Your Body Knows Before You Do: When Work Doesn’t Feel Safe

Your Body Knows Before You Do: When Work Doesn’t Feel Safe

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:

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.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So it's 4 47 on a Friday afternoon. You've mentally left work for the week, yet physically you're still sitting at your desk. Spiritually, you're already in sweatpants. And then a message appears. Hey, do you have a quick minute? A quick minute. At 447 on a Friday, your body immediately recognizes this as a hostile act. Your heart rate increases, your shoulders rise, your stomach drops directly through the office chair. And within six seconds, your nervous system launches a full internal investigation. What did I do? Did I miss something? Ooh, maybe my last email was too direct. Could the period at the end of thank you be perceived as aggressive? Oh, did I accidentally reply all? Did someone find the spreadsheet? Which spreadsheet? I don't know. Then suddenly every spreadsheet feels suspicious. You open your calendar and begin reviewing the last three months of meetings. You replay a conversation from Tuesday in which you actually said, I have a question, maybe too confidently? Ah, you knew it. You begin preparing explanations for situations no one has accused you of creating. You open LinkedIn and another tab, just to browse. Casually, yet professionally. You're not looking for another job, but you're simply reminding yourself that other buildings exist. And meanwhile, your body has established an emergency command center. Your heart is sending alerts, your stomach has called an unscheduled meeting, your jaw has returned from lunch and immediately started working overtime. And I think your shoulders are positioned somewhere near your earrings. And your brain is on standby at a whiteboard connecting unrelated events with a red string. Then your supervisor calls. You answer in your calmest workplace voice. Hi, of course. What's up? As though your nervous system has not already packed your desk plant, updated your resume, and placed your emotionally significant coffee mug into a protective custody. And your supervisor says, Oh, do you know where the file is from Tuesday? That's it. They need a file. You send it, they say thank you, and the conversation ends. But your body does not immediately end the meeting because your body was not reacting only to that message. It was reacting to every message that came before it. Every time a quick question became an ambush, every time a mistake became a character assessment, every time honesty changed the way someone treated you, and every time a reasonable question was interpreted as a challenge to authority. Every time you watch someone speak up and quietly disappear from the invitation list, your body remembers patterns that your professional self has learned to explain away. Your professional self says, Oh, they're just direct. And your body says, We stop breathing when they enter the room. Your professional self says, it's the busy season. It makes sense. And your body reminds you, it's been the busy season since 2019. Your professional self says, it's me. I just need to become more resilient. And meanwhile, your body says, I have been resilient. That's why we're still here. That is the part we do not talk about enough. Your body may recognize that something is wrong before your mind has permission, or even the language to name it, but your body can recognize something else too. It notices the leader who asks a question without setting a trap, the person who gives feedback without trying to reduce your size, the team that can disagree and remain connected. The moment you admit a mistake and nobody begins building a legal case around your personality. At first, safety may feel suspicious. You may wait for the other shoe to drop. You remain fully dressed in emotional protective equipment. Helmet on, clipboard ready, evidence alphabetized. But then something strange happens. The other shoe doesn't drop. Nobody even throws a shoe. The shoe is simply sitting there, surprisingly just being footwear. And slowly your body begins to receive a different message. Maybe I do not have to rehearse the sentence. Maybe I can ask the question. Maybe I can say no. Maybe I can make a normal mistake. Maybe I do not have to earn the right to have a human need. Maybe this room is not asking me to disappear because safety is not something a workplace can announce. Your body doesn't read the value statement, it reads patterns. And sometimes it knows you're in danger before your mind admits it. And sometimes, after enough consistency, enough repair, and enough evidence, it learns something else. It learns that we can finally stop preparing for impact. And so today we're talking about the signals we ignore, the environments our bodies remember, and the ordinary moments that teach us whether it is safe to soften. Because your body knows when you're not safe. The question is, how does it learn when you are? Hi, I'm so glad you're here. If you're back for another episode, have a seat. We're glad to see you. If this is your first episode, welcome. Pull up a chair. We have been saving you a seat. We have a lot to talk about. This is Please Meet Your Trauma. And I'm Tiffany Collins. I'm curious about what happens when work forgets we're human, professionally skeptical of corporate theater. And today we're asking, what happens when your body finally knows you're safe? Last time we talked about looking safe. You might want to go back and listen to that episode. We talked about the meaning face, the email face, the chair, the version of professionalism that teaches us how to disappear politely. We asked if professionalism taught us how to disappear. How do we know we're