We create this content from the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and Squamish Nations. As settlers providing therapy in Vancouver, we acknowledge that play practices have existed in Indigenous and BIPOC communities long before colonial systems tried to regulate and commodify them.

This post explores anti-oppressive therapy approaches that center joy as genuine resistance.

In This Guide:

• Beyond Performative Joy: When “Radical” Just Means Expensive
• Capitalism’s War on Joy: Why Your Boss Hates Fun
• Anti-Carceral Joy as Resistance: Beyond the Prison of Productivity
• Holding Multiple Truths: Joy Isn’t a To-Do List Item
• Building Collective Joy: Because the Revolution Needs Snacks
• Practical Applications: Making Joy Actually Revolutionary
• Next Steps in Your Joy Journey

Somewhere between the $45 “Joy Is Resistance” tote bags and LinkedIn posts about how answering emails is revolutionary self-care, we lost the plot. When every wellness influencer with a ring light claims their morning routine is dismantling capitalism, it’s time to ask: What makes joy actually revolutionary?

Beyond Performative Joy: When “Radical” Just Means Expensive

Let’s be real – if your “revolutionary joy practice” involves a $200 crystal-infused water bottle but no mutual aid, we need to talk. The wellness industry has mastered the art of selling resistance without the inconvenient parts (you know, the actual resisting). As providers of anti-oppressive counselling in Vancouver, we’re watching “joy as resistance” become another product in the self-care industrial complex.

• When your “radical joy” comes with a price tag
• How “listening to your body” became a luxury brand
• The problem with decontextualized “healing”

When your “radical joy” comes with a price tag, we have to question who profits from our “liberation.” The wellness industry has turned resistance into a marketable aesthetic – complete with $80 “Decolonize Your Mind” workshops and exclusive “healing retreats” that cost more than most people’s rent. This commodification of joy doesn’t just miss the point; it actively undermines collective liberation by making “resistance” accessible only to those who can afford it.

“Listening to your body” has somehow morphed from a basic survival skill into a luxury lifestyle brand. What was once wisdom passed down through generations of healers and community care workers is now packaged and sold back to us through premium meditation apps and exclusive somatic workshops. In Vancouver’s therapy landscape, we see how this commercialization particularly impacts BIPOC communities, whose ancestral practices of body awareness are now marketed as “revolutionary discoveries” by white wellness entrepreneurs.

The problem with decontextualized “healing” goes beyond cultural appropriation – it’s about how individual wellness gets separated from collective struggle. When therapy and healing work ignore the systems that create trauma, they become band-aids on bullet wounds. True healing can’t be divorced from its political context, especially when providing anti-oppressive counselling in Vancouver where colonial systems continue to impact our communities daily.

Capitalism’s War on Joy: Why Your Boss Hates Fun

Capitalism has a complicated relationship with joy – it sells it in packages while systematically destroying its authentic expressions. In providing anti-oppressive therapy in Vancouver, we see how:

• Productivity demands turn play into performance metrics
• “Work hard, play hard” really means “work hard, consume hard”
• Even our rest gets measured in optimization terms
• Joy gets relegated to “after hours” (if we’re lucky)

In our therapy practice, we often notice how productivity demands reshape our relationship with play. What starts as natural joy gets turned into measurable outcomes – from step counts to meditation streaks to “wellness points” at work. While tracking isn’t inherently harmful, there’s something beautiful about movement and play that exists just for its own sake, outside the metrics of productivity.

The phrase “work hard, play hard” reveals so much about how capitalism views rest and joy. It suggests that play is just another form of productivity, another way to optimize ourselves. But what if play could be gentle? What if rest could be slow? What if joy could exist without having to earn it first? In our counselling practice in Vancouver, we’re learning to create spaces where different ways of being become possible.

Even when we try to rest, capitalism’s logic seeps in. Our breaks get optimized (“power naps”), our hobbies become side hustles, and our pleasure gets measured in terms of how it improves our productivity. While there’s nothing wrong with feeling energized after rest, there’s also profound value in rest that serves no purpose beyond itself – rest as a birthright rather than a productivity tool.

