Empathetic Presence

Reclaiming Empathy as a Revolutionary Act with Nicole Bauman

• Lee Bonvissuto • Season 1 • Episode 5

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With so much dividing us right now, what if conflict could actually deepen our connections rather than tear us apart? I sit down with conflict facilitator and transformative justice practitioner Nicole Bauman to explore how empathy is not a weakness but a revolutionary tool for liberation.

Nicole shares their journey from conflict avoidance to seeing conflict as an opportunity for growth, revealing how self-empathy becomes the foundation for navigating even the most challenging conversations. Together, we explore why empathy has been "stolen from us" by systems of domination, how we can reclaim our capacity to feel as an act of decolonization, and practical ways to stay grounded in our humanity even when the world feels overwhelming.

My conversation with Nicole brought up both tender vulnerability and fierce wisdom if you are seeking to transform your relationship with conflict, in your community, workplace, or in movements for justice.

We discuss:

  • Self-empathy as the starting point for all conflict navigation
  • The weaponization of empathy and why disconnection serves power structures
  • Somatic practices for building safety and capacity in difficult conversations
  • Moving beyond binary thinking in a polarized world
  • Practical tools for staying embodied during conflict
  • The connection between personal healing and collective liberation

About Nicole Bauman:

Nicole is a facilitator working at the intersections of transformative justice, somatics, and nonviolent communication. They see building conflict resiliency as essential for the world to come and are passionate about creating spaces where personal and collective liberation feel possible.

Links from Nicole:

Timestamps:

  • [00:00] Introduction and Nicole's current work
  • [02:00] How Nicole uses their voice and shows up in the world
  • [06:00] Defining empathy and its role in conflict
  • [10:00] Rethinking conflict as opportunity rather than threat
  • [14:00] Cultivating safety in unsafe situations
  • [18:00] Is empathy learned or stolen from us?
  • [22:00] Empathy in corporate and dominating environments
  • [26:00] Nicole's offerings and upcoming programs
  • [31:00] Self-care and community care practices
Lee:

Welcome back to Empathetic Presence, a podcast to liberate our voices. I'm Lee Bonvissuto, your host, and we have a lot of conflict in our world right now. I am really conflict avoidant and like so many things, I'm a student of conflict. I am learning from teachers. I am practicing navigating conflict, and today I am honored to interview one of my teachers. Nicole Bauman, who is a facilitator in the worlds of transformative justice, somatics and nonviolent communication. They see building conflict resiliency as an essential part of living in the world to come. And they are passionate about creating spaces where personal and collective liberation feel possible. Welcome, Nicole. I'm so glad that you're here.

Nicole Bauman:

So good to be here, Lee, really excited to be in this conversation with you.

Lee:

I was just thinking about how much I've learned about conflict from you as someone who is naturally very conflict avoidant.

Nicole Bauman:

You are not alone. Not alone in that at all, with you in it. In fact, part of the reason that this is the work that I do, un shockingly.

Lee:

I know, I know. And we all teach what we need and I love that. And so I would love to hear, Nicole, how do you use your voice in this moment and in general?

Nicole Bauman:

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that question. Just, feeling into what is live today and some of how, what's coming up in this moment is just where I am this week and what I'm up to this week, which is feeling connected to some of the work I've been doing around organizing for a free and hosted a potluck and fundraiser in my local community last night and really feel yeah, just like feel the tenderness of what's happening right now. And parenting. I have a seven and a half year old kiddo, and it's one of the places where I get to have the most consistently challenging opportunities to practice empathy and what I bring to the world and how to be in my values around that. It's always there. A lot of what I'm up to is really supporting folks in conflict, in life, therefore in conflict, the intention to have a little more a toolkit and a little more capacity to show up to conflict with more hope for it to be generative, and that really for the sake of collective liberation. So having seen over and over again in my own life, in movement spaces and so many, so many places, how often conflict really just like breaks down our beautiful collaborations. I do work one-on-one. I'm with groups and in all kinds of ways to try to allow us to actually work together and be together in the ways we need.

Lee:

Wow, Nicole, and this is why I wanted to talk to you because this moment of conflict and historical conflict, conflict with our little ones. You know, hearing you talk about parenting is this consistently challenging place to practice this work and what first really attracted me to your work and I had wanted to study nonviolent communication for quite some time and to learn more about conflict navigation, but hearing you talk about it a lens of undoing domination

Nicole Bauman:

Mm-hmm.