in a safe to reappear? And today I want to take that question one layer deeper. Because safety is not only about whether you are technically allowed to speak. It's also about what happens inside your body while you're deciding whether to speak. Are you breathing? Are you bracing? Are you preparing to defend yourself? Are you calculating the emotional cost of asking a completely reasonable question? And what happens after you name a concern, a mistake, a limit, or a need? That is where safety becomes real. I once worked for a leader who was in what I would describe his second chapter. He had already served in the military and retired and had moved into organizational leadership. Because I had also served, I think initially I gave that background meaning, because most veterans do. And maybe I gave it more meaning than I should have. There's a certain presumption of trust that comes with your experiences. In my mind, you think he understands service, he understands responsibility, and he understands what it means to lead people. He understands that rank or a title is supposed to carry an obligation. And at first he was nice. He was friendly. He appeared to care about me, the work, and the people around him. He knew how to create the impression that he was listening. He knew how to make a conversation feel personal and he seemed approachable. And I believed it. But over time, something began to change. Or maybe it had always been there, and I simply began to see it. The communication became less direct. The questions began to feel less curious and more investigative. People started appearing in conversations and situations in ways that felt less like support and more like surveillance. In my head, I called them spies, not actual trench coat spies. Nobody was hiding behind a newspaper in the break room. This was a professional version. Very discreet, very polite, probably carrying a branded notebook, but the information I shared seemed to travel. Conversations that should have remained ordinary somehow returned to me through him. People would ask questions that did not quite sound like their questions. They sounded assigned. And then I started to feel watched. And then came the opportunities to fail. I would have received assignments with deadlines that were not merely ambitious, they were impossible. I would be given expectations without the resources, information, or time necessary to meet them. The conditions made success increasingly difficult, and then my ability to succeed under those conditions became the test. I want to be careful about intent. I can't climb inside another person's mind and prove why every decision was made. What I can tell you is that the pattern is what the pattern communicated to me. I began to feel as though the environment was being arranged so that I would have to defend myself regardless of the outcome. If I pushed back on a deadline, perhaps it would be interpreted as I wasn't committed. If I accepted and struggled, perhaps I was not capable. If I asked for help, perhaps I lacked independence. And if I didn't ask for help, perhaps I had failed to communicate. Every road seemed to lead to a performance conversation, and my body knew it. Every time I saw his name appear in a chat message, my palms became sweaty. Every time an email arrived, my heart began to race. And every time a mean appeared on my calendar, my body reacted before I'd even read the invitation. Nothing had happened yet. There was only a name on a screen. My body was already preparing for impact. So I would rehearse. I would gather all the documentation I think I would need. I would review old emails. I would take notes and prepare for explanations for questions he had not asked. I would think through every possible interpretation of every decision. I didn't enter conversations ready to collaborate. I entered ready to defend. And the strangest part was that I continued trying to reason myself out of what my body was telling me. Maybe I'm being too sensitive. Maybe he's under pressure, thus giving me pressure. Maybe this is simply his leadership style. Maybe I need to communicate more clearly. And maybe I need to be more flexible. Maybe I need to prove that I can handle it. Maybe my mind kept trying to negotiate with the pattern my body had already recognized. I knew I could not trust him. I didn't have necessarily just one dramatic moment to prove it. I had an accumulation. A strange question here, an impossible deadline there, a conversation that traveled and an opportunity to fail. A shift in tone. A meeting that did not feel like a meeting. And the body that reacted every single time is needed repairing. That is important because unsafe environments are not always obvious. Sometimes nobody else. Sometimes no one throws a chair or flips a table. No one sends an email announcing, good morning. We will be engaging in psychological manipulation from 10 to 11:30. Attendance is mandatory. Unsafe behavior can arrive quietly. It can be cloaked in professional. It can use appropriate punctuation and it can wear a suit. It also can ask how your weegan was before creating conditions that keep you awake all night. And because it does not always look dramatic, we often dismiss our own response to it. Just know that the body is paying attention to the pattern. Your body is the group chat you forgot to check. And it's been sending you messages all in caps. Monday, we do not like this. Tuesday, still do not like this. Wednesday. Are you seeing these? Thursday. Fine. Stomachache. Friday. Oh, now everyone is involved. Your body may communicate through a racing heart and tight shoulders, headaches, dread, exhaustion, shallow breathing, or the feeling that you must rehearse every sentence before you say it. No, I'm not saying every stomach ache means your manager is a villain. Sometimes