When joy becomes something we can only access after hours, on weekends, or during approved vacation time, we lose touch with the natural rhythms of pleasure and play. In providing culturally responsive therapy, we’re reminded by our communities that joy has always been woven into the fabric of life – in shared meals, in stories, in moments of connection that refuse to be scheduled into 30-minute blocks.

Here’s the thing about capitalist joy: it’s always trying to sell us back what it stole from us in the first place. Your “mindfulness bundle” subscription can’t replace the community connections that capitalism deliberately destroyed.

Anti-Carceral Joy as Resistance: Beyond the Prison of Productivity

When providing justice-oriented counselling in Vancouver, we see how carceral logic shapes even our relationship with joy. It’s not just prisons – it’s the whole system of punishment, control, and “rehabilitation” that tries to regulate how we experience pleasure and play.

• No, your “crime” of taking a lunch break doesn’t need punishment
• Your joy doesn’t need to prove its worth
• Pleasure doesn’t require productivity receipts
• Rest is not something you need to “earn”

When we talk about lunch breaks being treated as “time theft” or rest being seen as “lazy,” we’re seeing carceral logic at work in everyday spaces. These systems of punishment and surveillance show up in subtle ways – in time-tracking software, in productivity monitors, in the guilt we’re made to feel for taking a full hour to eat and connect with colleagues. In our therapy practice, we’re learning to gently challenge these internalized systems of control.

There’s something powerful about claiming joy that doesn’t need to justify its existence. In a world that constantly demands proof of our worth through productivity, choosing joy without explanation becomes a quiet act of liberation. This is especially true for SDQTBIPOC+ communities, whose expressions of joy have historically been policed and pathologized. Your joy doesn’t need to prove its worth – it’s inherently valuable because you are.

The idea that pleasure requires productivity receipts shows up everywhere – from having to “earn” our dessert to needing to “deserve” a break. But what if pleasure was understood as a natural part of being human? In our counselling practice, we see how transformative it can be when people begin to trust their right to experience joy, without first having to present evidence of their productivity.

Rest isn’t a reward for working hard – it’s a fundamental part of being alive. When we look to nature, we see how rest and activity flow in natural cycles. Trees don’t earn their dormant seasons, and flowers don’t need permission to bloom. In providing anti-oppressive therapy in Vancouver, we’re reminded by our communities that rest is ancestral wisdom – it’s part of how we’ve survived and thrived through generations.

Anti-carceral joy means rejecting the idea that our pleasure needs permission, our play needs purpose, or our rest needs reason. It means understanding that surveillance and control of marginalized people’s joy has always been a tool of oppression.

Holding Multiple Truths: Joy Isn’t a To-Do List Item

In our practice of culturally responsive therapy in Vancouver, we understand that authentic joy often coexists with grief, rage, and everything in between. Revolutionary joy isn’t about toxic positivity – it’s about holding space for our full humanity:

• Dancing at protests while holding rage
• Finding pleasure while processing trauma
• Laughing through tears in community
• Building joy while grieving what’s lost

There’s something powerful about dancing at protests – the way joy and rage can coexist in the same moment, the same body, the same movement. In providing therapy in Vancouver, we’ve witnessed how these moments of collective joy during struggle remind us of our wholeness. It’s not about choosing between celebration and resistance; it’s about understanding how they strengthen each other.

Finding pleasure while processing trauma isn’t a contradiction – it’s often part of the healing journey. When we create space in therapy for both laughter and tears, we honor the complexity of human experience. This is particularly important for SDQTBIPOC+ communities, who have often been told their joy must wait until after all wounds are healed. But healing doesn’t happen in a linear fashion, and sometimes joy is precisely what creates space for deeper healing.

Community spaces often hold some of our most profound moments of “laughing through tears” – those times when grief and joy dance together in ways that remind us of our shared humanity. Whether it’s sharing stories during organizing meetings or finding moments of lightness during heavy conversations, these experiences teach us that our emotions don’t need to compete with each other for space.

Building joy while grieving what’s lost is a sacred practice many of our communities know intimately. It’s in the celebrations we hold even as we mourn, the traditions we keep alive through generations, the new rituals we create together. This multiplicity isn’t about “moving on” or “getting over it” – it’s about honoring the fullness of our experiences and the depth of our resilience.

This multiplicity isn’t a contradiction – it’s what makes us human. And in a system that wants us to be productive units rather than people, simply claiming our full humanity becomes an act of resistance.

