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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Listen Here:
What happens when the people who know the work best stop speaking up?
In this episode of Please Mute Your Trauma, Tiffany takes a deeply personal look at Boeing, a company woven into her own family history and the Seattle community she grew up in. Both of her grandparents retired from Boeing, where the company provided stability, opportunity, friendship, and a sense of pride that shaped generations of families.
But after watching Netflix’s Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, that history collided with a much harder question: How does an organization go from being a source of pride and security to one where employees allege they were ignored, sidelined, or retaliated against for raising serious concerns?
Tiffany examines Boeing’s safety culture, whistleblower allegations, Senate testimony, leadership accountability, and what can happen when production pressure, financial priorities, and authority begin to outweigh expertise.
She also shares a personal HR story about speaking up when a business owner ignored legal and ethical concerns, why she ultimately walked away, and why “just speak up” is far more complicated when someone’s paycheck, benefits, family, or career are on the line.
This episode explores:
Boeing’s workplace and safety culture
Whistleblowing and employee voice
Why employees stay silent even when they know something is wrong
The difference between authority and real leadership
What happens when leaders stop listening to experts
How organizational silence becomes normalized
Why accountability should move upward, not downward
Practical steps employees can take when they see unethical, unsafe, or potentially illegal behavior
What leaders can do to make speaking up safer
Because a healthy workplace should not require heroism just to tell the truth.
And if nobody disagrees with you anymore, it may be worth asking:
Have you become an extraordinary leader, or have people simply learned to stay quiet?
Please Mute Your Trauma explores workplace culture, leadership, dignity, organizational trauma, psychological safety, meaningful work, employee voice, and what it actually means to be human at work.
Work becomes meaningful when dignity is protected — and that includes protecting your own.
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.
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What happens when an organization actually lives the values it puts on the wall?
In this episode of Please Mute Your Trauma, Tiffany Collins takes a closer look at the Savannah Bananas and Fans First Entertainment—not just as a wildly successful sports brand, but as a case study in workplace culture, leadership, employee experience, innovation, and organizational values.
The Savannah Bananas didn’t simply ask how to make baseball more entertaining. They questioned the system itself. Why does it have to work this way? What frustrates people? What traditions still make sense—and which ones are being protected simply because “that’s how we’ve always done it”?
That same question has enormous implications for the workplace.
Tiffany explores what leaders can learn from the Bananas’ “Fans First” philosophy, why organizational values only matter when they influence real decisions, and how cultures either encourage employees to question, contribute, experiment, and speak up—or quietly train them not to.
This episode also goes beyond diagnosing bad workplace culture. You’ll walk away with practical tools for identifying unnecessary organizational friction, testing whether company values are actually lived, examining systems before blaming employees, and creating safer conditions for people to bring forward ideas and concerns.
And there’s an important caveat: not every employee has enough power or psychological safety to challenge a dysfunctional system. Sometimes the goal is organizational change. Sometimes it’s protecting yourself while you decide what comes next.
In this episode:
Why “that’s how we’ve always done it” can become one of the most dangerous phrases at work
What the Savannah Bananas can teach leaders about innovation and organizational culture
Why fun perks are not the same thing as dignity or a healthy workplace
How leaders unintentionally train employees to stop speaking up
Why values should change actual business decisions
How to identify friction inside workplace systems
Why organizations should examine the system before trying to “fix” the employee
What employees, managers, and executives can each do differently
The challenge of protecting culture as an organization grows
Why meaningful work becomes possible when dignity is protected
Because workplace culture isn’t what your website says.
It’s what people experience when the meeting starts, the deadline moves, somebody makes a mistake, an employee challenges the process—and leadership has to decide what it actually believes.
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.
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What happens when one of the most influential organizations in human resources becomes an HR case study itself?
In December 2025, a federal jury found the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) liable for race discrimination and retaliation, awarding former employee Rehab Mohamed $11.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. SHRM disputes the verdict, unsuccessfully sought a new trial at the district court level, and is now pursuing an appeal. Meanwhile, SHRM’s employment-practices insurer has filed a separate lawsuit involving coverage of the $10 million punitive-damages award.
But this episode of Please Mute Your Trauma isn’t simply about a lawsuit.
It’s about credibility, power, professional standards, employee voice, workplace dignity, and what happens when there is a gap between what an organization teaches and what people experience inside it.
SHRM helps shape the HR profession. Its certifications appear in job descriptions, its resources influence workplace practices, and organizations look to it for guidance on everything from employee relations and investigations to discrimination and retaliation.
