The development of this interaction model of crisis communication shows content and crisis feeling as separate but interrelated aspects of the communication loop.  In actual crisis situations however, it may be helpful to think about content and feeling as parts of a message clarification process.  The individual has ideas and feelings that he wants to communicate to us.  He somehow puts these into verbal and nonverbal messages that we have to interpret.  How do we go about decoding or interpreting his messages?  We want to know what he means and how he feels.  As we begin to communicate with him then, we might deal with each message by first clarifying the meaning and feelings.  We could say to him, I hear you saying that things happened this way.  We then restate what we understood him to have said.  Having done that, we say, If that is what you meant, it seems like you feel this way about it, and tell him how we think he feels.  He has given us a message, and we have responded by telling him what we understood him to have meant and how we think he feels about it.  This helps him think about what he meant and what was involved in the situation as well as getting him to focus specifically on his feelings.  If we have accurately understood and read his feelings, he will go on to give us another message.  If not, he will clarify his meaning or feeling.  With each message, we can go through this process of restating the meaning and feeling, letting him clarify and restate if we were wrong, and continuing back and forth until we really do understand.  More importantly, this process lets him know that we understand.  To push the point one step farther, we can see that the process of message clarification helps him think more clearly about what is going on and helps him clarify his own feelings.  He has used our skill and ability to enhance his own ability to understand and think through his thoughts and feelings.  To summarize the idea of message clarification, we want to be sure that we understand both the meaning and feeling dimensions of each message.  We accomplish this by restating the message in our own words and asking the individual if we have accurately caught his meaning.  In addition, we reflect back to him our understanding of his feelings about the particular incident, person, situation, and so on.  This gives him an opportunity to see if we really do understand how he feels.  If we have misread his feelings, he can clarify them for us.  We will continue the process of restating and reflecting the meaning and feeling of the message until the individual agrees that we really do understand what he meant and how he feels.  We will not go on to another subject or question until we are sure that we really do understand what is being said now.  I hear you saying…, and you seem to feel….  I hear you saying…, but I’m not sure how you feel about it.  You seem to feel…, but I’m not sure what you think about it.  If we continue the process of message clarification until we understand both the meaning and the feeling of the message, we have reached a point of honest, informed empathy.  This level of understanding and empathy is the major goal of crisis communication. …

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