it's dairy. Sometimes it's coffee number four. Or often, sometimes it's the burrito you trusted against the advice of everyone who loves and cares about you. We all made choices, and your body is not a courtroom witness. A erasing heart is not definitive proof that a person or workplace is unsafe. It might be a present threat. It might be an old experience being activated. It might be uncertainty and it might be growth. It also could be caffeine. It might be that you open Microsoft Teams at 7.59 in the morning and saw your supervisor typing. There are several possibilities. The point is not to treat every uncomfortable sensation as a final verdict. The point is to get curious. Is this a single reaction or is this a pattern? What happened immediately before it? What does this environment usually do when someone asks a question? What happens when someone makes a mistake and what happens when a person says no? What evidence is my body responding to? There's actually some research underneath this experience. There's a neuroscientist named Amy Arnstein who's explained how stress affects the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain involved in working memory, attention, judgment, planning, and flexible thinking. Her work explains how acute, uncontrollable stress can weaken the networks that support those higher order functions. Okay, let's break that down. When your brain is spending its energy monitoring the room, studying a leader's facial expressions, anticipating punishment, and preparing to defend itself, it has fewer resources available for creativity, problem solving, and thoughtful decision making. You're still working, but some of your cognitive bandwidth has been reassigned. It's now part of an unpaid threat detection department. So when an employee who's constantly bracing begins to struggle with concentration or memory or even decision making, perhaps the question should not always be, what the heck is wrong with this person? Perhaps we should also ask, what is this employee having to monitor all day? Organizational research gives us language for this too. William Kahn's foundational work on personal engagement identified three conditions that affect whether people fully bring themselves into their work. First is meaning psychological meaningfulness. Second, psychological safety, and third, psychological availability. Really, these things form three questions. Does this work feel worthwhile? Can I show up without fearing what will happen to my identity, my status, career? And do I have enough physical, emotional, and psychological resources to actually represent? That last question matters. Organizations frequently ask whether employees are engaged without asking whether employees have enough of themselves left to engage. You could invite someone to bring their whole self to work, but if half of that self is monitoring danger and the other half is writing emails that sound aggressively pleasant, there is not much left to bring. I mean, they perform or comply, they may produce and they may smile. They also may answer an email with five exclamation points and a cheerful, ooh, happy to help. But internally, they may be scanning, they may be bracing, they may be calculating, they may be surviving. And let me be honest, survival is not the same as engagement. That is the one reason I am cautious when organizations celebrate the employee who appears completely unbothered, the employee who never complains, the employee who gladly accepts every assignment, the employee who remains composed while being interrupted, overlooked, and overloaded. The employee who says no problem. Well, their body is producing an itemized list of problems. We often call that person resilient. And sometimes they are resilient. Sometimes they have simply learned that visible distress creates additional danger. Compliance is not proof of safety. Silence is not proof of trust. Productivity is not proof of well-being. A person can perform at a very high level while living in a constant state of fear for a while. And then one day they can't keep doing it. The organization says the burnout appeared suddenly. The collapse may appear sudden, but the conditions rarely are. The important question is not only does my body feel activated, the more revealing question is what happens when I bring my concern, my mistake, limit, or need into the room? That's where safety shows itself. Imagine telling your supervisor, I need help prioritizing. I'm unable to continue doing everything at the current pace. In an unsafe system, the response might be, everyone is busy. You need to manage your time better. Well, that's what the job requires. Well, are you really committed? The system takes information about the workload and converts it into a judgment about the person. The safer system, the leader might say, thank you for telling me. What is at your current plate? Let me see what I can move. Okay, let's look at the deadlines and figure out which is reasonable and what are hard. What support would make this sustainable? And that doesn't mean every request receives an automatic yes. Psychological safety does not mean deadlines disappear, standards evaporate, and every meeting begins with a feeling circle. Safety does not mean the absence of accountability. It means accountability does not cost you dignity. Your need is treated as a legitimate information, means are data. Exhaustion is data, confusion is data, the body is saying this is too much. That's data. But unsafe systems often reject data when it interrupts the preferred organizational story. And the preferred story is usually, hey, everything's fine. And if everything is not fine, please update the spreadsheet. Word people first organization. Please collapse quietly. We care deeply about employees. Please attend this resilience