The podcast for people who've felt unseen and the organizations brave enough to ask why.
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Please Mute Your Trauma is a workplace culture podcast exploring what happens when employees are expected to remain professional, productive, and emotionally composed inside systems that may be harming them.
Hosted by Tiffany Collins, Navy veteran, HR professional, doctoral researcher, and founder of WakeMark Advisory, the show examines workplace trauma, toxic leadership, psychological safety, employee dignity, burnout, meaningful work, organizational betrayal, and trauma-informed leadership.
Through research, storytelling, humor, and real workplace experiences, each episode challenges performative “people-first” language and asks what organizations must do to create healthier, more human workplaces.
Because employees should not have to silence their experiences, sacrifice their dignity, or become extraordinarily resilient just to survive an ordinary workday.
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Please Mute Your Trauma is for employees, HR professionals, managers, and leaders who want to better understand the human experience of work.
It is for anyone who has survived a toxic workplace, questioned their worth after a performance review, felt unsafe speaking up, struggled with burnout, or wondered why organizations say “people first” while treating people as replaceable.
It is also for leaders who want to create healthier workplace cultures grounded in dignity, psychological safety, accountability, meaningful work, and trauma-informed leadership.
Whether you are trying to make sense of what happened to you at work or trying to ensure your organization does better, this conversation is for you.
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Your story belongs in the conversation.
Have a workplace experience you cannot stop thinking about? Leave me a voicemail and tell me what happened, what you wish someone had understood, or what you want us to unpack on the podcast.
You can share your name or remain anonymous. Please avoid including employer names, confidential information, or details that could identify other people.
Your message may be quoted, edited, or discussed in a future episode. If you do not want your voicemail shared, just say so in your message.
Call 888-629-5081 and leave me a voicemail.
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Bring the conversation beyond the podcast and into your workplace.
I offer keynotes, workshops, facilitated leadership conversations, and customized organizational sessions exploring workplace dignity, trauma-informed leadership, psychological safety, meaningful work, and the human impact of organizational culture.
Each experience blends research, real-world workplace insight, storytelling, and practical reflection to help leaders move beyond performative “people-first” language and create workplaces where dignity is protected.
Interested in bringing this conversation to your organization? Let’s talk about what your people and leaders need.
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What happens when seeing your leader’s name in an email makes your palms sweat, your heart race, and your entire body prepare for something bad to happen?
In this episode of Please Mute Your Trauma, Tiffany Collins explores how the body detects danger at work—and how repeated workplace experiences shape our ability to trust, speak honestly, make mistakes, and feel safe enough to fully engage.
Through humor, workplace research, and a deeply personal story, Tiffany reflects on working for a leader who initially appeared friendly, supportive, and invested in her success. Over time, the relationship changed. Communication became less direct. Coworkers seemed to be gathering information. Deadlines became increasingly unreasonable. Assignments began to feel like opportunities to fail rather than opportunities to succeed.
Before Tiffany could fully explain what was happening, her body was already responding.
Every chat message caused her palms to sweat.
Every email made her heart race.
Every meeting invitation sent her into preparation mode—reviewing documentation, rehearsing explanations, and entering conversations ready to defend herself instead of collaborate.
This episode examines why those reactions are not always signs that someone is too sensitive, overly emotional, or incapable of handling pressure. Sometimes the nervous system is responding to a pattern the mind has been trying to rationalize.
Tiffany also explores the other side of the experience: how the body begins to recognize safety.
Safety is not created through mission statements, leadership slogans, wellness webinars, or promises to put people first. It is built through repeated evidence—clear communication, consistent expectations, respected boundaries, honest feedback, meaningful repair, and accountability that does not require humiliation.