Lee:

and, you know, to think about, you know, Palestine and what we're witnessing there and the ongoing generational historical domination and oppression. And so the way that this carries through so much of your work, and it is so essential right now that we build tools for managing conflict. And one of the things that I loved in starting to work with you is realizing that empathy is at the core. And I just like wanna talk about that word Yeah. Like what does that word mean even mean to you?

Nicole Bauman:

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Talking about the word feels really important'cause I think the word gets misunderstood or just used in different ways by different people in different contexts. And I think what feels really important to me is that it's like being with, like really being with what is true for whether that's for myself or for another person. And one of my teachers talks about really making the important distinction between empathy and agreement, which feels really important inside of this political moment. I can have empathy, yeah, I can have empathy actually for why the Israeli government is what it is doing to Palestinian communities right now. just like an incredible legacy of trauma inside of Jewish community. Of course, that is one small piece of it. There's also major funding from the country that we live in. So there's like these other aspects, but empathy, I guess what I'm pointing to there is like having empathy for why someone might choose to take a violent action is really seeing that behind every action there's a beautiful attempt to meet a human need. And just because I have empathy for that doesn't mean that I agree with that choice or condone an act that does harm or violence. And that's a hard one for a lot of us and I think what allows us to stay human is being able to find that capacity to hold both things at the same time.

Lee:

Wow. This is why I wanted to speak with you and before we even like dive into empathy, you know, there's this spaciousness that you have when you're facilitating in this space in a conversation. There's a spaciousness that I've been aware of that you bring when you're facilitating and when you're holding space, that almost like creates the empathy. You know, it, it's that spaciousness and I just wanted to acknowledge that because it's between the words, it's nonverbal, it's who we are as human beings, and you know. So much of what you just shared speaks so deeply because the, the first time that you and I worked together was probably October, 2023. And for myself, you know, as a person with Jewish lineage lost in the Holocaust, I've always been like deeply obsessed with how can the Israeli government treat palestinians this way, you know, and seeing it with my own eyes and talking to Palestinian friends and that distinction that you just said of we can acknowledge empathy without agreeing is, is really opening my mind right now.

Nicole Bauman:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It is not in our culture at all. It's not what most of

Lee:

right.

Nicole Bauman:

possible. There's like including on the left where there's all kinds of emphasis around inclusion, et cetera. We are taught a very hard, like right, wrong, and bad, in and out, and I don't think it's serving us and not that

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

to have clarity about like our values and our integrity and our commitment for me, at least, a commitment to life and liberation. But it is important to me to also hold space for the humanity of folks who are doing violence, because I also do violence and harm That's healing work that I have done personally inside of nonviolent communication and empathy is like turning that on myself and

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

decolonizing my own internal voices and my own internal judgments and really actually like connecting more to my own beautiful needs and all the ways that I am trying to meet them, some of them very misguided. Some of the strategy is like really not actually meeting my needs or at the cost of other needs. And

Lee:

Wow.

Nicole Bauman:

starting with empathy for the self is a lot of what we practice and the classes that I teach and facilitation that I do and coaching that I do.

Lee:

Yeah, that was one of my observations from your work, and I worked with you in this group space of working on conflict in late 2023, and it was that awareness of, oh, I thought we were gonna really jump into conflict, but it started with internal empathy. It started with building empathy and compassion for ourselves. And I also love what you just shared because I, I really believe that we're just in such a binary society and it's good or bad. Right? And even as a person, I, I default to the binary so much. Right? And

Nicole Bauman:

totally.

Lee:

so I wonder about like, how do you, how do you think about conflict in general?

Nicole Bauman:

How do I think about conflict in general? I still am terrified of it, even though it

Lee:

Yeah, really.

Nicole Bauman:

I do, so I just wanna like hold so much compassion and dignity for myself, for all of us who are like so have, have experienced such dysfunctional and harmful conflict. Like of course we're scared of it. Of course some of us have a big way where we are like conflict avoidant and some folks, the, this language here comes a little bit more from the somatics background that I'm trained in, of strozzi and generative somatics and embodying racial justice. But we talk about towards, or an against, or an away as different ways we show up. And they're all beautiful strategies that we have adapted to, um, try to stay safer inside of conflict moments. Most of us don't actually have the tools to, to move with generativity and actually see conflict as an opportunity for more connection. And that's really the practice that I have been in and is a lifelong practice of choosing to that paradigm shift. I think really like what if conflict was actually an opportunity for deepening learning and connection instead of something to run away from and, and I see it happening for people and for myself as I practice more. And I think that self empathy, like you said, I start there in classes because it's self empathy, is, is resourcing and healing and it

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

capacity, more bandwidth to have genuine empathy for another when we offer that to ourselves and to be able to be with a wider range of emotion, expression, intensity to just like conflict so often asks

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

expand, right? To expand what we think is possible for us to hold, to hear, to receive, to expand our perspective. And that's really hard to do if we don't feel safe enough centered enough, held enough to know that we're not gonna be obliterated or like lose our belonging, lose our

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

Yeah.

