For the past 32 years, The Health Resource Network (HRN) has organized and sponsored Stress Awareness Month. The primary goals of Stress Awareness Month 2025 are consistent with those identified upon its initial launch in 1992:
“Stress Awareness Month is a national, cooperative effort to inform people about the dangers of stress, successful coping strategies, and harmful misconceptions about stress that are prevalent in our society.”
The founder and Director of HRN, Dr. Morton C. Orman, M.D., explains the value of Stress Awareness Month 2025 (SAM 2025):
“Even though we’ve learned a lot about stress in the past twenty years…we’ve got a long way to go. New information is now available that could help millions of Americans eliminate their suffering.”
In 2003, another non-profit organization,The Stress Management Society (SMS), based in the United Kingdom, joined HRN as sponsors of Stress Awareness Month. The SMS elucidates similar goals for Stress Awareness Month:
- Educate the public about stress: origins and effects.
- Promote effective stress management: improve overall health and wellness.
- Encourage dialogue: decrease stigma related to stress and mental health.
- Support those overwhelmed by stress: offer practical support – tools, resources, help numbers, peer groups – to help people effectively manage stress.
Each year, the SMS chooses a theme to focus their awareness efforts. Here’s the theme they chose for 2025:
#LeadWithLove
In the context of Stress Awareness Month, leading with love refers to each of us, individually, and the way we relate to one another, collectively. This theme is based on a concept in psychology and psychotherapy called. Let’s take a look at what this means, and how it can help us raise awareness about stress unconditional positive regard and mental health during Stress Awareness Month 2025 (SAM 2025).
Unconditional Love and Acceptance: What We All Need
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines unconditional positive regard as follows:
“…an attitude of caring, acceptance, and prizing that others express toward an individual irrespective of their behavior and without regard to the others’ personal standards. Unconditional positive regard is considered conducive to individual self-awareness, self-worth, and growth.”
In the context of SAM 2025, prioritizing kindness-with-no-strings-or-prerequisites teaches us to treat ourselves and others with respect, kindness, and compassion, regardless of the situation or circumstances. In the modern world, characterized by non-stop information, news feeds populated by algorithms designed to amplify topics that stir strong emotions that aren’t always positive, and more recently, by political chaos and division, when we #LeadWithLove, we work to counter the mood in our culture and promote positive change.
But what does this have to do with stress?
Think of it this way: stress is based in fear. Either fear of something happening in the future, ruminating (recycling fear/anxiety) about the past, or feeling anxiety/fear about what’s happening right now. If we accept that fear is foundational to stress, and love is the opposite of fear, then leading with love means we can replace the core emotion of stress, i.e. fear, with the core emotion of wellness and thriving, i.e love.
But why should we consider participating in Stress Awareness Month?
Here are five compelling reasons for anyone to participate, as defined by the Stress Awareness Network.
Four Reasons to Participate in Stress Awareness Month 2025
- Inspire People in Your Community. One voice makes a difference. Two can make change. Three create momentum – and more can change the world, one community at a time.
- Learn About Stress and Its Consequences. If you understand the sources and outcomes of stress, you can work to reduce stress and mitigate the negative consequences of stress.
- Manage Stress: When you participate in SAM 2025, you’ll encounter a wealth of resources online, through the links we share above. You can use these resources to add to your toolbox of stress management skills, and improve your overall health and wellness.
- Create Community: Stress can feel isolating and increase a sense of loneliness, which exacerbates almost all mental health issues. But when you learn you’re not alone, and that other people have gone through – and are currently going through – stressful situations similar to those you experience, you can find hope for the future, and confidence that you can meet and overcome any challenge you face.
We can simplify that list: you participate to help yourself, help others, and help your community. Now that you know the why – and you’re in – let’s take a look at the how.
You Can Help Show the Way: It Takes a Community
During awareness months like these, it’s often difficult to see where and how you can fit in and make a difference. Once you read the reasons above and commit to participate, what do you do? The best thing about the theme for this year – #LeadWithLove – is that you don’t need anything aside from you, your willingness, and people who need your support.
Let’s take a look at ways you can get involved, according to the organizers at the Stress Awareness Network.
Three Ways to Participate in Stress Awareness Month 2025
- Daily Acts of Love and Kindness: Small or large, kind acts motivated by love make an impact in the moment you do them, and can reverberate – and help – for a lifetime. That’s no exaggeration: we bet you can remember specific acts of kindness you received going back to childhood.
- Take Care of Yourself: Leading with love starts with you. When you extend compassion, kindness, and love to yourself, it enables you to offer the same to others, which can help reduce their stress and improve their overall wellbeing.
- Speak About Your Experience: Whether you share your successes or share your challenges, speaking out about stress – and how to counter it when you #LeadWithLove – paves the way for others to share and speak about their experiences. Lead by example, and you’ll create more than followers: you’ll create other leaders.
Now that we’ve covered the what, why, and how of Stress Awareness Month – what it is, why you should think about participating, and how you can participate if you decide to – let’s take a closer look at stress itself. More specifically, about the negative consequences of stress.
