two decades as a certified clinical interventionist.
Stephen takes us behind the scenes of what he calls "interventions with integrity," revealing a process that begins long before the actual confrontation. The preparation involves seven to eight hours with family members, carefully crafting letters that affirm love rather than simply highlighting damage. "An intervention letter is about how much I love you, happy memories that I have of you," Stephen explains, contrasting this with harsher approaches that focus solely on consequences.
The podcast uncovers the profound emotional dynamics at play during interventions, illustrated through powerful stories like that of an alcoholic attorney whose defenses crumbled when her tough Marine grandfather showed unexpected vulnerability. Her response—"What took you so long?"—captures the complex reality that many addicted individuals secretly want help but remain trapped in ambivalence.
Perhaps most illuminating is Stephen's multi-goal model for interventions. While getting someone into treatment remains important, equally crucial goals include challenging learned helplessness, beginning to heal family relationships, and surprisingly, giving the addicted person back some control. "Addicts and alcoholics don't have a lot of control in their life, but they have a delusion that they're in charge," Stephen observes, explaining how his approach acknowledges this paradox.
For families wondering if intervention might help their loved one, Stephen offers clear signs to watch for: increasing isolation, abandoning previously enjoyed activities, and the telling presence of shame around substance use. These indicators suggest someone may be ready for the loving confrontation that an intervention provides.
Ready to learn more about helping a loved one struggling with addiction? Contact us at 720-756-7941 or email admissions@valiantliving.com to discover how we might support your journey toward recovery and healing.
Well, hey, everyone. Welcome to the Valiant Living podcast, where we educate, encourage and empower you towards a life of peace and freedom. I'm your host, drew Powell, and I'm a grateful alumni of the Valiant Living program. Valiant Living offers hope and transformational change to men and their families struggling with addiction and mental health challenges. So on this podcast you'll hear from the Valiant team, as well as stories of alumni who are living in recovery. If you or someone you love is struggling to overcome addiction or trauma, please call us at 720-756-7941. Or you can email admissions at valiantlivingcom. We'd love to have a conversation with you, but for now, let's dive into today's episode.
Speaker 1:You okay, um, we talked a little bit on the phone yesterday and I don't again not to jump in too quick, but what I love you talking about, you're talking about interventions with integrity sure and so we partner with valiant at valiant, with a lot of interventionists, and I'm really, I'm really excited to to hear how you got in this way to hear your story, but actually to dive in really specifically on what that means, what that looks like, cause we've got a lot of people that are that listen or watch that I think there's just a lot of, maybe even some, misconceptions around intervention. What is it? How do we go about it? I'm even thinking right now there's a person that's close to me that I think probably needs an intervention, but I'm just like it's such unknown territory and we'll talk about that offline. I might need your help with that. But first of all, just thank you. Thank you for being here, but tell us a little bit, how did you get into this work?
Speaker 2:Well, the short answer is I drank too much and it's kind of like the last time I got drunk and went to jail, one thing that just happened after another and I ended up doing this.
Speaker 2:So I'm an alcoholic in recovery and I'm also Catholic, and so I was part of an effort in the Archdiocese of Denver to help the Catholic Church have a more robust response to people that might come to their parish priest and say I'm struggling, or my husband, my child, is struggling with alcoholism, drug addiction.
Speaker 2:And through that effort I met a gentleman named Howie Madigan. Now Howie worked through Harmony Foundation, which is in Estes Park, and that's a treating agency that's been around for over 40 years, and Howie started doing interventions through that organization way back in the 70s, doing interventions through that organization way back in the 70s when there really wasn't much of a method or a model in place, and so Howie and I were working together on this effort within the Catholic Church called Outreach for Recovery, and he kept encouraging me to learn how to do interventions. His idea was that I could do them pro bono through the Archdiocese of Denver, and I was resistant to that. And so you know I belong to a fellowship that we support each other and help each other stay sober. It's easy to find it's very close to the front of the phone book.
Speaker 1:This organization I belong to and I had a mentor You're picking up while you're laying down here. I think I'm following you, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I had a mentor or a sponsor in that organization named Phil Nolan. Now Phil Nolan was in his 80s, an Irish Catholic guy, had been sober over 30 years. Howie Madigan, irish Catholic guy been sober in that organization over 30 years. One day I just let it slip the name of my mentor and it didn't occur to me that these two guys might know each other and they were fast friends. And so my mentor invited me to lunch and I walked into the restaurant and there was Howie Madigan and Phil, my sponsor, sitting at this table and I thought, oh, the gig's up. And so Howie started to train me and mentor me how to do interventions.
Speaker 2:And then there were some treating agencies in Colorado that I was working with and I'm doing this pro bono through the archdiocese and one of those organizations was called CEDAR and there was a director of admissions named Jeanette Moss and she really pressured me to get some education and certification so that she could refer to me so that I could do this professionally, gotcha. And it turns out that I really love the work and so I got the education and I became a certified addictions counselor. Back in the day I have let that certification lapse, day I have let that certification lapse and I went on to get education and I'm a certified clinical interventionist is my certification.
Speaker 1:Okay, Now what does that mean exactly? You say clinical interventionist.