webinar during lunch. Camera on, please. Absolutely not. I refuse to make eye contact with 24 squares of exhausted people while a consultant named Todd tells me to breathe. No disrespect, Todd. You might be lovely. You might have a calming voice and excellent slides. But Todd is not going to fix the staffing model. And naturally, you're expected to bring your own lunch. A Dignity Center Workplace asks a different question. If people repeatedly break down, what is this environment repeatedly requiring of them? When one person is struggling, the explanation may be the individual. But when many people are struggling in the same way, we should at least consider that the problem may be structural. But organizations often prefer individual explanations. Individual explanations are convenient. The employee needs better time management. The employee needs more resilience. I think the employee needs to meditate. This employee needs to practice self-care. Ooh, this employee should download an app. I mean, the organization does not have to change. The person simply needs to become better at surviving it. Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety helps to explain why the consequences extend beyond employee comfort. She defined teen psychological safety as a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. That means people believe they can ask questions, acknowledge errors, request help, and challenge assumptions without being humiliated and punished. Her foundational study connected psychological safety with team learning behaviors. That matters because people can't learn from the mistakes they're required to hide. They can't solve problems they are not permitted to name. They cannot protect the organization if protecting the leader's ego is more important than telling the truth. Later meta-analysis combined 136 individual samples, involving more than 22,000 individuals and 5,000 groups. The research found that psychological safety was meaningfully connected with outcomes such as information sharing, learning, performance, creativity, and discretionary contribution. So psychological safety is not a beanbag chair, it's not casual Friday, and again, it's not muffins. Psychological safety is part of the infrastructure that allows information to move. This is why safer organizations can occasionally look messier. People report problems, they admit mistakes, they challenge assumptions, and they bring forward information that an unsafe organization successfully keeps hidden. An unsafe organization may appear calm because everyone has learned to conceal smoke. The safer organization says, huh, tell us where the fire is. Your body can learn to detect danger through patterns, but it also learns safety through patterns, not promises, not through one inspiring leadership retreat, and not because the CEO stands on a stage and announces, starting today, we're going to have psychological safety. Fantastic. Does it begin immediately or should everyone restart their laptop first? Safety is built through ordinary responses. If you make a mistake, what happens next? You disagree. What happens next? You say no. What happens next? You admit you don't know something. What happens next? You share a concern that compensates the preferred narrative. What happens next? Your body is constantly collecting those answers. Can I disagree without losing access? Can I make a mistake without becoming a mistake? Can I ask a question without being made to feel unintelligent? Can I have a personal emergency without my commitment to the organization being questioned? Can I set a boundary without being punished, through distance, exclusion, or lost opportunities? Leaders answer those questions through their behavior. They answer through their tone, through consistency. They answer through whether they keep your word or how they respond to bad news, through whose mistakes receive context, through whether the rules can change depending on who is standing in front of them. A nervous system cannot fully settle in an environment where the rules are constantly shifting. People can often manage difficult news, but what is harder is to manage the emotional unpredictability. Will today's question be welcomed or punished? Will this leader support me in the meeting and criticize me afterwards? Will I receive direct feedback or discover that people have been discussing me for three months? Which version of this person will arrive today? Safety doesn't require perfection. It requires enough consistency that people do not have to spend the entire day scanning for the next thread. Sometimes the first sign that you feel finally safe is not happiness. Sometimes it's exhaustion. You leave the job, you leave a relationship, you move away from the person or environment that kept you constantly alert. And instead of immediately freeing free, you fall apart. You can't focus, you sleep more, you cry over something small, you feel less productive than you did when everything was supposedly worse. And you often wonder, why am I struggling now? I thought I was finally okay. Maybe your body is not betraying you. Maybe it's finally decided that it no longer has to hold everything together. For months or perhaps years, it kept you functional. It helped you read the room before entering. It reminded you to rehearse your answers. It taught you which version of yourself was safest to be present. It kept your shoulder. Type, your body ready, your emotions professionally unavailable during working hours. And then the threat moves farther away, and your body finally says, huh, you can put it down now. That's the strange thing about safety. Sometimes it does not initially feel peaceful. Sometimes it feels like becoming tired enough to rest. Sometimes it's taking a full breath without realizing how long you've been