All About Stress: Positive Origins, Negative Outcomes
First, in order to ensure we’re all on the same page, let’s review what we mean by stress in the context of mental health. The American Psychological Association (APA) offers this official definition:
“[Stress is] the physiological response to internal or external stressors. Stress involves changes affecting nearly every system of the body, influencing how people feel and behave. By causing these mind–body changes, stress…directly affects mental and physical health, reducing quality of life.”
In addition, leading authorities on stress identify three types of stress:
- Positive stress refers to the type of stress we all manage successfully every day: running behind, dealing with people who annoy us, and common work/school pressures.
- Tolerable stress refers to the type of stress we experience in response to challenging life events: losing a job, conflict with loved ones, and managing minor physical ailments, illnesses, or injuries.
- Toxic stress refers to the type of stress we experience in response to chronic, extreme stress, such as long-term physical or emotional abuse, living in a war zone, the death of a loved one, or experiencing a chronic, life-threatening illness.
To be clear, our subjective experience of stress is part of what has kept humans alive for millions of years. Stress is associated with our flight/fight response, which is a survival advantage. Stress also drives us to study for tests, prepare for meetings at work, or prepare our homes when bad weather is coming: it causes us to behave in ways that will protect us from a wide variety of dangers and threats.
However, when stress persists after the event that elicited it, that continued, ongoing stress can cause serious issues. For instance, when we experience toxic stress, but don’t have a way to process or resolve the associated emotions in a healthy and productive manner, it can lead to significant physical, emotional, and social/relationship consequences.
Physical problems associated with unresolved toxic stress include:
- Dysfunction in the circulatory, digestive, immune, and reproductive systems dysfunction
- Musculoskeletal pathologies
- Elevated blood pressure
- Weight gain/loss
- Fatigue
Emotional issues associated with unresolved toxic stress include:
- Mood disorders/persistent sadness
- Anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)/persistent anxiousness
- Behavioral disorders/persistent anger/irritability
Social/relationship issues associated with unresolved toxic stress include:
- Problems forming and maintaining meaningful connections/relationships
- Conflict with friends and family
- Withdrawal from key relationships: family, friends, romantic partners
- Decreased participation in favorite activities
This information summarizes the impact of stress in our lives: in optimal circumstances, stress is like a warning sign to take action now. But in the modern world, our stress response often persists after the stressor is gone, which creates the problems we list above.
There’s good news, though. You can manage your stress with basic techniques and strategies that are easy to learn and immediately applicable.
Stress Awareness Month 2025: What’s Love Got to Do With It?
The basics of stress management start with common sense:
- Eat healthy food
- Get plenty of exercise
- Get good sleep every night
- Maintain positive social connections
- Prioritize your personal wellbeing
All five of those have everything to do with love: love for self, not be confused with self-indulgence, casual narcissism, or arrogance. Love for self establishes the foundation for loving others, or, in the context of Stress Awareness Month, extending others the empathy, compassion, kindness, and understanding they need when they’re experiencing stress.
When you #LeadWithLove, you lead the way to a better future for yourself and others, directed and guided by the power of love for others and yourself. If a positive, loving mindset is not your default modus operandi, don’t worry: you can learn.
In fact, you can take a month and practice #LeadingWithLove in a simple way every day. We adapted the following list from this free resource. It’s a kindness calendar, designed to help you lead with love and kindness every day in the month of April, or for 30 consecutive days from whenever you decide to start.
30 Ways Lead With Love in April 2025
First Week
- Write down three things you like/love about yourself.
- Take 15 minutes to do something just for you.
- Hold open the door for someone at the store.
- Practice a mindfulness exercise.
- Write a love letter – to you.
- Indulge yourself: bubble bath or special treat to eat.
- Clean up litter in your neighborhood.
Second Week
- Compliment a friend or coworker: find something genuine and meaningful.
- Help a friend do work around their house.
- Tell someone who helped you how grateful you are for them.
- Listen to someone who needs support.
- Volunteer for a cause you believe in.
- Be kind to a stranger: not random, but intentional.
- Think of a mistake you made in the past, and forgive yourself for it.
Third Week
- Go the whole day without saying anything negative.
- Think of someone from the past you think wronged you, and forgive them.
- Spend the day listening more than talking.
- Bring food to a friend.
- Write down three things you’re truly grateful for.
- Tell someone hard at work they’re doing a great job.
- Tell someone who’s having a hard time that you believe in them, and can help.
Fourth Week
- Help an elderly person complete a task: taking groceries to the car, helping them clean up their yard – whatever they need in the moment.
- Try to smile at everyone you see.
- Give up your seat/place to someone who needs it – on the bus, at an event, or at the grocery store.
- Write down three cool things you’re proud of doing in the past.
- Ask someone how they’re doing – how they’re really doing – and take the time to listen to whatever is going on in their life.
- Donate items to charity: books, clothes, or household necessities.
- Think of someone you remember fondly, find their contact info, and send them a note about your good memories of them.
Bonus Days
- Share a quote that inspires you.
- Look back over the past month, and write down what you gained from your month of intentional kindness.
We’ll close this article with our take on this well-known adage:
An act of kindness a day keeps the stress away!