Speaker 2:So I trained with a couple named Jeff and Deborah J. They wrote a book called Love First, which is really the method that most interventionists follow today. Howie Madigan called it a healing method and Jeff and Deborah Jay call it the Love First method. And so I trained with them extensively. It was a five-day training. I went to Minnesota and trained with them. I did supervised interventions where they did clinical supervision for me, and so now I have that certification.
Speaker 1:Very cool. I was reading up on you a little bit and I think it was 2002? Mm-hmm, is that when you started the Wilkins Group? Yes, yeah, it's funny because when I hear in my brain, when I say 2002, I'm like, oh, that's not that long ago right for some reason it says it doesn't, and then I was like wait a minute, that's two decades. Yeah, I mean, you've been doing this, your own company, for over 20 years yes, yeah I mean, and so much has changed. I could imagine in the last 20 years.
Speaker 1:What are some of the? What are some of the shifts and just intervention and just things that you've seen in the last 20 years, sure.
Speaker 2:So Howie Madigan said to me once I have a lot of little pearls of wisdom that are stuck Right, that stuck with me. And Howie said if we're not in this effort, in this endeavor helping people overcome addictions, if we're not doing it better, we're not doing it right, meaning you always have to try and do it better. Wow, and so one of the things that I did started doing is in this method of intervention. One of the things I help family members do is write letters to their loved one, to their like an impact letter of sorts uh, it's not, it's an intervention letter.
Speaker 2:Okay, so an impact letter is. This is how you've harmed me okay an intervention letter is more about how much I love you, happy memories that I have of you, oh, wow, okay. Talking giving somebody back their strengths, their attributes, because oftentimes when somebody's lost and in addiction, they forget that they're smart and that they have been effective in the past. So reminding them of all of those things.
Speaker 1:So this is a very loving, affirming approach, right, right?
Speaker 2:And so the way an intervention often looks is that you know we'll greet the afflicted person, the loved one, and that's a really loving kind of a greeting loved one, and that's a really loving kind of a greeting. So oftentimes we invite people to an intervention so a family member will say to them we love you, and the whole family's really scared about what's going on, what's happening to you, and so we're going to have a family meeting in three hours and we've invited somebody in to help us have that conversation so it doesn't go off the rails. So oftentimes we invite them.
Speaker 1:So they kind of know, have a bit of a framework of what they might be walking into.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Gotcha.
Speaker 2:Other times that's too risky. And family members will say to me, if we try to invite them, if we give them a heads up, they're leaving. And so sometimes we do kind of have more of an immediate intervention. We knock on the door and we come in and of course at that moment everybody's emotions are running kind of high. Everybody's anxious, and kind of high, Everybody's anxious. The family members, my clients, they're anxious. Our loved one, the addict, the alcoholic, scared. And so what I instruct the family members to do is, one at a time you're gonna embrace them and it's not a short little bro hug where you just kind of do that.
Speaker 1:You hold on to A couple of pats and out you hold on to them, Wow.
Speaker 2:And if they try and leave that embrace early, you just say to them stay here for a minute. I love you so much and I'm scared I need to hold on to you and you pull them back. So after everybody does that, people are a lot calmer. They feel a lot safer. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Then I'm going to talk them into what's going on and I'm going to ask them to listen to a letter. At the end of the letter there's a question we have a gift for you today, this opportunity to go get well, will you accept this gift? And then there's some negotiation in between the letters, and so oftentimes we'll get almost an immediate yes After one or two letters. I facilitated some interventions where we didn't even have to read a single letter and somebody said, yes, I'll go to treatment.
Speaker 1:They just kind of they saw what was happening and they just got out in front of it, type thing.
Speaker 2:Well, they've wanted to go to treatment for a long time anyway. The problem is, if I'm an alcoholic and I go to treatment, they won't let me drink there. So that is typically one of the rules. Yeah Right, and so I'm stuck in this ambivalence. I want to keep drinking Alcohol is really important to me but I want to get healthy too, and so they're already kind of there. They already kind of. There's part of them, a healthy part, that wants treatment. So, back in the day, as soon as we got a yes, that's it, we're done and we're going to get you packed, get you in the car, we're going to get you moving, and usually they're already packed. A family member is packed for them.
Speaker 2:I think that we have many goals that we can pursue in an intervention. Getting somebody into treatment is just one of them. Okay, getting them motivated, challenging their helplessness and their hopelessness, learned helplessness. Challenging that, because oftentimes people believe I can't get clean and sober, I can't get into recovery. I don't know if people have ever, you know, I don't know if somebody's made a genuine effort to quit, to quit drinking, to quit using drugs, but I know they've tried to manage their drinking or their drug use and they have failed in spectacular fashion for a long time, and so they might believe I can't get into recovery. Other people can, but not me. I want them going to treatment, believing in themselves. I want to offer the family relationships an opportunity to start to heal, to offer the family relationships an opportunity to start to heal, and so, after we get a yes, I'm going to ask our loved one if they'll listen to the rest of the letters, because we have more than one goal.