holding it. And sometimes the moment an email arrives from your boss and your stomach doesn't drop, you make a mistake and response is, thank you for telling me, let's fix it. You ask a question and no one acts like you have disrupted the natural order of the universe. You say, I don't know, and no one treats it as a confession of incompetence. Something inside of you exhales, but people have who have lived or worked in unpredictable environments don't immediately relax because someone says, you can trust me. Trust isn't transferred through announcement, it's built through evidence. You may wait for the other shoe to drop, you may overexplain, and you may apologize when no apology is necessary. You may remain hyper-independent because relying on other people has not historically felt safe. You may enter a healthy environment and think, why is no one emotionally tap dancing? Excuse me, this message is so clear. Why? Did that perfectness say what they meant the first time? What am I supposed to spiral about? No. For people accustomed to chaos, safety can feel boring, suspicious, too quiet. Your nervous assessment may stand there wearing a helmet and saying, I know how this movie goes. But sometimes the other shoe doesn't drop. Someday nobody throws a shoe. Sometimes the sick shoe is simply a shoe. Personal growth, accepting footwear is natural. Huge milestone. Sometimes healing means being able to tolerate the absence of emergency. Over time, your body collects new evidence. The person falls through. This leader gives feedback without attacking me. This team can disagree and reconnect. I can ask a question, I can take a lunch, I can leave at the end of the day. I can make a mistake and remain worthy of respect. I can receive an email containing the word okay with the period without immediately beginning estate planning. That last one may take additional practice. So how can I recognize a safer workplace? Not a perfectly safe workplace, because there's no such thing as perfect for a place safety, because there's people in it. And people are going to be people, but there are patterns worth noticing. One, needs can be named without humiliation. You can say help. You can say I'm confused. I need a break. I can't complete all this by Friday. And the answer might always be yes, but this response is not contempt. Your need is not automatically treated as proof that you're weak, entitled, uncommitted, or incapable. Number two, feedback addresses the work without attacking the person. Safe feedback sounds like this the section may need to be revised. This deadline was missed. Here's what I need to change. Unsafe feedback becomes an identity assessment. You're careless, you're difficult, and you're not committed. And you're absolutely the problem. There is a difference between correcting behavior and reducing a human being to their worst moment. Three, power can be questioned. In many environments, they are safe as long as no one challenges the person with authority. You can have ideas as long as they're agreeable ideas. You can give feedback as long as they flatter the system. You can be honest as long as your honesty doesn't require anyone powerful to change. But listen, that's not safety. That's permission to decorate the cage. And retaliation does not always arrive with a written announcement. Nobody says, hello, we're retaliating now. That would be far too transparent. Instead, it sounds like, oops, we forgot to invite you. Oh, we decided the opportunity should belong to someone else. The relationship has changed for completely unrelated reasons. Sure, and I'm Queen of Genovia. The punishment arrives when a cardigan, a retaliation cardigan, soft and professional, and still somehow dangerous. Number four, repair is expected. A safe person will still make mistakes. A safe leader will still get something wrong. A safe team will experience conflict. The difference is what happens next. Can we acknowledge it? Can we talk about it? Can the behavior change? Can we change the conditions that made that harm more likely? A real apology doesn't sound like we're sorry that some team members may have experienced our actions in a way that did not align with our intention. Let's be clear, that's not an apology. That's a hostage, a negotiation without accountability. A repair sounds like, sorry, I interrupted you. Oh, I dismissed your concern. I don't think I communicated that clearly. The way I handled that wasn't appropriate, and here's what I would like to do differently. Maybe the apology should come with lengths because words matter. Repair is behavioral. Repair goes somewhere. Safety is not the absence of rupture, safety is the presence of repair. And that's where dignity enters the conversation. Dignity does not mean everyone must feel special and safe. Dignity does not mean everyone must feel special every second of the workday. It means a person's worth does not disappear because they made a mistake, disagreed with the leader, needed support, or failed to produce at their usual level. Dignity is safety made visible. It's visible when a manager corrects someone privately instead of turning feedback into a public performance of authority. It's visible when employees receive information that affects their lives rather than discovering it through rumors. It's visible when the lowest ranking person in the room is allowed to finish a sentence. It's visible when leaders explain decisions or when policies apply consistently, especially when consistency is inconvenient. It's visible when people are not required to disclose every painful detail of their private lives before receiving basic human compassion. It's visible when a leader has enough confidence to admit I was wrong. Leaders do not necessarily destroy trust by making a mistake. Trust is often destroyed by refusing to