In This Episode
How workplace trauma and toxic leadership affect the nervous system
Why certain emails, meetings, and leaders trigger physical stress responses
How unpredictable leadership creates hypervigilance at work
Why employees begin documenting, rehearsing, and overexplaining
The difference between high expectations and creating opportunities to fail
How chronic workplace stress affects focus, memory, and decision-making
Why productivity and compliance are not proof that an employee feels safe
How workplace trust is built through patterns rather than promises
What dignity-centered accountability looks like
Why safety can feel suspicious after working in an unhealthy environment
How the body slowly learns that it no longer has to prepare for impact
This conversation is for anyone who has felt their stomach drop after receiving a meeting invitation, rehearsed a simple workplace question, documented every interaction for protection, or realized that they were spending more energy monitoring their environment than doing their work.
Your body does not read the company values statement.
It reads patterns.
And sometimes it recognizes an unsafe workplace before your mind is ready to admit it.
Reflection Question
Where do you notice yourself becoming guarded, overly prepared, or physically tense?
And what has that person or environment repeatedly taught your body to expect?
If you have ever sat through a meeting wondering whether anyone was listening, received a pizza party instead of meaningful support, or been told to “bring your whole self to work” only to discover there were terms and conditions attached, you belong in this conversation.
Please Mute Your Trauma explores workplace trauma, toxic workplace culture, dignity at work, meaningful work, leadership, burnout, and employee well-being through humor, research, and honest workplace stories.
Explore more episodes and resources at:
Have a workplace story, question, or random Wednesday thought? Leave Tiffany a message at:
888-629-5081
Because work becomes meaningful when dignity is protected.
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You can look safe and not be safe.
You can look calm and be bracing.
You can look professional and be disappearing.
In this episode of Please Mute Your Trauma, Tiffany Collins continues the conversation from Episode 4 on professionalism and asks the next question: if professionalism taught us how to disappear, how do we know where it is safe to reappear?
This episode explores the difference between performing professionalism and experiencing real psychological safety at work. Because a workplace can look safe. A team can sound safe. A leader can talk about safety. There can be plants, snacks, an open-door policy, a wellness committee, a meditation app, and yes — muffins.
But muffins are not metrics.
Tiffany breaks down why looking professional is not the same as being protected, why “nice” is not the same as safe, and why psychological safety is not just a corporate buzzword. Drawing from Amy Edmondson’s foundational research on psychological safety, this episode explains why true safety is about whether people can take interpersonal risks: asking questions, admitting mistakes, naming concerns, setting boundaries, and telling the truth without being punished later.
This episode also explores dignity at work, using Randy Hodson’s work to frame dignity as more than politeness or approval. Dignity means your humanity remains intact while something hard is happening. You can receive feedback with dignity. You can be corrected with dignity. You can be held accountable with dignity. The question is not always, “Did I feel good?” The question is, “Was I still treated as fully human?”
If you have ever sat in the chair where you were told to be professional, held your face still, made your voice even, nodded when something inside you knew the situation was not okay, this episode is for you.
In This Episode
Tiffany explores:
Why professionalism can become a performance of safety
The difference between looking calm and actually being safe
Why psychological safety at work is not the same as everyone being nice
How “we’re like family here” and “we have an open-door policy” can hide unsafe patterns
Why familiar dysfunction can feel like safety
How employees learn to disappear politely
Why dignity at work means being treated as fully human, even during conflict
How leaders can confuse compliance with safety
Why “muffins are not metrics”
What it means to ask: “But is it safe?”
Key Takeaways
Professionalism is not always about respect. Sometimes it is about containment.
Psychological safety is not whether the room feels pleasant. It is whether the room can handle truth.
A workplace can be nice and still be unsafe.
Familiar is not the same as safe. Sometimes you are not safe — you are just fluent in the dysfunction.
Dignity means your humanity remains intact while something hard is happening.
If your humanity has to disappear for the system to function, that is not safety. That is compliance with better lighting.
Listen Here:
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Who Told You That Was Professional? The Hidden Rules of Workplace Culture
What does workplace professionalism actually mean—and who taught us the rules?