Speaker 2:So will you listen to the rest of the letters Interesting? I'm not only trying to pursue the goals of helping them find motivation to get well and to heal family relationships, I'm giving that person back, giving them some control back. So oftentimes addicts and alcoholics don't have a lot of control in their life, but they have a delusion that they're in charge and they're not.
Speaker 1:They're not, yeah, the addiction's in charge. Well, I think what you're saying is so powerful because I'm processing for myself and I had an intervention as well. Not quite exactly how you explained, but if someone were to sit down and I had a bunch of loved ones around and they wanted to read letters to me, I probably would be that guy that was like, hey, listen, I'll go Just to kind of make everyone happy Because I knew I needed it, but I probably would be the one that wouldn't want to hear the letters. And that's so powerful that you say that even if someone tries to get out in front of it, you still have them hear the letters.
Speaker 2:I asked Because there's more than one goal. You asked them if that would be okay, right, I love that.
Speaker 1:I think that's so powerful.
Speaker 2:So if I get a, yes, yes, I'll listen to the letters, I'm going to give them some more control. I'm going to say, okay, I understand that this can be difficult, and if you need a break, you just give me the nod and you get a break for a while. Or if we come to a point in time that you're just done and you don't want to hear any more letters, you let me know and then I say whose letter do you want to hear next? And I give them all of that control. They're guiding the process at that point right and we change the letter. So there is a section in the letter where, uh, a family member will say this is how your, your drinking, your drug use has hurt me. Okay, this is what scared this. I was in credit. I was scared to death at this moment. I was angry with you at this moment. I was so hurt when you didn't show up for my wedding. Whatever it is, we skip that. I'm not going to have them hear that in the intervention if they've already accepted treatment.
Speaker 2:That letter will follow them to the treating agency and a smart therapist will use that letter Right. So you know, two weeks into treatment somebody says, ah, my drinking wasn't that bad. A therapist will hand them a letter and say please read this letter out loud to the group, just to remind them that it was that bad letter. Out loud to the group, just to remind them that it was that bad. And instead of saying please go to treatment, I'm going to have my client, the family member, identify the gift they just received and they're going to say thank you. So a sibling can say you've always been my best friend and I've missed you so much. Thank you for going to treatment.
Speaker 1:I can see my best friend coming back into into my life and so, wow, I do that now I do that now I've got I mean I've got goosebumps because I'm just goosebumps, because I'm thinking about how much I want to say, but I feel sadness because there's a loss for me, right, and what you just described is so beautiful because you said and I was trying to hold it together when you said that, because that's exactly how I feel the gift of like man, I, I the sadness of the loss of man, I, I miss this relationship, I miss what, this and cause I remember what it, what it was and what could be and all those things and the way that you've framed this, steven. I just feel like, cause I was about to ask you. You've framed this, stephen. I just feel like because I was about to ask you how do you help families shift from fear to confidence in this process?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, you already answered the question.
Speaker 2:Well, it's more than that.
Speaker 1:Really, oh sure, keep going, keep going. I love this.
Speaker 2:Well, fear to confidence, and so I spend about seven or eight hours with the team before I ever meet our afflicted loved one right.
Speaker 1:And by team you just mean family friends, sure.
Speaker 2:Family members, friends. I've had pastors sit in on the team, so they're all my clients. So they're all my. They're all my clients. The, the addict, the suffering loved one is not my client, they're not my client, can't be my client. But so the intervention team all of those people are my clients, gotcha, uh. So I sit with them for seven or eight hours before the intervention. And we have two sessions, three and a half, four hours in length of piece. Wow. At the end of the first session, what I do is I hand them an outline for an intervention letter, I walk them through that outline and I coach them on how to write a letter In the next session. And this is also how my practice has evolved.
Speaker 2:We used to just read the letters One after another. We read the letters. I don't do that that way anymore. What I do now is I process the emotional experience that each individual had as they wrote the letter. So where were you sitting when you wrote the letter? Was it quiet? Can you go back to that moment, the introduction of the letter?
Speaker 2:I ask you to tell this person how much you love them and why they're unique and special to you. Can you remember how you felt when you wrote that down? And sometimes people will say I felt really sad. I felt really sad To write an introduction about how much I love you and why you're special to me. I ask them to write happy memories, three or four of their happiest memories. How did you feel? I felt happy, but I also felt sad. And so we can put that individual in touch with the fact that they've suffered a loss and they haven't allowed themselves to grieve that loss and maybe for years they're just stuck. I can't acknowledge the loss or grieve it, because that would be a betrayal, because my son is right over there, still walking and talking and breathing.
Speaker 2:Right but in a very real way. They have lost him, and so we go through that. Then everybody reads the letters and I coach them on how to read the letter about their voice, right, don't let your voice get angry, don't let your voice get hard, don't let your voice run away with you. Oftentimes somebody will start to read a letter and then they're just off to the races and what they're trying to do is outrun the emotions that go with the words they're reading. Yes, so I'll slow them down, slow down.
Speaker 1:That would be me. I would read it real fast. Yeah, because I don't want to feel it you would have to tell drew, you need to sit in this and you need to feel it right, because I would try, I would read it. So I'd be like the remember the Micro Machines man commercial where he's just going real fast. That would be me, yeah, yeah. Right, Because I don't want to feel this man.