acknowledge the mistake, rewriting what happened, or making the harm person responsible for restoring everyone else's comfort. Now I want to make this personal for you. Think about the places where you armor up. Where do you become extra polished? Where do you rehearse before speaking? And I don't mean healthy preparation. I mean you're in the shower conducting a full mock trial, you're shampooing your hair and saying, Your Honor, I'd like to submit Exhibit A, the text message from Tuesday. Nobody's there. The shampoo bottle is concerned. Where do you send an email that should have been two sentences and now contains a thesis statement, three citations, and a closing argument? Just want to clarify? No, you want it to survive. Spellcheck can't help that. Where do you laugh because you're uncomfortable? That laugh says, ha ha, no worries. But in your soul, is standing in the corner holding a clipboard and saying, there are several facts, several worries. Where do you know to soften? Where do you know to breathe more fully? Where can you ask a real question? And where can you say, I don't know? Can I have a minute? I made a mistake. I disagree. Where can someone correct you without making you feel erased? Where can someone disagree with you and remain connected? And where can you rest without feeling that you will have an emotionally replay the time later? Those places may not be perfect, but they may be safer. When your body reacts strongly to a person or environment, I want you to try asking three questions. First, what am I feeling in my body? Second, what story am I telling myself about the situation? And third, what evidence do I have about how this person or environment responds to needs, boundaries, honesty, conflict, mistakes, and repair? Because safety is not only a vibe. Although some vibes are extremely loud, some vibes enter the room five minutes before the person does. But evidence matters. The goal is not to become suspicious of everyone. The goal is to become discerning. Suspicion says, no one's safe. Naivity says everyone is safe because they said they were. And discernment says, I'll pay attention to patterns. So how do you know you're safe? Not because everything is easy and not because everyone agrees. Not because no one ever feels uncomfortable. You know you're safer when your humanity does not have to disappear for the system to function. You know you're safer when means are treated as data, not as drama. You know you're safer when accountability does not require humiliation. And you know you're safer when power can be questioned and harm can be repaired. And you know you're safer when your body is believed before it has to break. You do not have to call a place safe simply because you survived it. Safety is not survival. Safety is what allows you to start performing survival. So over this next week, notice where you armor up and notice one place where you soften. Don't judge what you find, just pay attention. Your body will be telling you a story that your mind has not given it permission to hear. And ask yourself, what would safety have to prove before I believed it? Because your body does not need another promise. It needs evidence. Evidence that the truth can be spoken, evidence that mistakes can be repaired, evidence that authority can be steady, evidence that accountability does not require humiliation, evidence that you can be fully human and still be taken seriously. Safety rarely arrives all at once. It's built through ordinary moments, a calm response, a respected boundary, a kept commitment or a seer apology, a question asked with genuine curiosity, and a leader who chooses not to use all the power available to them simply because they can. Eventually, after enough evidence, something shifts, your shoulders drop, your breathing changes, and your mind becomes quieter. You stop preparing for the battle that is not coming, and your body finally says, I know this feeling. This is what safety feels like. And before I go, I want to leave you with one more thought. This podcast was never meant to be a monologue. It's always meant to be part of a conversation. Because I know I'm not the only one asking these questions. And I know I'm definitely not the only person who sat in that chair, held their face still, made their voice even, and wondered whether being professional meant becoming less human. So if today's episode made you stop, made you think, or made you recognize a place where you have been performing safety instead of experiencing it, I would love to hear from you. Please head over to pleasemeetyourtrauma.com. Go find every episode, additional resources, and a place to continue the conversation. And if you have a workplace story or a question, or even just a random Wednesday thought, please leave me a voicemail message at 188-629-5081. Again, that's 1888-629-5081. Seriously, I want to hear your voice. And some of those episodes may become part of future episodes because I have a feeling the conversations we're not having are exactly the ones we need to begin having. And whether you're sitting here today as an employee, a leader, HR executive, or somewhere in between, there's always a seat for you here. Not the chair you have to disappear, not the chair where you have to perform being fine. But a seat where your questions are welcome, your humanity is not inconvenience, and your dignity is the baseline. Until next time, stay curious. I'm Jimmy Collins, and I'm curious about what happens when work forgets we're human. And I'm still asking why. Because I believe organizations don't have a people problem, they have a humanity problem. And further, I believe that work becomes meaningful when dignity is protected. And that means protecting Rome. Take care of yourself, take care of each other, and hydrate with actual water, not vibes.