Love Intervention?

Interventions are a counseling technique designed to urge an addict to get into treatment for various problems including but not limited to alcoholism, gambling, drug abuse, obesity and other addictive tendencies. Family and friends often prepare in advance to confront the addict with their wishes for them to get help which usually is followed by a list of consequences or losses that the addict will have to endure if they decline help. These usually range from a cutoff of financial help and sometimes are as extreme as banishment from the family or complete disassociation by friends. Some statistics say that interventions are approximately 90% to 95% effective as a wake up call to the addict that allows them to enter and complete treatment.

But what about addictions that are harder to understand and not so obvious? Love addiction is becoming one of the fastest growing addictions and not as easily recognized. The victim does not stick a needle in their arm or steal for drug money. They do not consume alcohol and slur their words. They do not spend hundreds of dollars in casinos or crack houses or binge and purge their food. No, these addicts have a far more socially tolerated problem that doesn't often instigate family or friends to intervene and demand the addict accept help.

These addicts use their mates as their drug. They experience the same spirit shattering self-hatred as the most hardened drug/alcohol addicts. They are attempting to use the other person to medicate and distract them from the emotional pain of their life, sometimes repeating the cycle over and over with the same object of their misguided affection. Usually, this pain is associated with early childhood experiences such as abandonment and attachment needs.

If you have a family member or friend in the throes of this type of destructive relationship, it is as unbearable as watching them commit slow suicide with drugs, etc. They will accept lowered standards of treatment due to their dangerously low self worth. These relationships are usually one sided, often emotionally and/or physically abusive and cause severe developmental and financial loss.

So how does one approach a love addict and persuade them to enter professional counseling so that they may get to the bottom of their childhood abandonment issue and break this cycle for good? They are intensely defensive about the topic and may defend the relationship as if their very life depended on it. And they very likely believe it does.

An intervention for this disorder can be done in much the same way as an intervention for drug or alcohol abusers.

1. Gather a small group of family and friends beforehand to discuss their strategy.
2. Have all concerned parties write down their feelings about how this destructive behavior has affected them and what boundaries will beset forth for the future should the addict deny help. For example: No more listening to the addict's problems in regard to their relationship. No more offering a shoulder to cry on.
3. Have a pre-planned counselor or inpatient treatment center lined up in the hopes that the addict chooses to get help.

On the chosen day of the intervention have all parties waiting for the addict in a controlled, peaceful setting. Explain to them that they are not being ambushed but that they are loved. One by one each member reads to the addict all of the negative things that their destructive behavior has caused in their life and why they believe the addict needs intensive help to break the cycle.

After all feelings have been expressed the members will ask the addict to seek help. If the addict declines, the members will move on and commit to the “tough love” stage which is to adhere to the new boundaries so that they will no longer be dragged down or participate in the addict's behavior. If, however, the addict agrees to help they will immediately be entered into a therapeutic environment to begin recovery.