So Tiffany asks the uncomfortable question:
If we treat an institution as a standard for the profession, what does that institution have to do to keep deserving our trust?
In this episode, Tiffany breaks down what happened in Mohamed v. Society for Human Resource Management, why the timing and handling of the employee’s complaints became so important, what the jury actually decided, what SHRM argues went wrong at trial, and where the case stands now.
Then the conversation gets bigger.
What does an HR certification actually certify? Why do employers require SHRM credentials in the first place? Should professional authority ever be accepted without scrutiny? Can an organization be technically compliant and still leave people feeling fundamentally undignified? And is employee voice really meaningful if speaking up makes the employee less safe?
Because knowing the policy is not the same as living it.
Having the certification is not the same as having the courage to challenge power.
And certification can demonstrate knowledge. It cannot certify humanity.
This episode explores:
The SHRM discrimination and retaliation verdict
The $11.5 million jury award and SHRM’s ongoing appeal
Workplace retaliation and employee voice
Internal investigations and organizational trust
SHRM certification and professional credibility
The difference between compliance and dignity
Institutional accountability and organizational legitimacy
Why workplace culture is measured by what happens when someone actually uses the policy
What HR leaders and employers can learn from the case regardless of its ultimate appellate outcome
This isn’t an argument to abandon SHRM, burn your certification, or assume one lawsuit defines an entire organization.
It’s an invitation to question something much bigger:
Who HRs HR? Who certifies the certifier? And who holds the standard accountable?
Because work becomes meaningful when dignity is protected—and dignity requires more from us than knowing the right answer on the test. It requires us to live the answer, especially when nobody is grading us.
Please Mute Your Trauma: Emotionally Unavailable During Working Hours
Workplace trauma. Workplace dignity. Meaningful work. Organizational culture. Leadership. And the very human mess underneath all of it.
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.
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Ever leave a workplace meeting and immediately call your best friend just to confirm that you did, in fact, hear what you think you heard?
Welcome to the Corporate Gaslighting Starter Pack.
In this episode of Please Mute Your Trauma, Tiffany Collins takes on workplace gaslighting, broken promises, corporate buzzwords, psychological contracts, organizational justice, workplace trauma, and the strange systems that somehow keep underperformers protected while the person actually improving everything gets labeled “difficult.”
With plenty of humor, Tiffany explores what happens when an organization says it values transparency, innovation, and employee voice—but employees learn that honesty can come with consequences.
We also look at the leadership side of the equation, including a real example from Alan Mulally’s leadership at Ford and what happens when leaders make it safer to tell the truth instead of perform success.
Because sometimes disengagement is not laziness.
Sometimes resistance is memory.
And sometimes cynicism is grief wearing business casual.
If you have ever documented a conversation “just to confirm your understanding,” panicked over a calendar invite titled “Quick Sync,” or wondered why the person holding the entire department together was somehow the one who got cut, this episode is for you.
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.
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Broken promises at work do more than disappoint us. They create burnout, erode trust, and can turn hope into a management strategy.
In this episode, Tiffany Collins examines “the moving carrot”: the promotion, staffing support, job security, recognition, or relief that always seems almost within reach. Drawing from her experience accepting a 50 percent pay cut during COVID while managing three children’s remote schooling, attending graduate school, experiencing a significant medical emergency, and ultimately being laid off, Tiffany explores what employees can lose while trying to prove their loyalty.
She also examines how chronic understaffing turns competence into evidence that a broken system is supposedly working, why appreciation is not the same as reciprocity, and how repeatedly moving the finish line can lead to burnout, disengagement, and workplace betrayal.
SHOW NOTES
How many times can an organization tell an employee to “just hang in there” before hope stops being motivation and starts becoming a management strategy?
The moving carrot is the thing employees are encouraged to keep sacrificing for:
The promotion that is supposedly coming.
The additional employee who will be hired after the next budget.
The workload that will calm down after one more project.
The recognition that never becomes compensation, authority, or meaningful support.
The promise that loyalty will eventually be returned.
The carrot remains close enough to keep the employee moving, but every time they approach it, the conditions change.
In this episode of Please Mute Your Trauma, Tiffany shares the deeply personal cost of chasing that promise.
During COVID, while working at an architecture firm experiencing significant financial losses, Tiffany agreed to a 50 percent reduction in pay. As a single mother facing an unprecedented economic crisis, she believed that helping the firm survive until its PPP funding arrived would help protect her employment.
At the same time, she was supporting three children enrolled in different schools through remote learning, completing graduate school, and continuing to perform her job at an unsustainable pace.