Speaker 2:Sure. These are all of the side effects of your medication.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly Right, that would be me yeah.
Speaker 2:So the team will sit together and they will hear each other's letters, and it's not just the words. The team members are now emotionally authentic. They're present, they're vulnerable and that's the hook right. But almost always, at some point in the time we'll hear a very powerful letter and at the end of the letter I'll just stop and I'll say can you see your son saying no to that letter? And people will say no, I'm saying okay, we got them, they're going to treatment. Right, we got them. And so the family is very. That's how I build their confidence.
Speaker 2:At the end of the second session I often hear this. I often hear something like this man, I wish we could just go over there and do this right now. Yeah, they're ready Because I know it's going to work Right, right, because I know it's going to work Right, right, and so if my team shows up and they're confident, that helps the loved one, the afflicted loved one, feel safe. If my team shows up and they don't know, they're not confident and they're obviously jittery or scared, well then the afflicted loved one thinks these people don't know what they're doing. But if we show up and we are confident and we are strong and we're a cohesive team, then they're safe. Yeah, these people know what's what they're doing.
Speaker 1:They've got my back yeah, yeah, wow, that's amazing. I want to go back to could you unpack a little bit more of this multi-goal model, or how? I don't know how you would or how you explain it, but you talk about. You've got. What are those and how? How does that work with your, with your group?
Speaker 2:Sure, and so first, just a little bit about the relationship I have with the team members, each one a client, and one of the things that therapists owe we have this ethical obligation to give our clients is called the right to self-efficacy. Okay, which means I'm going to pursue your goals in a way that's acceptable to you, your goals in a way that's acceptable to you. And so that, having been said, you know, people call me on the phone and they'll ask me about interventions and I'll ask them you know, what do you want? And I don't really hear very often I want my son in treatment. Mom will say I want my son back. Or a spouse will say I want the person I married healthy and I want them back. So it's not just about getting them into treatment, it's about getting them into the appropriate treatment and setting them up for success. And so of course that's a goal into the appropriate treatment and setting them up for success. Okay, and so of course that's a goal, and that's the first goal. But I have to, since I owe my clients the right to self-efficacy I owe my clients. I have to protect their relationships in accordance to their wishes. Okay, and so I'm just.
Speaker 2:It goes without saying that when alcoholism or addiction comes into a family, every relationship suffers, not just relationships with the addict or the alcoholic. Mom and dad's relationship suffers, right, because both of them are feeling like they're failures and they're hopeless and they're helpless, and they're not always on the same page about how to handle this. And other children might be angry with mom and dad for enabling, or the family might be mad with somebody's spouse for enabling, and all of those relationships get dinged. So I need to protect those relationships in accordance to the wishes of each individual.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I'll hear a family member say of course I love her, but her behavior is so risky and destructive If something doesn't, if she doesn't get help quickly, I'm afraid we're going to lose her. So if she's angry with me for a while, I'm okay with that. Somebody else might say my relationship with this person is vital to me. I'm afraid I'm going to lose this relationship completely. So you need to protect my relationship. All of that having been said, I need to protect those relationships, but this is also an opportunity for those relationships to start to heal right and so Pete, so your job in this is it's not if I'm hearing you right, it's not a client as a whole.
Speaker 1:You're viewing each person that's going to be in that room as a client and you're wanting to know what their wishes are specific to.
Speaker 2:Except for the addict, the addict right. The addict cannot be my client, Right? Because if I owe him the right to self-efficacy and I say to him, what would you like to talk about? He's going to say I want to leave.
Speaker 1:Right right.
Speaker 2:And so he's not my client.
Speaker 1:But all the other individuals you're actually doing personal, not work, but you're wanting to know from each one what their intents are and goals.
Speaker 2:Each one has the rights of a client.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 2:That's cool, and so this is an opportunity for those damaged relationships to start to heal too. Everybody knows that if you have a wound and you want that wound to heal, the first thing you need to do is clean it out, and so family members get to show up and tell their truth. Oftentimes, somebody who's struggling with an addiction will maintain some delusions in order to give themselves permission to continue with this destructive behavior. And sometimes that delusion sounds like this it's my life, I can do what I want with my life. I'm not hurting anybody but myself, and that is such crap. Nobody's life belongs exclusively to them.
Speaker 2:Right, you're married, you have kids. You gave a big chunk of yourself to your wife and to your kids and siblings and parents. When you have a friendship, you give a little piece of yourself away, and the idea that I'm an island and I'm only hurting myself is crap. Yeah, so through the intervention, we take that delusion away from them. That delusion might be so pervasive. Somebody might believe this. I'm no longer a lovable person. Who could possibly love me? Look at the mess I've made of myself so maybe my family would be better off without me.
Speaker 2:Maybe, my maybe the best thing for me to do is is distance myself from the family and get through this life as quick as I possibly can. Right, I'm no longer lovable. Well, if these people show up and they demonstrate in an undeniable Mm-hmm ruin, you continue to ruin yourself, wow.
