The Performance of Being Fine

In this first full episode of Please Mute Your Trauma, Tiffany Collins explores “the performance of being fine” at work: the way employees learn to smile, comply, stay quiet, and keep functioning even when they are exhausted, overwhelmed, or carrying far more than anyone can see.

Through humor, lived experience, and sharp workplace reflection, Tiffany unpacks the gap between what organizations say they value — people, authenticity, well-being, psychological safety — and what they often reward: emotional suppression, compliance, and silence.

This episode asks what happens when professionalism becomes performance, when “I’m fine” becomes a survival strategy, and when dignity is treated as something employees have to earn.

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.

If you've ever sat through a meeting wondering whether anyone was listening, received a pizza party instead of support, or been told to "bring your whole self to work" only to discover there were terms and conditions attached, this episode is for you.

Learn more about the show and connect with Tiffany at:

www.pleasemuteyourtrauma.com

Because work becomes meaningful when dignity is protected.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Please Meet Your Trauma, the podcast for anyone who's ever sat through a mandatory employee wellness seminar while actively developing the need for therapy. I'm Tiffany Collins. I'm a wife, a mom, a doctoral researcher, a Navy veteran, and an HR professional. Which means I spend most of my time solving problems, managing emotions, remembering important dates, locating missing information, and trying to prevent avoidable disasters. Honestly, HR and Motherhood have far more overlap than anyone likes to admit. I've spent nearly two decades watching organizations do absolutely fascinating things in the name of people first. And I think I should clarify that by fascinating, the kind of decisions that leave you staring out of a conference room window, wondering if you're the only one hearing this conversation, or looking around the room, trying to figure out whether everyone else got a completely different set of instructions. Have you ever been in a meeting where somebody uses the phrase circle back three times in one sentence and somehow got promoted? Because I have. In fact, after almost two decades in a jar, I'm reasonably confident that some people have built entire careers of saying things like, let's take this offline. We're looking for synergies. Let's put a pin in that. And my personal favorite: people are our greatest asset. Which is fascinating because those same organizations often treat their asset the way I treat the treadmill I bought in 2021. I technically own it. I talk about it occasionally, but I haven't checked on it in months. And honestly, that's kind of the problem. Organizations love talking about people. What they aren't always great at is treating people like people. I've come to believe that there are a few universal truths in every organizational life. First, every meeting scheduled for an hour will last at least an hour. Even if that information could have fit in a text message. Second, every employee engagement survey contains answers leadership is somehow shocked to discover, despite employees having explained those same concerns in meetings, one-on-ones, town halls, exit interviews, stay interviews, anonymous surveys, and occasionally what could only be described as interpretive dance. And third, every organization wants you to bring your whole self to work. Right up until your whole self becomes inconvenient. And that's the one I want to talk about. Because I think most of us learn a strange lesson early in our careers. Not from orientation, not from an employee handbook, not from leadership training. We learn by watching. The lesson we learn isn't work hard, be accountable, be professional. The lesson is be human, just not too human. Nobody actually says the words, please mute your trauma, least out loud. Instead, they say things like, let's keep that off camera, let's focus on solutions, let's stay positive. Sure, you can do that as long as it doesn't impact your performance. Different words, same message. Bring your humanity, just don't make it visible. And before long, most of us become experts at a very specific workplace skill. Looking completely fine when we're absolutely not. And that's what this podcast is about. Not because people are weak, not because I think people need to toughen it up, but because I think organizations have spent decades confusing professionalism with emotional suppression. I don't think most organizations have the people problem they think they have. I think many organizations have a humanity problem. And after a few decades of asking employees to perform fine, a lot of us are getting tired of the performance. I know I was. And before we start judging ourselves for participating in this little charade, we should acknowledge something important. Most people aren't muting themselves because they're weak. They're muting themselves because they're practical. Rent is due on the first. Health insurance is attached to employment like a hostage note. People have mortgages, student loans, kids, medical bills, responsibilities. So when organizations quietly communicate, leave your humanity outside the building, most people comply. Not because they agree, because survival requires it. But over time, something strange happens. You get so good at performing fine that eventually you stop checking whether you are. You stop listening to yourself. You stop noticing things. And one day you realize you've started calling numbness stability. That realization changes people. It changed me. So I joined the Navy when I was 21, which is an age you're apparently old enough to carry a security clearance, but not necessarily old enough to make consistently good life decisions. Case in point, I voluntarily joined the military. And the military teaches you very quickly that your circumstances do not matter more than the mission. Plans change. Rules are rules. The institution comes first. I got pregnant with my first son while I was serving. I knew that when he was born, I was to be given 42 days of maternity leave. 42 days. Knowing that it wasn't much time, I intentionally saved my vacation leave throughout my pregnancy because I just wanted a little more time at home with him before returning to work. I remember making the request, and I remember being told that if I wanted to use the leave I had already earned, I needed to submit a special request asking for admission. Just think about that for a second. I wasn't asking for months off. I wasn't asking to avoid my responsibilities. I wasn't even asking for special treatment. I was asking to use a leave that already belonged to me so I could spend two more weeks with my newborn son. I submitted the crest and it was denied. So I went back to work on day 43. And that same afternoon, on my first day back, I was called into my commander's office. He said two weeks. My son was 43 days old. I didn't end up deploying because of a medical issue, but that moment changed something in me permanently. Because standing in that office, I realized something I had never fully understood before. There was no floor to what the institution could ask of me. And here's the part that still surprises me. My first thought wasn't, that's not fair. It wasn't anger at how could they ask this of a new mother? My first thought was, how am I going to make this work? Because I had made a commitment. I had raised my right hand and taken an oath. And I believe that if I was going to teach my son anything, it was that when you make a commitment, you honor it. Looking back now, I can hold two truths at the same time. I'm incredibly proud that I served my country and I would do it again. And I can also recognize that somewhere along the way, I learned that honoring my commitments often meant putting my own needs last. What strikes me now isn't even that my request was denied. It's honestly that no one around me seemed surprised. No one questioned it. No one said there has to be another way. It was simply accepted as a cost of serving. And eventually so did I. Instead of pushing back, instead of saying this felt impossible, I adapted. For those who have never served, there was another part of military life I had to suddenly figure out. We stood what the Navy calls duty days. That meant a portion of our command had to remain on a ship or on base for a full 24 hours, ready to respond if we were needed. When you were on duty, you didn't go home at the end of your workday. You stayed. As a single mom, that wasn't just another work shift. It was a puzzle I had to solve over and over again. I wanted to be both. A good mother and a good sailor. I wasn't willing to give up either role. So I made compromises. Every Friday after work, I pick my son up from daycare. We would pack him a little bag, and we would drive to the ferry. We would ride the ferry over to meet my parents. I'd hand him over to them. I would take the ferry back and report for duty the next morning. I'd spend the next 24 hours on base. Then I'd pick him up Sunday evening and we'd start the week all over again. At the time, I called that resilience. Looking back, I still do. I also think it was love. I loved my son enough to make sure he was cared for. And I love serving my country enough to honor the commitment I made. But what I didn't realize was that while I was learning to show up for everyone else, I was slowly learning not to show up for myself. I was learning that my needs could wait. That asking for them probably wouldn't change anything anyway. That being dependable meant being endlessly adaptable. And eventually I stopped asking myself an important question. What do I need? Because somewhere along the way I had confused self-sacrifice with strength. And once you learn to silence your own needs, it becomes very easy for an organization to mistake that silence for resilience. Because somewhere along the way, I learned that resilience and silence were the same thing. They are. And it would take me another 18 years to learn the difference. And also, what I didn't realize, I was teaching myself something much more dangerous. That my needs were not the kind that deserved to be spoken out loud. 18 years after leaving the military, I started my doctoral research. One of my professors published research on warplace dignity and had us read it last fall. I remember reading it and feeling almost physically stunned. Because suddenly I had language for something I had been experiencing for decades. Dignity isn't just respect. It's not being treated nicely. It's not getting an employee of the month in a parking spot that honestly is somehow far away from everyone else's. Not just useful, not just productive, not just valuable when you're performing at your best. Human. And once I started researching dignity, I discovered something else. Nearly 70% of adults will experience some form of trauma in their lives. And when I say trauma, I'm not talking exclusively about combat deployments, violence, or major disasters. Sometimes trauma comes from loss, from grief, divorce, a serious illness, a difficult childhood, a betrayal. A moment that fundamentally changed the way you see yourself or the world around you. Trauma isn't the event itself. It's honestly our response to the event. And the interesting about trauma is that it doesn't always stay politely in the past. Sometimes it shows up years later. Sometimes it resurfaces when we least expect it. And sometimes it appears in places we never intended to bring it.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Like work. Which means every workplace is already filled with people carrying grief, loss, fear, stress, responsibility, and invoiceable stories nobody else can see.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