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

through being with with another person. Yeah.

Lee:

way you talk about the expansiveness of conflict, which is so different than I, than I think our societal understand my own per my personal, when I hear the word conflict, I constrict, I, I want to protect. And then hearing you talk about this baseline of safety, right?

Nicole Bauman:

Mm-hmm.

Lee:

And I'm thinking about this so much right now. And so how do we move into conflict when we don't feel safe? Or how do we cultivate safety in conflict?

Nicole Bauman:

Yeah, these are such good questions. Such important questions such as you name, just like really relevant questions and I think, again, this is where self empathy can come in and for me, as I probably said many times in the class you were in, empathy is really a body-based practice. For me, a somatic practice in that we are tuning in to what are we feeling. So I'm trying to think of an example if I'm like choosing whether or not I want to like go film law enforcement situation happening on my street. There's like a lot happening in my body as I decide whether or not to do that as white person in a very mixed race neighborhood, as a gender fabulous, kind of person.

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

where I, where I can start is like, first I wanna offer the little caveat of, we wanna be real. I wanna be really clear that in situations of like overt violence and abuse, like let's take care of ourselves and remove ourselves from a situation and keep ourselves safe and keep each other safe as much as we can. And in this example, where I'm going is like me slowing down enough to feel my own sense of, um whatever risk, fear, activation is happening in my body, anticipating whatever risk could be very possible and getting to actually honor it and like notice what it's pointing me towards, like what does this tightness in my chest or this constriction in my belly, or a feeling of like curling into myself, telling me about what I need and in this case, there's probably many needs up, but slowing down enough to be like getting curious. There's something about safety there. Something about belonging and my own dignity and if when I can be in a regular practice of slowing down and kind of like honoring and nourishing those things for myself, and then also being live in the moment able more and more to notice what is old, like what of my sense of lack of safety is fear-based or from the past, and can I reassure my literal nervous system right now that there's enough safety, I have enough safety to stay. And that's like a practice over time and it's gonna look different for different bodies in different situations obviously, but that, that's where self empathy kind of meets somatic practice. Trauma healing is like reestablishing our felt sense of safety and belonging enough to show up to intense situations, to literally put my body on the line if I so choose for sake of my community.

Lee:

Yep. And a lot of us are, are making these sorts of decisions daily right now, and, and it feels really, you know, to have even language around this, Nicole is so helpful. You know, even just slowing down. And that's been my own somatic practice of like, oh, my life is actually slowing down as I can be more aligned, really, you know, brain and body And I just love that, that self practice as a starting point, really powerful.

Nicole Bauman:

Yeah. Yeah. It really is a reprogramming. I think that

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

little by little over over time with the repetition of practice and it does shift. And like

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

coming into my classes, like you named, people are like, give me the script for how to do conflict better. And that's not what I give people. And I hear back from so many people that giving them a tangible empathy practice does make a big difference.

Lee:

Oh yeah. It's changed my life quite a bit, and so much of what we did together was really like, I, I brought it to my, my personal life, my community, my neighbors, you know, using it every day of just this practice of checking in and slowing down. I always wondered, is this taught, you know, or are we born with it? Is it then disrupted by oppressive systems of domination? Or is it nurture? Is it nature? Is empathy learned? And I wonder what you think about that.

Nicole Bauman:

Yeah, love these questions and I don't know all the answers scientifically or neuroscientifically speaking, but I know my own experience and what I have observed around me, which is that people can and do learn empathy and Very actively been dominated out of us in all kinds of ways, socialized out of us. That our brains were like evolved to flourish and learn best in relationality, in like attuning and resonating with one another. And that, that's empathy is like feeling with other humans and feeling for our interconnectedness and a lot of that we lose a lot of that and lose is like an in inadequate word. It's like really stolen from us. It's a cultural wound and a severance, I think, and, and we can, we can regrow it, is like the beauty of neuroplasticity. And Sarah Peyton is one of my teachers and she's, she, she started studying nonviolent communication decades ago and then did a deep dive that became her whole career basically studying the neuroscience of what is empathy and how does it work. And her work has been so transformative to really help me really trust the ability of our brains to lay down these new neuro pathways and actually grow more ability to heal with empathy, with empathic presence and resonance.