In this episode of Please Mute Your Trauma, Tiffany Collins examines the unspoken rules of professionalism at work: where they come from, how employees learn them, and why many of those rules are less about respect or competence and more about compliance, emotional suppression, and survival.
From “leave your emotions at the door” and “be a team player” to “watch your tone,” workplace culture constantly teaches employees what will be rewarded, what will be punished, and which parts of themselves they must edit to appear credible, committed, professional, or worthy of leadership.
But professionalism is not always neutral.
At its best, professionalism can mean accountability, preparation, respect, ethical behavior, and care for others. At its worst, it becomes a tool for protecting power, silencing discomfort, discouraging honest feedback, and labeling employees as difficult when they challenge an unhealthy system.
This episode explores why the same behavior can be interpreted differently depending on who holds power. Asking questions may be praised as initiative in one employee and criticized as insubordination in another. Direct communication may be viewed as confidence from one person and an attitude problem from someone else.
When professionalism is applied inconsistently, employees learn that success is not only about doing good work. It is also about correctly reading the room, managing other people’s reactions, and knowing when it is safer to remain silent.
In This Episode
What professionalism at work is supposed to mean
How employees learn the unwritten rules of workplace culture
Why professionalism can become a form of emotional suppression
How “watch your tone” can be used to avoid addressing the actual message
The difference between accountability and control
Why psychological safety requires people to question authority
How power influences who is viewed as confident, credible, or difficult
The connection between workplace professionalism and employee dignity
What healthier, more human-centered professionalism could look like
This conversation is for employees who have ever felt pressured to become smaller in order to be taken seriously, leaders who want to examine the standards they reinforce, and anyone who has wondered why authenticity is encouraged until it becomes inconvenient.
Because maybe professionalism was never the lesson.
Maybe survival was.
Reflection Question
Which workplace rule have you followed without ever asking who created it, whom it protects, or whether it helps people do better work?
If you have ever sat through a meeting wondering whether anyone was listening, received a pizza party instead of meaningful support, or been told to “bring your whole self to work” only to discover there were terms and conditions attached, you belong in this conversation.
Please Mute Your Trauma explores workplace trauma, psychological safety, dignity at work, meaningful work, and employee well-being through humor, research, and honest workplace stories.
Explore more episodes and resources at:
Have a workplace story, question, or random Wednesday thought? Leave Tiffany a message at:
888-629-5081
Because work becomes meaningful when dignity is protected.
Listen Here:
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Workplace Trauma Counts: When Work Leaves a Lasting Mark
How many times have you minimized your own experience?
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Other people have been through worse.”
“I should be over it by now.”
“It doesn’t really count.”
In this episode of Please Mute Your Trauma, Tiffany Collins explores why so many people instinctively dismiss the experiences that have shaped them—and why workplace trauma is not always defined by the size or drama of a single event.
Sometimes what stays with us is not only what happened.
It is what the experience taught our nervous system to expect.
Through personal stories from the military, human resources, leadership, and her own life, Tiffany examines how seemingly small interactions can create lasting lessons about safety, authority, trust, belonging, and self-worth.
From a question involving a service dog to finding herself hiding from an unpredictable leader years later, Tiffany reflects on how past experiences can continue shaping the way we think, communicate, lead, connect, and respond at work.
This is not an episode about remaining trapped in the past.
It is about recognizing the invisible lessons we may still be carrying—and asking whether those lessons are still true.
In This Episode
Why people minimize their own trauma and workplace experiences
What workplace trauma can look like beyond a single catastrophic event
How the nervous system learns from repeated experiences
Why certain leaders, conversations, or workplace situations trigger strong reactions
How past experiences shape trust, communication, and psychological safety
The connection between trauma, dignity, leadership, and employee well-being
Why understanding a response is different from allowing it to control you
How to begin questioning the lessons an unsafe environment taught you
This episode is for anyone who has questioned their own reactions, felt themselves becoming smaller around certain people, or wondered why a workplace experience stayed with them long after the moment ended.
