By Brooke Bertrand

We are already aware of our stress. Very, extremely, overwhelmingly aware. What we need now is each other. And the Joy Train.

Every April, the wellness industrial complex swings open its arms and declares it Stress Awareness Month. Candles are lit. Deep-breathing infographics flood your feed. Some brand that sells adaptogenic mushroom coffee sends you an email with the subject line "You deserve to exhale." And somewhere, a pastel-coloured poster goes up in a break room next to a scheduling spreadsheet that nobody has updated since February.

We appreciate the thought. Truly. But here's the thing: we are already aware. Profoundly, viscerally, chronically aware. Our awareness of stress is not the problem. Awareness and knowledge are not change agents. Our stress is the problem and a significant portion of it is not coming from inside the house.
A brief history of how we got here Stress Awareness Month was established in 1992.

In 1992, you could buy a house on a single income, make a phone call without anyone tracking your location, and go to the grocery store without experiencing what can only be described as a full existential reckoning in the cereal aisle. The bar for "stressful" was different. Navigable, even.

Today, we are managing a cost-of-living crisis, $10 butter in these streets, a housing market designed for people who already own homes, global (terrifying) news delivered directly to our eyeballs every three minutes, a job market that demands "5+ years of experience" for entry-level roles, a loneliness epidemic, highly anxious teenagers, and the lingering social pressure that we should somehow also be optimizing our gut microbiome (did you get your protein ladies?)

All at once. On a Tuesday. Good intentions, wrong prescription

Every Stress Awareness Month, the internet rallies around the same carousel of solutions: journaling, meditation, going for a walk, "limiting your news intake," and our perennial favourite, saying no to things. Bold. Radical. Revolutionary. If only our landlord, our boss, and our body's cortisol receptors were willing to accept "no" as an answer.

Look, as a therapist, I will not pretend or dismiss that these things don't help us cope. I spend hours every week discussing stress management. A 10-minute walk genuinely can shift your nervous system. Breathwork works. Sleep is non-negotiable, and the hill I will professionally and personally die on every single time (midlife just made the climb steeper). However, it is within my values as a therapist to be honest about reality. Even I can’t ignore that there is something deeply unserious about suggesting that the antidote to systemic, structural, economy-grade stress is a gratitude journal and a chamomile tea. That's like offering someone a band-aid and calling it surgery.

The audacity of telling someone working three jobs in order to afford nearly $2/liter gas and childcare to "just practice self-care" is, itself, a source of stress. And here's what I want to say clearly, as both a clinician and a person who also lives in this world: it is not a personal failing that you are struggling. The problem is not your mindset. The problem is real, it is big, and you are not imagining it.
Your worth is not your output.

One of the most insidious things chronic structural stress does is that it quietly attaches itself to our sense of self. We start to feel like the stress is evidence of something wrong with us. Like if we were smarter, more disciplined, better organized, less sensitive, more boot-strappy, we would have figured it out by now.
This is just not true. And I say that not as a platitude, but as a clinical observation I have made over and over again in my work: the most capable, generous, hardworking people are often the ones most crushed by systems that were never designed with their wellbeing in mind.

Your bank balance is not a measure of your value. Your productivity is not a measure of your worth. The weight you are carrying is not proof of weakness, it is proof that you are a human being trying to function inside structures that are under enormous strain. Separating those two things — what is happening to me versus what is wrong with me — is not just a therapeutic exercise. It is an act of profound self-respect.

Beyond self-care: the case for community care

You have been sold a version of self-care that is fundamentally individual: a purchase, a routine, a personal optimization project. And somewhere in that translation, we accidentally stripped away the most powerful thing: the we.
Community care is the idea that we are not meant to manage our stress alone. What restores us is not just rest, but belonging. It is the neighbour who drops off soup when you're overwhelmed. It is the coworker who says "I've got this one" when they can see you're at capacity. It is the mutual aid fund, the friend who texts back at 2am, the community group that organizes rides for people without cars. It is, frankly, what humans evolved to do before we convinced ourselves that needing each other was a weakness.
"Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion." — bell hooks, All About Love

Research backs this up consistently. Social connection is one of the most powerful buffers against the physical and psychological effects of chronic stress. Connection that is not just a performance, not posting a highlight reel, but real, reciprocal, sometimes-messy human contact. Artemis II Mission specialist Christina Koch described her crew after ten days in deep space as people who were "inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked" — sharing the same cares and the same needs. That is not just a description of four astronauts. That is a description of every community worth belonging to.

Joy is not a luxury. It is a strategy.

Here is something I want to say plainly, because it sometimes gets lost in conversations about mental health and resilience: joy is not frivolous. Choosing delight, protecting your capacity for wonder, for play, for beauty, is not ignoring reality or a distraction from the hard stuff. It is how we survive it.

Neurologically, positive emotion broadens our thinking, builds psychological resources, and counteracts the physical toll of stress. When we laugh, when we are moved by something beautiful, when we get genuinely absorbed in a piece of music or a story or a breathtaking image, our nervous system gets a real break. And yet we have somehow collectively decided that consuming joyful, awe-inspiring media is indulgent or beside the point, especially when things feel serious. I'd like to push back on that. Hard.

Case in point: this past week was full of wonder and awe and evidence of the very best of us.

