Screaming Won't Set You Free

Acting out your emotions can escalate rather than release them

In early 2021, a group of mothers in Boston gathered in a field to scream bloody murder.

A therapist had organized the event. Enough people heard about it that the New York Times set up a phone line you could call to scream into for a full minute, joining the Boston women as they stood in the January cold. The logic was that women were at their breaking point with the pandemic. They needed to get it out to feel better.

We think screaming helps with releasing our emotions because we imagine that emotions work like pressure — they build up inside us and must be let out before we can feel well again. It’s an old idea. In the 1960s a therapist named Arthur Janov built a whole practice on it, called it primal therapy, and claimed the primal scream could cure not only anxiety and depression but asthma and even cancer. His book sold more than a million copies, and John Lennon was a client.

The belief has persevered because it isn’t entirely wrong. You do feel better after you scream or hit something. (I went to a rage room when I was furious and six months pregnant, and I did feel great for a bit after smashing a bunch of plates with a baseball bat.) But the relief actually comes from a crash. That behavior spikes your adrenaline way up. Then, when you are done, it drops down, which feels like relief and calm even if it has just returned you to where you started.

This is what researchers found when they tested primal therapy directly. In one study, people were made angry and then split up. Some were told to hit a punching bag while picturing the person who had angered them, and others were sent to sit quietly and do nothing. Afterward, the people who had hit the bag were angrier and more aggressive than before, and the ones who had done nothing were the calmest of anyone.

Acting your anger out doesn’t release it. Every time you hit or smash or scream, you practice that behavior. Eventually, your craving for the release keeps you doing it. Researchers call this “rehearsal”: when you meet your anger by escalating it through behavior.

None of this means the anger itself is the problem. Feeling anger is necessary, but many of us, women especially, were trained early to swallow it. Learning to feel anger is important work. I’m simply drawing a line between letting anger surface and deliberately amplifying it, between feeling an emotion and performing it.

Instead of acting out your anger, I want you to let it come up and notice where it sits in your body, dialing it to an intensity you can actually stay with rather than pushing it down or cranking it higher. Past that intensity, you’re not feeling it anymore, you’re just flooding your nervous system. Therapists call this “titration.” This matters the most with anger because anger feeds on itself: what you rehearse, you strengthen.

So when your anger spikes and everything in you wants to throw it outward — or turn it inward on yourself — do something that calms you down instead of revving you up. Step outside. Slow your breathing. If you’re feeling hot, splash some cold water on your face. Lie on the floor (my personal favorite). True healing is what happens after the emotion surfaces, when you can look at it and use it to understand yourself, your past, or your present in a new way. When it can help you realize that you need more boundaries or a hard conversation with your spouse.

Real change doesn’t come from one big release. It comes from doing the uncomfortable thing enough times that your body finally has evidence it’s safe. Any healing I’ve done in my life didn’t come from a cathartic scream (though I have definitely done that). It came from allowing my emotions to surface, understanding them, and, most important, taking action. The moms in the field weren’t wrong to want relief. The scream just wasn’t healing them.