Lee:

Empathic presence and resonance. It's part of our humanity, you know, and I know that, and yet, you know, Elon Musk said that empathy is the greatest weakness of western civilization. And Hannah Arendt apparently said similar things, that seeing the lack of empathy is always the first sign of society being broken apart and dominated and oppressed. And it must be really powerful if people are so set on stealing it from us, as you so beautifully said. And, why is it so powerful that people are set to take it away from us?

Nicole Bauman:

Mm-hmm. Huh. Yeah, I feel the grief that comes up as you ask that question, as you bring that

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

because of the way this is being weaponized right now for, uh, in service of billionaires.

Lee:

Yep.

Nicole Bauman:

Continuing to amass power at, at the expense of all of us. And like truly, I think that is only possible to, to perpetuate if you have stopped feeling

Lee:

Wow.

Nicole Bauman:

like, I guess that that's, that's where I'm landing. Like I don't know

Lee:

Right.

Nicole Bauman:

and I say that, I'm like, oh yeah, and like me too, like my life depends on an immense amount of extraction and violence and colonization that I've benefited from every day and

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

my ability to face that and feel that is what helps me reclaim my life.

Lee:

Wow.

Nicole Bauman:

and is like fuel for doing something about it. And so I often talk about there's one full you may remember, where we just talk about feelings and the radical act of re-accessing feeling and body sensation as an act of decolonizing

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

because it serves those in power if we don't feel, and if we don't feel, um, the heartbreak of harm that's being done, we can, we're much more likely to go along with. Go along with anything if we don't see how we're impacted.

Lee:

Yeah, so much of what you're saying reminds me, most of my clients are in corporate settings and so many people who come to see me, first of all, they're getting this feedback that they need more executive presence. Which is just coded language for, you know, professionalism and at work, but it's also they're being told that they're too sensitive or that they feel too much or that they have too much empathy and so what are people who maybe want to continue in those environments, in those dominating environments? How can they still access empathy or leverage empathy when they're being told that it is a weakness?

Nicole Bauman:

Yeah, so painful. Like I just really feel in listening to you name all of that, how crushing these systems are, like how they many systems, even the most well-intentioned settings, most of our businesses, corporations, like justice minded spaces are still set up with a lot of domination mechanisms in place that don't make space for us to bring our full humanity. And yeah, there's a number of layers coming up there with that question. I think some of what I'm feeling is just like, how do we keep making space to grieve that that kind of narrative or reality is, is true for some of the corporate folk that you're working with.

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

And making space for grief and rage and feeling is like a whole other piece of my work and practice and exploration now it feels very connected, what we're talking about. And the other piece that was coming through as you were offering that inquiry, I'm just feeling for the words. It's. How do we also get choiceful like contained in a good way around when and how we are expressing what, um, and, and when we are offering empathy to others, really remembering that we wanna be in choice and within our capacity around that too, or that's another form of violence

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

Over extension is often doesn't land as empathy when

Lee:

Right.

Nicole Bauman:

is not centered.

Lee:

I love that phrase that you shared, which is being in choice. And I've heard you say that in your trainings too. And I think that is, you know, our, our agency, our ability to make choices, which anxiety and these silencing systems can take away so much. Right. And the connection of grief. And can you talk a little bit more just about your work in general? And you mentioned grief, and I know you do conflict navigation work. How can folks engage with your work?

Nicole Bauman:

Hmm. Yeah, thanks for that question. I, I am really excited about a lot of the work that I am offering right now and really grateful for that to be true. I had a friend ask me recently about like, how are you feeling about your work in this moment? And I was just like, actually, I feel even more convicted that what I am up to is necessary. Given That we are living in, that continues to explode in so many ways. so I, these classes we keep referring to are one of the things that I offer that it are a really wonderful way for folks to start to connect with my work. So Navigating Conflict is an eight week online course that will actually happen again this fall, starting at the beginning of September through the Good Work Institute. And all of that can be linked in the show notes. And then navigating feedback is like a deeper dive with some of that same toolkit, which is nonviolent communication, plus somatics, plus undoing domination, undoing oppression. A focus on giving and receiving feedback with care. And that will be happening later this fall. And I do one-on-one coaching with folks too. And some of that is more explicitly conflict coaching, where we might be working on a live active conflict thing or communication and conflict tools and skills. And then I also do healing centered coaching, that incorporates a lot of somatics and embodiment and is a container in which I support folks around their own healing for the sake of healing and transformation. And especially working with folks who are doing liberation work, justice work in some form to really able to show up more fully to collective liberation. And, and then I do a variety of other work. I'm running my first year long cohort and getting ready to launch a second year of a cohort called Weaving New Ritual with a co-facilitator. And this is a year long program that's for white folks of Christian Lineage who are using the Wheel of the Year to reclaim ritual fluency and also excavate like what of this Christian lineage, might we want to call forward for the sake of collective liberation and what might we need to compost as we work on unraveling whiteness? we launched last summer not knowing how timely this work would be as we see nationalism the rise. So for me, as someone who left the Christian Church spaces I grew up in a long time ago, uh, as a queer person for a variety of reasons, it has been incredibly powerful to consider what does it mean for me to actually say this story is mine too, and there's a different narrative possible here, and I am not, I am not letting the right define this, this tradition. And there is so much liberatory narrative inside of this lineage. Um, so up to that work with like other folks, other folks of Christian lineage and like what does it mean to really also then see our like supporting folks of white Christian lineage as Kin and to like learn how to empathy and connection inside of some of those most challenging spaces, including with my own relatives, you know? I wanna speak the name of Susan Raffo one of my elders and teachers, a white queer person who just turned 60 and just walked across the country last year. She is someone I'm really looking to and being inspired by, as she's done a lot of thinking and working and feeling around what does it mean to like really be in that work of presence and connection and empathy those who are hardest other white people to to be with.

Lee:

I'm so grateful for you doing this work, all of the work, but also the self work. I think that you are really creating models for how we all must do this work. And you know, so many of my Black and Muslim and Palestinian friends have talked about for the last two years how essential it is that people who share a Jewish lineage and white people are talking about this. And so, finding ways to do this work within our own communities. The unraveling, that word unraveling, unraveling ourselves and our own narrative and our own habits and the continue the domination we witness in so many different levels. So I'm just grateful to you for doing that work and modeling it.

Nicole Bauman:

Mmm. Yeah. Thank you. I am, I'm so grateful to get to be offering it and holding space and being in that work with myself, with others.

Lee:

I think it's really important also for listeners to hear how we're all caring for ourselves right now. And it's a hard question, right? You know, it's this pull between like wanting to be really involved and to do so much, and then really knowing that we need rest and we need healing and safety. And so Nicole, what are you doing to care for yourself right now?

Nicole Bauman:

Mm. Thank you for that question. We really do need it. And yeah, I, gardening is one of the big ones for me. And, um, spending a lot of time digging in the soil and tending plants and being outside. I go and walk and hike on the river trail here where I live regularly and in other places. Um. And spending time with my kid who's just like a really great invitation into absurdity and play and like shifting out of like I, and it feels so important to hold the complexity of I now more than ever, we need all of us to keep showing up.

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

like not at cost to ourselves. So how are we, especially inside of like privilege and self care culture really

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

holding nuance around like, yes, we must slow down and we must care. For ourselves and each other. We must be nourished and also in a way that like resources us to continue and to be in the flow. And that challenges grind of capitalism that says

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

don't wanna participate in that even while we all still must survive and therefore here we are participating. Um, so kid time helps me kind of like transcend all of the nonsense and. That is good. I also weave willow baskets and that's another way of kind of transcending the nonsense is getting really fixated in the physical craft and the plants and Yeah.

Lee:

incredible. Incredible.

Nicole Bauman:

And

Lee:

And that's all connected?

Nicole Bauman:

too.

Lee:

Yeah. Oh, grief ritual.

Nicole Bauman:

yeah.

Lee:

Wow.

Nicole Bauman:

Holding, holding, like being in the collective healing work is part of taking care of myself and others also, and

Lee:

Yeah.

Nicole Bauman:

I'm getting ready to host a queer healing retreat on land this weekend, and I've just been preparing herbal bundles and tea and a grief ritual time, but also like we're gonna just rest and relax and go swimming and piece together and community.

Lee:

These moments for all of the range of emotions that we're gonna feel, you know, and again, it's not binary, it's really expansive.

Nicole Bauman:

Right.

Lee:

Nicole, I'm so grateful just to know you and to learn from you and for the work that you put out in the world and the way that you can really live in the spaciousness of it all and the complexity of it all. I'm really grateful to you.

Nicole Bauman:

Taking that in. I appreciate that. Just, yeah, so grateful to get to have the space with you also for the work that you're up to as well.

Lee:

Thank you, Nicole.

Nicole Bauman:

You're so welcome. Thank you.

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Lee Bonvissuto

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