Speaker 1:So in a lot of ways, you're just you're exposing them to this idea of of how connected they really are to everyone else's human experience absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:There's a woman, uh, doctor, and I, I can't remember. She wrote a book called I'm struggling here and I'm going to give you a quote, and I can't remember who to credit this to. She says love makes us vulnerable. But we know that at the darkest moments of our lives, nothing but contact with those that we love will do. And that is true for a healthy human being. It is not true for somebody who's dependent upon drugs and alcohol. At the darkest moments of my life, when I was drinking, I walked right past my family and friends who wanted nothing but to take care of me, and I went to the bar Right. And so we're going to give those relationships, we're going to highlight those relationships, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's so good. One of your goals is or I think it is and correct me if not but to help the addicted loved one give voice to their existing motivation. How do you draw that out?
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm going to tell you a quick story, okay. So years ago I was working with a family in one of the wealthier townships around Denver. In one of the wealthier townships around Denver and on the intervention team we had mom and dad, there were three siblings and there was maternal grandpa, and we were talking about a woman who was an attorney. I'm going to give her a fictitious name, we'll call her Michelle, and Michelle was an attorney. Her life looked great from the outside, she was doing well professionally, but she wasn't showing up for family functions anymore and the family knew not to call her after five or six o'clock in the evening because she couldn't make any sense on the phone. So she's drinking too much. Now maternal grandfather was a retired Marine colonel and before the intervention, when I met him, he said these words to me. He said alcoholism is not a disease. Alcoholics are just a bunch of whiny little piss ants that don't have enough character to handle their liquor.
Speaker 1:Whoa.
Speaker 2:And my granddaughter does not need treatment. Treatment is a scam. She needs my boot in her ass. Wow, and that was the colonel. That's tough. So the colonel was one of the team members and I wasn't really sure I wanted him on the team. I thought he was going to sabotage us. But he was in and so he went through this. Eight hours, seven and eight hours training with me is I drill down and give families some really robust information about the disease of addiction a brain injury disease, an emotional disorder, a psychological disorder and I give them the ABCs. Now I'm doing that and I'm looking at the colonel and I couldn't read him at all. He would sit ramrod straight. He's taking notes. I don't see him. I have a hard time reading him.
Speaker 2:So they decided to surprise this young woman with the intervention. They invited her down to the family home on a Friday night. So she walked into the room and she was supposed to have dinner and there was food there, but she knew something was up, okay, and she was furious, and so the family members tried to embrace her. She allowed her mother to embrace her and her grandfather to embrace her. She wouldn't let anybody else hug her.
Speaker 2:Wow, they all sit down in their circle behind me and it's my job to get her to sit down and have the conversation. So I offer to shake her hand, I introduce myself, I say will you sit down and talk with your family? And she cursed like a Marine, right? So I hear I'm not going to blah, blah, blah. Sit down until I know what the blah, blah, blah you want to talk to me about. And I said we need to talk to you about your drinking. And she cursed some more Blah, blah, blah. Is this one of those damn interventions? Where are the cameras? Because a television show, right? I said oh, there are no cameras, we're not going to do that to you. And then she glares at the family over my shoulder and she's just looking daggers at them. I had also coached the family about eye contact. If she's giving you the stink eye, you will not maintain eye contact. Don't look at your feet, don't be submissive, but look somewhere else.
Speaker 1:Really. Why is that?
Speaker 2:I'm curious, Because if you stay with them you're kind of feeding their anger.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, and.
Speaker 2:I don't want them to be angry.
Speaker 1:Gotcha Right. So you're breaking eye contact with them, but you're, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. Also, when your family shows up to help you because you're in trouble, anger is not an appropriate response and we're just not buying into that, got it. So her head kind of pivots around and I can feel the my client, the family behind me, not giving her what she wants, okay. And then she sticks and she's looking at her grandfather that's where he's sitting and I thought, oh man, grandpa's the colonel is trying to scare, stare her down, yeah. And so I look over my shoulder. I almost don't recognize grandpa. He's slump, tear up, he's crying man. And I look back at Michelle and she looks at her shoes and I see a little tear form in her eye. And then she looks back up at me. I think she's going to sit down. She looks at me, she looks at grandpa. She says what took you so long? She knew she was in trouble with alcohol. She wanted help. Wow, she was trying to live up to her grandfather's ideals. This is not a disease, just be tough, right, right.
Speaker 1:and so when grandpa, showed up and put his broken heart on display, she said yes, right away. She wanted to go to treatment, and you almost didn't want him in the room because of how he showed up initially, but that's who she needed. But kudos to the grandpa for doing his own work and allowing him to show the vulnerability.
Speaker 2:I found out later that the grandpa was raised by an alcoholic. He got out of the family. At the end of high school he went to college ROTC. He left two siblings behind. One of those siblings, his younger brother, also became alcoholic and died in a one-car accident and there's a lot of suspicion that that may have been suicide. Okay, so for him to acknowledge alcoholism was a disease was really hard for him, right, because he was gonna have to forgive his father and he was gonna have to forgive his brother.
Speaker 1:Wow so he had so much of his own work that he was staring down, yeah yeah, what a powerful story. I mean it's like it's almost like I just got to sit in that for a minute because it's just so, it's so intense yeah it's so intense, but it's.