Your experience does not have to look dramatic from the outside to leave a lasting mark.
And the goal is not simply to decide whether it “counts.”
The more useful question may be:
What did it teach you—and is that lesson still protecting you now?
Reflection Question
What experience have you minimized because someone else appeared to have it worse?
And what did that experience teach you about yourself, other people, or what you should expect at work?
If you have ever sat through a meeting wondering whether anyone was listening, received a pizza party instead of meaningful support, or been told to “bring your whole self to work” only to discover there were terms and conditions attached, you belong in this conversation.
Please Mute Your Trauma explores workplace trauma, psychological safety, dignity at work, meaningful work, and employee well-being through humor, research, and honest workplace stories.
Explore more episodes and resources at:
PleaseMuteYourTrauma.com
Have a workplace story, question, or random Wednesday thought? Leave Tiffany a message at:
888-629-5081
Because work becomes meaningful when dignity is protected.
If you have ever sat through a meeting wondering whether anyone was listening, received a pizza party instead of meaningful support, or been told to “bring your whole self to work” only to discover there were terms and conditions attached, you belong in this conversation.
Please Mute Your Trauma explores workplace trauma, psychological safety, dignity at work, meaningful work, and employee well-being through humor, research, and honest workplace stories.
Explore more episodes and resources at:
PleaseMuteYourTrauma.com
Have a workplace story, question, or random Wednesday thought? Leave Tiffany a message at:
888-629-5081
Because work becomes meaningful when dignity is protected.
Listen Here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trauma-at-work-it-counts/id6785582790?i=1000775022144
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Don’t Be Air. Be Fire: How to Stop Overthinking at Work
How much energy have you spent preparing for workplace conversations that never happened?
Replaying an interaction.
Anticipating conflict.
Analyzing someone’s tone.
Trying to understand why a person may not like you.
Or mentally preparing for a battle that exists almost entirely inside your own head.
In this deeply personal episode of Please Mute Your Trauma, Tiffany Collins shares a story from a doctoral residential that forced her to confront an uncomfortable truth: sometimes the greatest battles we are fighting are not happening around us. They are happening within us.
Tiffany arrived emotionally prepared for tension, rejection, and conflict—but the conflict never came. Then one simple piece of advice shifted the way she understood her attention, anxiety, and personal power:
Don’t be air. Be fire.
This episode explores how trauma and difficult workplace experiences can teach us to become hypervigilant. We begin monitoring people’s expressions, replaying conversations, anticipating criticism, and giving enormous amounts of emotional energy to situations that may never happen.
But attention is a limited resource.
Every hour spent analyzing someone who has not earned your energy is an hour taken away from your work, relationships, creativity, purpose, and peace.
Together, Tiffany examines what it means to stop supplying oxygen to workplace anxiety and begin directing your attention toward the people and goals that deserve it.
In This Episode
Why trauma can prepare us for battles that never happen
How hypervigilance and overthinking show up at work
Why we replay conversations and anticipate conflict
The emotional cost of trying to understand why someone dislikes us
How attention shapes our workplace experience
The connection between dignity, self-worth, and where we invest our energy
What it really means to stop being air and become fire
How reclaiming your focus can become an act of dignity
This episode is for anyone who has mentally rehearsed a difficult conversation, lost sleep analyzing someone’s behavior, or allowed another person to occupy far more emotional space than they earned.
Meaningful work does not always begin when the environment around us changes.
Sometimes it begins when we stop feeding the things that are stealing our attention.
Reflection Question
Where are you giving your energy to people, problems, or possibilities that have not earned it?
And what could you build if you redirected that energy toward something that matters?
If you have ever sat through a meeting wondering whether anyone was listening, received a pizza party instead of meaningful support, or been told to “bring your whole self to work” only to discover there were terms and conditions attached, you belong in this conversation.
