Part III Relationship Building

Chapter 10 Relationships that Fail

To this point, we have focused on the crisis intervention process and have developed an understanding of crisis communication.  Relationship building moves our knowledge and skills in working with people one step farther.  As we have seen, crises always involve conflict in the interaction between individuals and their total situations.  In the majority of crisis situations with which you are likely to deal, the conflict will be between the individual and one or more people.  That is to say, the crisis will involve conflict within one or more relationships.  Typical conflict situations reflect marital difficulties, problems in parent-child relationships, employer-employee difficulties, trouble between friends, and so on.  More often than not, serious interpersonal difficulty will be a central part of the crisis, and a serious upset or disturbance within an important relationship will be seen as the precipitating event.  It will, then, be helpful to look at interpersonal relationships, how they deteriorate or “blow up,” and how people can go about building relationships with less conflict that do not end up in crisis.