And yet most organizations operate as though humanity is a distraction from work instead of the reason work exists in the first place. That realization changed the way I saw everything. Because the question stopped being, what's wrong with employees? And became what would happen if organizations were designed for actual human beings? Not ideal employees, not productivity machines, human beings. And that's the question behind this podcast. This podcast isn't about making people softer. It's about making organizations more honest. We're going to talk about dignity, leadership, burnout, trauma, meaningful work, and the absurd things organizations do, as well as the rare things a few organizations get right. Some episodes will make you laugh. Some will definitely make you uncomfortable. And some may cause you to pause halfway through a meeting and think, oh no, am I the problem? And if you might change the way you think about work altogether. But every episode is built around the same belief. That work becomes meaningful when dignity is protected. And if you've ever felt like something was wrong at work but couldn't quite put the words around it, welcome. You're in the right place. And here's what I hope you take away from today. The ask was never neutral. Please meet your trauma was never simply professionalism. It was a decision about which parts of humanity were allowed to exist visibly at work. And which parts needed to stay hidden. I know what that costs. I've lived it. And I've watched countless other people live it too. I want to leave you with a question. What would happen if organizations stopped building themselves against human reality and started building themselves around it? What would happen if people didn't have to spend so much energy performing? Fine. What would happen if dignity wasn't something employees had to earn through productivity? What would happen if work recognized that human beings are not machines with emotions attached, but people with stories attached? I don't know all the answers. And that's why we're here. What if the problem isn't that people are too emotional?

SPEAKER_00 19:02

What if we've simply misunderstood what it means to be human at work? What if organizations aren't the whole story?

SPEAKER_01 19:15

If organizations aren't the whole story, let's save that for next week. Because we're going to talk about the stories we carry into them. Because sometimes the loudest voice in the workplace isn't your manager's. It's your own. Remember, work becomes meaningful when dignity is protected. And that includes protecting your own. See you next week.