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.

We want to hear from you!

Support the show

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.