Then she experienced a significant medical emergency and needed FMLA leave.
Approximately one month after returning, she was laid off.
The loss was not only the job or the money. It was the time, energy, health, and presence she had sacrificed while believing she was protecting her family.
Her children received less of her while she was trying to prove her value to an organization that ultimately could not protect her.
Tiffany also explores another familiar workplace carrot: the promise of additional staffing.
When leaders repeatedly acknowledge that the workload is unreasonable but continue postponing help until the next budget, quarter, or planning cycle, the employee’s ability to keep everything functioning can become the organization’s justification for doing nothing.
The staffing model did not work.
The employee worked.
There is a difference.
IN THIS EPISODE
Tiffany explores:
• What separates ordinary disappointment from workplace betrayal
• How broken workplace promises damage trust
• Why employees continue sacrificing for uncertain rewards
• The unwritten psychological contract between employees and organizations
• How job insecurity can be used to extract additional labor
• The personal cost of chronic understaffing and overwork
• Why exceptional effort becomes the new minimum expectation
• How organizations transfer operating costs onto employees and their families
• Why burned-out employees may become guarded, quieter, or disengaged
• How leaders can distinguish honest possibilities from promises they cannot guarantee
• What genuine reciprocity looks like at work
• How to recognize when the finish line is continually movingFIVE THINGS TO TAKE WITH YOU
1. Name the carrot
Identify exactly what you believe you are working toward.
Is it a promotion, additional staffing, recognition, job security, compensation, flexibility, or relief?
Once you name the carrot, you can ask whether it is real, approved, measurable, and genuinely within reach.
2. Calculate the complete cost
Do not measure the sacrifice only in hours or money.
Consider what it is costing your health, family, sleep, attention, emotional capacity, and ability to be present outside of work.
The cost does not disappear simply because it is absent from the organization’s budget.
Someone is still paying it.
3. Stop confusing appreciation with reciprocity
“We could not do this without you” may sound like praise, but it can also reveal a dangerously fragile system.
Appreciation says thank you.
Reciprocity changes something tangible: staffing, compensation, workload, authority, resources, or expectations.
4. Pay attention when the conditions change
Plans and budgets legitimately change.
But when every fulfilled requirement produces a new requirement, every timeline becomes another conversation, and every sacrifice is expected to continue indefinitely, the employee may no longer be moving through a development process.
They may be participating in an endurance test without a finish line.
5. Trust evidence more than reassurance
“Hang in there” is not a plan.
“We are working on it” is not a timeline.
“Your time is coming” is not a decision.
Employees are allowed to ask what has been approved, who has decision-making authority, what the criteria are, and what will happen if nothing changes.
Clarity is not disloyalty.
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.
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Why do toxic workplaces protect difficult people while expecting everyone else to adapt around them?
In this episode of Please Mute Your Trauma, Tiffany Collins explores the familiar workplace phrase, “That’s just how they are,” and how it allows toxic leadership, harmful behavior, intimidation, and disrespect to become normalized within organizational culture.
Every workplace seems to have someone employees are quietly warned about. Meetings are scheduled around their moods. Coworkers carefully manage their language. Teams learn when it is safe to ask questions, disagree, or speak up. Yet instead of holding the person accountable, leaders often excuse the behavior because the employee is experienced, powerful, well-connected, or considered too valuable to lose.
Using workplace stories, research-informed insight, and humor, Tiffany examines the hidden cost of protecting difficult leaders and high performers. She discusses how employees become unofficial emotional support humans, how harmful behavior gets renamed as a “strong communication style,” and why organizations often focus on an employee’s resilience rather than addressing the conditions causing the harm.
This episode explores toxic workplace culture, employee dignity, psychological safety, workplace trauma, leadership accountability, organizational betrayal, retaliation, burnout, power dynamics, and the emotional labor required to survive an unpredictable work environment.
You will also hear why:
“That’s just how they are” is a decision, not an explanation
High performance should not provide immunity from accountability
Employees should not be responsible for managing a leader’s emotions
Trauma may explain behavior without excusing its impact
Workplace culture is defined by what leaders tolerate, reward, and protect
Repair requires more than asking employees to simply move forward
A healthy workplace is not one without conflict. It is one where people can make mistakes, receive honest feedback, repair harm, and change without requiring others to sacrifice their dignity.
Because when an organization repeatedly protects one person’s behavior, that behavior no longer belongs to only one person. It becomes part of the culture.
Have a workplace story you want to share? Call 888-629-5081 and leave Tiffany a voicemail.
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.
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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