Speaker 1:It's beautiful. When you're talking about drawing out the, the motivations, I guess it's in it's part of why you're great at what you do, but everyone has. There's something different for everybody. Yeah, like it's part of why you're great at what you do, but there's something different for everybody. Yeah, it's hard to know that. That's what would have been the thing for her in that moment Right.
Speaker 1:So I'm guessing for you. There's just a part of it that's a little bit of I'm a musician, it's almost jazz. It's almost like you've done the training yeah. Yeah, some improv in there, right? Oh, there is, of course there is, because you didn't know that that was going to happen in that moment. I mean, you've got your training and you know how to handle those moments, but you didn't know how she was going to respond.
Speaker 2:The lesson for me in that experience was that the family has its own wisdom and the family knows the family and they know the addict. I know addiction, I know interventions, I have my area of expertise. I bring that to the table need to collaborate with the family because their area of expertise is their loved one and that family Right.
Speaker 1:Wow. And I was told no, no, grandpa needs to be here yeah and uh, but I wasn't feeling comfortable about it they knew that he was part of the part of the ticket to getting her to break and he was the patriarch of the family.
Speaker 2:She needed his permission the line. What took you so long?
Speaker 1:that's going to stick with me. I mean that I don't even have words to describe what comes up for me when you told that part of that story.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean it's just yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean just the. I think some of the responsibility, some of the I guess I just heard such loneliness and sadness in her voice when she said that you know just of like, how much she's been carrying for so long.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Almost like the relief like finally, sure, a rescue came Sure, the relief like finally, sure, a rescue came Sure. I mean it makes me have empathy, more empathy for these loved ones that are struggling in addiction. There's so much more than what meets the eye on the surface. Going on right, of course, yeah.
Speaker 2:Of course. Yeah, there are two reasons that interventions work. Somebody who's struggling, they know they're struggling. Yeah.
Speaker 2:There are two reasons that interventions work. Somebody who's struggling they know they're struggling, okay. They know they're in pain. They know the destruction that addiction brings into their life. They're living it and they do want help At some level. They want help. So that's one of the reasons interventions work. Level, they want help. So that's one of the reasons interventions work. The other reason is because, with a little bit of work, right the family if you love somebody who's struggling with an addiction, you have to survive their addiction and you build defenses and those defenses prevent you from showing up and being authentic and vulnerable in that relationship because you've been hurt so often. So a lot of the work I do is deconstructing those defenses so that the family can show up and be vulnerable and so with that kind of honesty and love that can be more powerful than the voice of the addiction for a short period of time right.
Speaker 2:Long enough to get somebody where they need to go.
Speaker 1:So I want to jump to a conversation around helping know when the loved one is ready to say yes, because I'm imagining there's going to be families and people listening or watching this that are kind of on the fence of like do they really need an intervention? Are they really struggling? Are they you know, I know you deal with this all the time that are, like even some of your first phone calls, I'm sure, like I don't know if this is what we need, but I just maybe, maybe you know it's like, can you help us identify maybe some signs or some some ways to know if our loved one, if this is an appropriate response for them?
Speaker 2:sure. And so how can you tell if somebody wants to change their life? You know, not necessarily go to treatment or but but they they are. If somebody is recognizing that my drug use or my drinking is is destructive to me and to my family, and here's some signs they start to lie about their drinking or their drug use and why they do that why people lie about drinking is shame. I'm ashamed of the way that I drink. That's motivation to get better.
Speaker 2:When people distance themselves from family, when people give up recreation or things that used to be a part of their lives that they really loved they don't go skiing anymore, they don't go fishing anymore right, alcoholism creates a depressive disorder. When people are depressed, they don't want to be depressed and once they get there, they're not drinking to feel better anymore. That ship has failed, sailed and failed. Yeah, failed, yeah, both. Yeah, they're drinking to not feel. And when you, when you want to be comfortably numb, you're numbing yourself from a lot of the negative consequences of your addiction, so it, the addiction, is feeding on itself. All of those are signs that people want to get better and they get worse, man.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure I lose relationships, I lose marriage, I lose a job, I get arrested, I go to jail. How could you not want to quit doing that?
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Are there scenarios by which an intervention is not appropriate? It's not the right time for one, would you ever advise hey, this is, this isn't the right next step, or I'm just curious about that?
Speaker 2:Sure. So I think that the one thing that we really have to be aware of is safety. One thing that we really have to be aware of is safety. Okay, and so if there are people who are, uh, who are violent, uh, in defense of their addiction, or have have been violent in the past with family members, uh, and so we're not going to do uh, uh, do an intervention there. Uh, they have guns in the house. Well, can we get them out of the house for the intervention? And not every intervention works right. That doesn't mean that the just because we don't get somebody to treatment doesn't mean that the intervention was a failure. Sure, because at the end of the day, everybody on the intervention team will know they left it all on the field. I have done everything I possibly can to help my loved one and they're out of my reach. Family members don't know that before the intervention they're always kicking themselves what more can I do? What did I do wrong? And so they get to know they've done everything they possibly can.
Speaker 1:And there's some piece that comes with that of like hey, I've.
