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IN SUMMARY

In the course of your crisis intervention work, more often than not, the crisis will be related to severe conflict or deterioration in the interaction between the individual and one or more other people.  Crisis usually has to do with problems in relationships between people.  Everyone has some degree of difficulty in interpersonal relationships.  However, this difficulty usually does not reach crisis proportions.  Sometimes, however, the conflict and disruption in a relationship is so intense that it really is a crisis situation.  People unfamiliar with the social interaction approach to crisis intervention, and having little understanding of the crisis communication process, as well as not being familiar with the process of building relationships, will usually be inclined to try to fix or repair the crisis relationship.  To do this successfully would require insight into and understanding of the life process, building process, meaning/valuing process, and blueprint process for each individual and for the relationship, as well as an ability to maintain this insight and understanding as the relationship changes over time.  That insight and understanding would, of course, need to combine with a complex array of skills for dealing with the intensely complicated maze.  Finding this unusual level of insight, understanding, and skill in one counselor or therapist is theoretically possible but is about as likely to happen as finding a chef who can “save” the stew after it has been severely burned.  For most people involved in crisis intervention, it is definitely more reasonable to assume that the really bad relationship is nonrepairable.  Does that mean there is no hope for the individuals?  Of course not.  Instead of trying to fix or repair their old relationship, your skills and energies can be used to help them build a new relationship.

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