September 2015 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 9
Promotional feature
A decade of experience has shaped Intuitive
Thinking Skills’ successful approach to
attitude change, as
Peter Bentley
explains
Challenging attitudes
IN 2003
, I was coming to the end of a week-long
alcohol detox in Manchester’s Smithfield Centre. I was
determined to never return there and it was apparent
to me that the best way to ensure that was to stop
drinking and using drugs for good.
I got a fabulous detox, professionally delivered and
with a refreshingly short waiting time to start. What
happened afterwards however was far less impressive.
Newly detoxed, I leapt into the post-detox
services that were available in 2003. These were
pretty much exclusively the fellowships and a kind of
quasi fellowship daily support model. There was a
unifying thread that ran through all the services then
– namely that you were a patient, that ‘treatment’
would take a long time and that there were no
guarantees. This was when I was first told that I had
a ‘relapsing condition’, that people rarely conquered
the problem and that I should not give myself a hard
time if I failed.
What was happening in front of my very eyes was
the state trying to replace substance dependency
with service dependency, and to this day I have
proudly railed against the duplicity of this.
So here we are, ten years on, and in May 2015
Intuitive Recovery changed its name to Intuitive
Thinking Skills to celebrate its anniversary and to
reflect on the increased number of courses we deliver
across the UK.
We realised our speciality was attitude change,
whatever that attitude may be. Dependence is a
curious word, often used to justify the place that a
person is in rather than the solution to help move
them on. All our courses are designed to enable a
person to gain independence – not just from their
own negative behaviours but also from public
services they are engaged with.
We believe we are a truly unique organisation,
entirely peer-led and promoting abstinence,
education, training, employment and self-
determination within our learners. The fact that we
have been there and got the T-shirt means that we
deliver hard-hitting, no-nonsense education which
cuts through the treatment and recovery jargon that
has become so prevalent.
Our staff are all graduates of our programmes and
have left services, fully ‘recovered’, employed and
enjoying the world of work and all the benefits it brings.
The message? Change looks and feels great and is
entirely do-able.
BELIEFS
Whether it is beliefs and attitudes that support future
substance use, inactivity in employment and
education, or negative attitudes to community
engagement, our programmes all target these beliefs,
presented as negative thoughts, outlooks and attitudes
and allow learners to see that they create their own
obstacles through their learned thought patterns.
Once people learn that we all have negative
thoughts and that we are all selective in choosing
which of these we act upon, change becomes easy.
After a little practice, the new set of choices becomes
second nature.
OUR PROGRAMMES
INTUITIVE RECOVERY
An accredited educational programme that promotes
abstinence as achievable and easy to maintain.
Delivered over six sessions, it provides skills and tools
to recognise and control addictive desires and to take
responsibility for choices, behaviours and change.
Install a plan to never use again; it feels great to know
you will never go back.
SKILLS-TU EMPLOYMENT
Our accredited educational course designed to skill
people into employment. The course targets
attitudes of dependence on state benefits and
low or unrealistic aspirations regarding future
employment. We deliver in a classroom setting
over a short yet intensive period with follow-
up sessions supported by sensible yet
challenging targets.
THINKING COMM-UNITY
Thinking Comm-Unity is an educational course
aimed at improving any individual’s
knowledge, sense of belonging and
understanding of their community. By
recognising and valuing each person’s skills
and abilities, we demonstrate how these can
be coordinated to give people the power and
responsibility for their future.
The course helps to identify how attitude,
knowledge, skills and abilities can affect not
only your life but the lives of those around you.
By examining different types of communities,
we gain an understanding of the importance
of diversity. Through community-focused personal
development, we achieve our goals while overcoming
challenges and helping to improve the lives and
wellbeing of others.
KEY INTERVENTIONS TOOLS
KIT training offers a simple and effective tool aimed at
complementing or refreshing the knowledge and skills
of professionals, volunteers or mentors. In fact this is for
anybody wishing to gain insight and wanting to
improve their work with individuals involved within
drugs and alcohol, back to work, criminal justice and
social housing sectors. The key objectives of this
training are to both raise insight and awareness and
encourage independent action towards abstinence,
desistance, rehabilitation and employment. Partnership
focused, we bring together key stakeholders within an
area and look at how system-wide structures can cause
blockages and obstacles for our shared service users.
Peter Bentley is managing director at Intuitive
Thinking Skills
For more information, visit
or email
‘The fact that
we have been
there and got
the T-shirt
means that
we deliver
hard-hitting,
no-nonsense
education
which cuts
through the
treatment and
recovery
jargon that
has become
so prevalent.’
Intuitive Thinking Skills – The Specialists in Attitude Change