Speaker 2:I hope so.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I've done what I could. Earlier this year no, I guess it was the end of last year, end of 2024, I facilitated an intervention for a young woman who was living the ski bum life and she was alcoholic and she was really sick. And the family came together. We did an intervention three and a half hours. We're trying to get her to go to treatment or at least go to a doctor, and she just wasn't having it. The best we could do is, at the end of that three and a half hours she said I'll come back and I'll talk to you some more tomorrow. Uh, the family had a good dinner together. I. I gave the family instructions right, neutral corners, enjoy each other's company, watch a football game, have dinner, don't talk about this anymore. Right, right, uh, and we'll get back together tomorrow. Uh, that Right, right, and we'll get back together tomorrow.
Speaker 2:That young woman took the intervention letters. She went to some friends who live in the metro area. She spent the night with some friends. The report is that she read those letters with her friends. She had made a decision to go to treatment. She went to sleep and she didn't survive the night. Right, and that's brutal. That's brutal. That is so hard. Uh, what killed me was I didn't get to speak to the parents for a couple of days. They just weren't in a place where they could talk to me. But when they did talk to me they said thank you. We know that we tried everything we could.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's heavy.
Speaker 2:And so you know, with those kind of consequences I rarely say this is not a good fit for an intervention. Sure, sure.
Speaker 1:Right, help us, and I'll be respectful of your time, but this is so valuable and so good. Help us as your clients when a loved one may say no. Okay, what do we do after that? Okay, help us navigate that.
Speaker 2:So back in the 70s and 80s there was a model of intervention called the Johnson Institute model and that was about consequences. If you don't accept treatment, we're going to protect your children from your drinking, You've got to move out of the house. We're not going to support you financially anymore, and that was kind of it. So those kinds of consequences I don't have any. Sometimes I do a professional intervention, so employers or partners in a law firm sit somebody down and say, okay, here's what's going on. If you don't accept treatment, you're going to lose your job. Or we're doing this, no problems there in that environment.
Speaker 2:Or the criminal justice system happens all the time. You will go to treatment or you will go to jail. Right, no problems there. But in a family that can be really destructive to the relationships. So oftentimes a family will be in a place where they are ready to say if you don't, we tried everything, we didn't want to get to this place in the intervention, but if you don't go to treatment, you have to leave the house.
Speaker 2:I've had people who were on probation for felonies, who have stolen checks and forged checks from their parents. If you don't go to treatment, you're going to be detoxing in jail. That's up to the family. There are interventionists who still insist that you have a bottom line or a consequence If they don't accept treatment. Mom, if they don't accept treatment, you're going to have to tell them they can't live in the house anymore. And if mom's heart isn't in that, you're violating that woman's right to self-efficacy and you are doing something really destructive, Because if mom's heart isn't in it, she might kick her child out of the basement for a few days or for a week but she's going to let them come back, and then the rest of the family is angry with her.
Speaker 2:She feels guilty and awful, and our addict, our alcoholic, has learned once again I can do anything I want and there won't be any consequences. So it's up to the family whether they're going to go down that road or not. If they do decide to go down that road, we're going to do it in a way where any anger attached to that healthier boundary which is a term that I like to use rather than consequence any anger. I want that anger directed at me. So I'm the guy that might deliver the bad news.
Speaker 1:You don't care if they're mad at you. You're trying to protect the client.
Speaker 2:Actually, if there's anger, I want it following me. If we need a bad cop in the intervention, I am the only bad cop ever. My relationship with that person, with the loved one, is disposable and temporary. The family members, their relationships, are vital and enduring. So I always tell my families this at the end of an intervention, right or sometime during the preparation I want you to imagine a year from after the intervention, your son, your spouse. They're sober and they're grateful and they say to you man, life is so much better now and thank you for helping me get into treatment. Thanks for the intervention, but, steven, that guy was kind of a jerk. You're going to agree with him. You will throw me under the bus, otherwise that anger comes in your direction, right, right.
Speaker 1:So I love that. Okay, I got one last question, sure, I love that. Okay, I got one last question, sure, and maybe we have to do a part two on this because this is so good.
Speaker 2:I have all the time in the world Okay good, good, good.
Speaker 1:Well, I want to just have you give some final thoughts on integrity in intervention. I know that's a big thing for you. It is, and I've heard that in everything you've said so far. I mean this integrous process that you're in. So you've already talked about it. But I wanted you just to, kind of high level, talk your philosophy as an interventionist, and what does that look like to have integrity, or even what does a lack of integrity look like in an intervention process?
Speaker 2:Sure, and so I think if there's a family who gets to a place in their life where they're looking for an interventionist, they're vulnerable and they can be taken advantage of, and oftentimes that happens and oftentimes that happens. And so I'm a big believer in certification for intervention interventionists. The state of Colorado does not certify interventionists, and so there are very few interventionists in Colorado who actually have a certification. There are a lot of people that claim they're certified and they might show you a piece of paper that is a certification that they took certain classes. This certifies that so-and-so took these classes in interventions. That's not a certification, and so I think the interventionist should be certified. Oftentimes people will hire interventionists.