On April 6th, four astronauts, including Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, flew around the far side of the Moon, farther from Earth than any human has been since 1970. They watched an Earthrise. They witnessed a solar eclipse from deep space. They photographed craters no human eye had ever seen. They lovingly named a crater after the deceased wife of their crewmate. They splashed down safely just days ago, and for 10 special days, millions of people looked up. That collective looking-up matters more than we give it credit for.
"We have a term in our crew that we coined a long time ago — the 'joy train.' We're not always on the joy train. There are many times we're not on the joy train. But we are committed to getting back on the joy train as soon as we can. And that is a useful life skill for any team trying to get something done."
— Jeremy Hansen, CSA astronaut, Artemis II

Awe
The experience of something vast and humbling and beyond our ordinary frame — is one of the most potent psychological reset buttons we have. Studies show it reduces self-referential thinking (the mental loop of worry and rumination), decreases inflammatory stress markers, and increases our sense of connection to something larger than ourselves. It does not minimize our problems. It expands our sense of what is possible.

You do not have to watch a moon mission to access this. The Blue Jays (and all of their joy but especially Ernie Clement!) are back on the field. Birds in nature are singing with signs of spring. Watch a documentary that genuinely moves you. Read a novel that pulls you out of yourself (my personal daily favorite). Listen to music especially the music you loved in your youth. Go outside at night and look at the actual sky. The point is to let something in something that reminds you the world is also vast and strange and full of things worth caring about.

This is stress management. This is also, quietly, an act of resistance, a refusal to let anxiety and dread have the only say about what your life feels like. Creativity works the same way. Making something, anything, even badly, reconnects us to agency and play, the parts of ourselves that chronic stress tends to crowd out. You do not need to be good at it. You just need to show up for it, show up for yourself.

BeTheChange

This year's Stress Awareness Month theme is a call to move from passive awareness into active participation in your own life, and in the life of your community. The following are real, doable things that actually move the dial.
What you can actually do (no mushroom coffee required)

1. Name what is structural, and stop blaming yourself for it
   When stress hits, try asking: "Is this a me problem or a system problem?" You cannot journal your way out of unaffordable rent. Naming the source accurately is the first step to responding wisely — and to not internalizing something that was never your fault.
2. Awe —Check in on someone and mean it
   Not "let me know if you need anything." That puts the labour on the person already struggling. Instead: "I'm making dinner Friday — can I bring you some?" or "I have an hour Tuesday. Want to go for a walk?" Specific, low-barrier offers are community care in action.
3. Let yourself be helped.
   This is harder than it sounds. Chronic stress often comes packaged with the belief that we should handle it alone. Accepting support is not weakness it is what makes community care possible. You cannot receive what you refuse.
4. Get back on the joy train
   Schedule something that brings you genuine delight. Put it in the calendar and treat it as non-negotiable. Whether it's a film, a walk, a creative project, or a conversation that has nothing to do with obligations — joy is not a reward for when the to-do list is done. It is maintenance.
5. Create something — even badly
   Draw, write, cook something new, plant something, dance in your kitchen, sing loudly in the car. Creativity reconnects us to agency and play, the parts of ourselves that stress tends to crowd out. You don't need to be good at it. You just need to show up for it.
6. Consume something that fills you up
   Be intentional about the media you take in. Doomscrolling is not the same as staying informed. Find one thing this week such as a documentary, a podcast, a book, a piece of music that makes you feel wonder, warmth, or genuine hope. Protect that feeling. It is doing real neurological work.
7. Get informed and get loud locally
   Attend a city council meeting. Write to your MPP about mental health funding. Support local organizations working on housing, food security, and addiction. Structural stress requires structural solutions, and those come from informed citizens who show up.
8. Talk about money, workload, and burnout out loud
   Shame thrives in silence. When we normalize conversations about financial stress, caregiver load, and feeling overwhelmed, we reduce stigma and create openings for solidarity. You don't need to have the solution to break the silence.
9. If you lead people, your behavior is the policy.
   Model leaving at a reasonable hour. Normalize cancelling unnecessary meetings. Ask your team how they actually are, and wait for the real answer. End late night email chains. Workplace culture shifts one manager at a time, and what you permit and model matters more than any wellness program.
   Stress, left unaddressed, does real damage — to hearts, to sleep, to relationships, to the part of the brain responsible for perspective and patience.
10. If you are drowning right now, please tell someone. Not an app. A person. A doctor, a friend, a therapist. Help is not a reward you earn by suffering enough first. It is something you are allowed to reach for right now, exactly as you are.
    And if you are someone who is doing okay, look around. Someone near you probably isn't. That is your opening. Community care is not a program or a hashtag. It is the decision, made over and over again, to treat the people around you as if their wellbeing is connected to yours. Because it is. It always has been.
    Take care of each other.
11. Get back on the joy train when you fall off. And if you see something this month that makes your chest unclench with awe and wonder— even for a moment — let it.

Monthly Column Brooke's Inside Voice

Brooke Bertrand, MA, RP, owner of Bright Raven Psychotherapy and brings over 20 years of experience helping clients navigate relationships, anxiety, burnout, addictions, and relational trauma. Trained in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, she guides partners toward real connection—and even reaches those who never thought therapy was for them.

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Bright Raven Psychotherapy is committed to providing quality therapy service that is client-centered, anti-oppressive, and trauma-informed.

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 Off the clock, she’s chasing two teenagers around hockey rinks. She believes life is lived best with humor, the love of cats, great books, good tea, and a great playlist.

 Brooke’s Inside Voice will bring common therapy topics into the public spotlight, exploring the issues that quietly shape our relationships. From mental health and the hustle of modern life to the joys and challenges of being human and seeking connection to ourselves and others, Brooke shares insights that help readers understand themselves, their loved ones, and the ties that bind us.