Please Mute Your Trauma explores workplace trauma, psychological safety, dignity at work, meaningful work, and employee well-being through humor, research, and honest workplace stories.
Explore more episodes and resources at:
PleaseMuteYourTrauma.com
Have a workplace story, question, or random Wednesday thought? Leave Tiffany a message at:
888-629-5081
Because work becomes meaningful when dignity is protected.
If you have ever sat through a meeting wondering whether anyone was listening, received a pizza party instead of meaningful support, or been told to “bring your whole self to work” only to discover there were terms and conditions attached, you belong in this conversation.
Please Mute Your Trauma explores workplace trauma, psychological safety, dignity at work, meaningful work, and employee well-being through humor, research, and honest workplace stories.
Explore more episodes and resources at:
PleaseMuteYourTrauma.com
Have a workplace story, question, or random Wednesday thought? Leave Tiffany a message at:
888-629-5081
Because work becomes meaningful when dignity is protected.
Listen Here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dont-be-air-be-fire/id6785582790?i=1000774930624
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Pretending to Be Fine at Work: The Cost of Emotional Suppression
What happens when pretending to be fine becomes part of your job?
In the first full episode of Please Mute Your Trauma, Tiffany Collins explores emotional suppression at work—the pressure employees feel to smile, comply, stay quiet, and remain productive even when they are exhausted, overwhelmed, or carrying far more than anyone around them can see.
Through humor, lived experience, and honest workplace reflection, Tiffany examines the gap between what organizations say they value—authenticity, employee well-being, psychological safety, and people-first leadership—and what many workplace cultures actually reward: silence, emotional control, compliance, and the performance of being okay.
This episode explores:
Why “I’m fine” can become a workplace survival strategy
How traditional ideas about professionalism encourage emotional suppression
The difference between genuinely supporting employees and simply expecting them to remain productive
How workplace culture teaches people which parts of themselves are acceptable
Why psychological safety requires more than encouraging employees to speak up
What dignity at work looks like when people are struggling
This conversation is for employees who have ever hidden what they were experiencing to protect their reputation, leaders who want to create healthier workplaces, and anyone questioning whether professionalism has become another word for emotional disappearance.
Because maybe the problem was never that people brought too much of themselves to work.
Maybe the problem is that work asked them to leave too much of themselves behind.
Continue the conversation
Visit PleaseMuteYourTrauma.com for episodes, resources, and more conversations about workplace trauma, psychological safety, dignity, meaningful work, and employee well-being.
Have a workplace story, question, or experience you want to share? Leave Tiffany a message at 888-629-5081.
Please Mute Your Trauma is hosted by Tiffany Collins and explores what happens when organizations expect human beings to work as though they are not human.
If you have ever sat through a meeting wondering whether anyone was listening, received a pizza party instead of meaningful support, or been told to “bring your whole self to work” only to discover there were terms and conditions attached, you belong in this conversation.
Please Mute Your Trauma explores workplace trauma, psychological safety, dignity at work, meaningful work, and employee well-being through humor, research, and honest workplace stories.
Explore more episodes and resources at:
PleaseMuteYourTrauma.com
Have a workplace story, question, or random Wednesday thought? Leave Tiffany a message at:
888-629-5081
Because work becomes meaningful when dignity is protected.
Listen Here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-performance-of-being-fine/id6785582790?i=1000774889556
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Description text goes hereSome jobs stay with us long after we've left them, not because we miss them, but because of what we quietly carried out the door. In this introduction, I share the question that followed me through the Navy, human resources, government, and eventually doctoral research: why do some workplaces leave us feeling more alive while others leave us doubting our own worth? This is a podcast about dignity at work, about giving language to experiences we've carried for years, and about the possibility that we were never the problem we thought we were.
Listen here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/please-mute-your-trauma/id6785582790?i=1000774748181