Speaker 2:I had one family. They called me. They said we tried an intervention a couple months ago. That guy took a lot of our money. We don't have much money left. Will you help us? And we want to try again.
Speaker 2:And I happen to work on a sliding scale. I have never said no to a family that needs an intervention. So if I work pro bono, I work pro bono, I get to sleep at night. So if I work pro bono, I work pro bono, I get to sleep at night. So I worked with that family and their son was addicted to opiates. He was on felony probation. This was the guy that had stolen and forged checks from each of his parents and from a nonprofit organization that his grandfather was treasurer for. They had him on surveillance video stealing a very expensive bicycle from his sister and the family was ready to say if you don't go to treatment, you're going to go to. We're going to report you. Now the first interventionist flew in from out of state, charged them more than I've ever made for an intervention.
Speaker 2:The young man walked into that intervention. He was mean, he was cavalier, he kind of laughed and said I'm not doing this, I'm leaving. And he walked out of the house and the interventionist never mentioned you're on probation and you've been committing crimes. So we tried it later and the guy came into the house and he was mean and he was cavalier and he looked at me and he said I bet my family didn't tell you they tried this before. They tried this a couple of months ago and you're bigger than that last guy was, but you're older than he is too and I'm pretty sure I can kick your ass and I'm leaving, whoa. And I said you can leave if you want to. Cops know you're here and that stopped him Right. I said cops know you're here. Cops know that you're on probation. Cops have been informed that you've been forging checks. So you can walk out the door and you can detox in jail or you can sit down and talk to your family.
Speaker 1:Wow, I bet he sat down.
Speaker 2:Oh, he was a kind young man. He was very respectful after that.
Speaker 1:A little Jekyll and Hyde going on there. Yeah, that's funny.
Speaker 2:But that first interventionist robbed those people. He robbed them Right. And so another thing that kind of disturbs me is that oftentimes interventionists will facilitate an intervention and then they will say to the family when your loved one comes back from treatment, I'm going to be their sober coach. I love sober coaches, I love that. But I think that relationship has got to be a really tight relationship, right, and I think that if somebody's going to have a sober coach, they should be able to pick a sober coach that is going to fit their needs, is going to fit their needs. And so if you're starting out, if you're starting that relationship sober coach client and the client is already at least embarrassed or angry or hurt by the person who's going to be their sober coach.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can't be the bad cop if you got to turn around and be their coach, right, yeah?
Speaker 2:it doesn't work, and so I think that's all about creating an income stream for an interventionist. I don't think that that is an ethical practice at all. Yeah, and it, and that disturbs me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I've seen that go sideways.
Speaker 1:Well, I appreciate your, your honesty about that and it makes sense based on what you, just what you just unpacked for us in the role of the interventionist, is to be in sometimes the scapegoat Right, and that is. It is counter to what the sober coach needs to be.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So it makes total sense when you say it that way. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I, I'm, I have. I have people that, uh, that I facilitated their interventions and later on they became my friends Michelle, the attorney I talked about earlier. So there are people that I run across, Sure.
Speaker 1:Once they start healing, are they healthy and they see hey, I hated you back then but I'm so grateful for you now. I'm sure that happens. A fair amount, Right, yeah?
Speaker 2:But more often know, maybe more often they. They just don't want to have any more contact with me and I can understand that. Yeah, yeah, it's embarrassing yeah to be an addict and an alcoholic. It's embarrassing to have some guy out in the world who knows your secrets yeah and uh, and so I keep those secrets tight. Right, I don't talk about them.
Speaker 1:Stephen, thank you. You are welcome this has been incredible, incredibly helpful for me personally, for people listening or watching. I don't know that there's more important or profound work to be done on the planet than helping our loved ones get healing and get healthy. So, thank you for what you do.
Speaker 2:I'm just a piece of the puzzle. There are other. You know the people in treatment agencies who are doing the same work right, so yeah it ends up that what I you know, 25 years ago, what I did not want to do. I love this job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can tell You're tender when you talk about it, which I appreciate. It's not clinical in the sense of it's just cold and it's just whatever. Seeing your eyes filled with tears, even even after a couple of decades of doing this, that means something to me, and I mean something that people would work with, because it's it's more than just a job for you. I can tell this is what you've been called to do, and and and, uh it's. It's actually really, really meaningful to hear you talk about it, um, the way you do. So. Thank you for sharing it with us. We'll have to have you back If you're willing to come back.
Speaker 2:There's plenty more to talk about. There is. This is a big subject and I love talking about it, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well. Thank you, my friend. I appreciate it. Thank you Well. We appreciate you listening to this episode of the Valiant Living Podcast, and our hope is that it helped you feel educated, encouraged and even empowered on your journey towards peace and freedom. If we can serve you or your loved one in any way, we'd love to have a conversation with you. You can call 720-756-7941 or email admissions at valiantlivingcom. At Valiant Living, we treat the whole person so you not only survive, but you thrive in the life you deserve. And finally, if this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean a lot to us if you'd subscribe and even share it with your friends and family. You can also follow along with us on Instagram and Facebook by simply searching Valiant Living. Thanks again for listening and supporting the Valiant Living podcast. We'll see you next week.