Building Collective Joy: Because the Revolution Needs Snacks

Through our anti-oppressive therapy practice in Vancouver, we’re learning that revolutionary joy isn’t something you can buy or achieve alone. It’s built in community, through:

• Mutual aid networks that include pleasure and play
• Movement spaces that honor rest and celebration
• Community care that doesn’t require perfection
• Collective healing that makes space for laughter

Mutual aid networks teach us something beautiful about joy – how it multiplies when shared. When we bring pleasure and play into our support networks, we challenge the idea that mutual aid must always feel heavy or serious. Sometimes solidarity looks like skillshares that end in dance parties, or food distribution that includes recipe sharing and communal meals. These moments of shared joy don’t distract from the work; they sustain it.

Movement spaces that honor rest and celebration understand something crucial about sustainable resistance. In our counselling practice in Vancouver, we’ve learned from SDQTBIPOC+ organizers that celebration isn’t just something that happens after the work – it’s part of how we build capacity for the long haul. When we make space for rest and joy within our movement work, we practice the world we’re trying to create.

Community care that doesn’t require perfection feels like a radical departure from both capitalist and carceral logics. It’s in the group chats where we can say “I’m struggling” without having to perform our pain perfectly. It’s in the organizing spaces where we can show up exactly as we are – tired, hopeful, messy, brilliant. This kind of care reminds us that we don’t have to earn our place in community; we belong simply because we exist.

Collective healing makes space for laughter because our communities have always known that joy is medicine too. Whether it’s inside jokes that carry years of shared history, or the gentle teasing between elders and youth at community gatherings, this laughter carries wisdom. It reminds us that even in spaces of healing and transformation, there’s room for lightness, for play, for the kind of joy that helps us breathe a little deeper.

Revolutionary joy is found in the moments between actions – in shared meals after organizing meetings, in inside jokes during long campaigns, in dance breaks during difficult conversations. It’s not an escape from the work; it’s part of what makes the work sustainable.

Practical Applications: Making Joy Actually Revolutionary

So how do we practice revolutionary joy in ways that actually challenge systems? Through our SDQTBIPOC+ centered counselling in Vancouver, we explore:

• Building joy practices that support movement work
• Creating pleasure-positive resistance spaces
• Finding sustainable ways to celebrate while fighting
• Making therapy spaces that honor both struggle and joy

Building joy practices that support movement work looks different for everyone, but it often starts with small, intentional choices. In our therapy practice, we explore how to weave moments of pleasure into organizing – from starting meetings with community check-ins that go beyond surface-level updates, to ending difficult strategy sessions with collective breathing or movement. These practices aren’t extras; they’re essential tools for sustainable resistance.

Creating pleasure-positive resistance spaces means challenging the idea that serious work can’t include playfulness. When providing anti-oppressive counselling in Vancouver, we learn from communities who have long understood that joy and justice work together. This might look like art-making during planning sessions, incorporating music into protests, or using theater and storytelling to imagine different futures.

Finding sustainable ways to celebrate while fighting requires us to think differently about what celebration means. Sometimes it’s spontaneous dance breaks during long meetings. Other times it’s honoring small victories alongside ongoing struggles, or creating rituals that help us mark moments of growth and change. These celebrations aren’t distractions from the work – they’re anchors that help us remember why we do this work in the first place.

Making therapy spaces that honor both struggle and joy means creating room for the full spectrum of human experience. In our practice on these unceded territories, we’re learning to hold space where laughter can follow tears, where play can exist alongside processing, and where healing doesn’t have to look just one way. This approach recognizes that our capacity for joy is as much a part of our resistance as our capacity for critique.

Because here’s the truth: joy without action isn’t resistance, but resistance without joy isn’t sustainable. We need both. We deserve both.

Next Steps in Your Joy Journey

Ready to explore how revolutionary joy might support your healing journey? Here are some ways to connect:

1. Book a free consultation to discuss how anti-oppressive therapy might support your path to authentic joy.

2. Take our 3-minute questionnaire to receive personalized therapist recommendations.

3. Explore our free resource database for more information about justice-oriented therapy approaches.

Have questions? Text us at 778.775.7504 or email connect@venturouscounselling.com.

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