In 2004, Regina George finds out Cady Herron is feeding her high calorie nutrition bars to gain weight before spring fling. A harrowing scream pierces through the cinema as she returns home to finish the Burn Book, before sabotaging the entire school.
In 2007, Britney Spears is in the depths of grief when she is confronted by an onslaught of paparazzi during a public custody battle. Spears uses an umbrella to smash a car windscreen in a display of intense frustration and anger.
In 2016, Beyonce releases her jaw dropping album titled Lemonade. Each song is a lyrical expression of female rage and racial oppression. In her song ‘Hold Up,’ Queen Bey struts down the street swinging a baseball bat, smiling as she smashes cars and fire hydrants.
Britney, Regina and Beyonce all have one thing in common and it isn’t widespread popularity or beautiful hair. It’s the expression of rage. Guttural, intense and primal in their response to deeply unsettling experiences and emotions.
These critical moments in pop culture have contributed to a public conversation about female expression, creating space for women to demonstrate emotions which have been otherwise silenced in real life.
Historically, public displays of rage made the public question a woman’s sanity, with some women even being burnt at the stake in the name of hysteria. Even though society has progressed since the condemnation of witchcraft, rage still appears to be a taboo subject thought to directly oppose femininity.
We’ve heard it all before. If a woman loses their temper, they’re crazy. If they yell, they’re being dramatic. If they smash a car window with an umbrella, they’re psycho. What this terminology fails to address is the power of human emotion, the systemic oppression and social stigma attached to female rage and underlying difficulties that come with emotional expression in the modern world.
Humans have emotions. Humans get angry. Women are humans. Women have emotions. Voila.
It’s normal for negative emotions to rise, but what’s more important is how we deal with them.
Dr Katie Kjelsaas, Clinical Psychologist and Director at Connections Count, was discussing emotional processing with a friend who is a physicist and he said to her, “one of the laws of physics is that energy doesn’t disappear – it just changes state.” Dr Kjelsaas thought this applied beautifully to rage and other powerful emotions.
“If I don’t process and make adaptive use of that emotional energy, it doesn’t disappear, it just changes state,” says Dr Kjelsaas, “it shows up in my body and mind in other ways as physical or mental unwellness, stress based illness, depression or anxiety.”
Rage triggers the release of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which raise heart rate and blood pressure. Long-term physical effects of pent-up anger and rage can manifest as anxiety, headaches, high-blood pressure and it can even impact your immune system. These factors can increase your risk of developing heart disease, gastrointestinal disorders and metabolic conditions.
Rage isn’t something you should allow to stay in your body for too long and managing it is key to maintaining optimal health. However, it can be difficult to let strong emotions pass.
“Rather than thinking about releasing, think about processing,” says Dr Kjelsaas. “Our emotions are a valuable signalling system.”
“While it can seem reactive and nasty on the surface, if I slow down, turn towards my rage and look deeper, I’m likely to find what researchers call primary anger,” says Dr Kjelsaas. “It alerts me to injustice and to places in my life where I may need to take action and remove any obstacles in order to achieve my goals.”
“It provides me with motivation and energy to take action,” says Dr Kjelsaas. “Sometimes, when rage feels really reactive, it can be relieving to close the physical loop by discharging some energy safely, like taking a run, punching a bag, shouting at the top of your lungs in a place where it is safe to do so.”
Interestingly, shouting at the top of your lungs was once considered a revolutionary advance in psychology.
Discovered by Arthur Janov in the 1970’s, Primal Therapy, also known as Scream Therapy, was used to treat mental health disorders and psychotic episodes caused by buried traumatic events. Janov’s method involves releasing these pent-up emotions by re-living emotional experiences and releasing them by screaming. The important note here is to connect the difficult memory with the scream itself.
Local scream group meet ups have been reported but you can also log online to a scream forum, operating 24 hours a day where you can scream with strangers on the internet. You just need audio and microphone access, and you can let it all out in the comfort of a random internet group.
Truthfully, the results vary. Scream Therapy was widely criticised in the field of Psychology and Janov appeared to have conflated its positive results.
While this form of therapy has been academically discredited, you can’t help but wonder if unleashing your rage in a safe space still has positive effects.
If screaming isn’t for you, smash rooms have increased in popularity around Melbourne. Here you can, “Smash. Laugh. Unleash,” in a safe, clean environment that provides mugs, plates, glasses and more. They’re also available for corporate functions.
Axe throwing is another activity gaining popularity in the Melbourne social scene, with multiple metropolitan locations Australia wide. You can unleash your anger by throwing various axes at long distance targets, dressed up like a Viking while sipping on a cocktail. What more could you want in an expression of primal rage?
Dr Kjelsaas notes significant benefits to releasing rage including, “reduced stress, reduced adrenaline and cortisol in the bloodstream, improved immune response and greater mental calm and peace.”
“It helps to remember that our emotions make excellent servants but very poor masters,” says Dr Kjelsaas. “Exercise your agency. Use your emotions as servants, signals, tools to provide you with wisdom and enhance your decision making.”
“If things get out of balance and you feel like your rage is taking over, an experienced emotionally focussed therapist can help you regain control,” says Dr Kjelsaas. “There’s no need to be a slave to your strong emotions.”
Another way to digest difficult emotions is through a process known as energetic realignment.
Rach Mellican, a yoga teacher and co-founder of the Sacred Soul Co, explains energetic alignment as, “the process of bringing the subtle body back into harmony when life’s experiences, emotions, and patterns have pulled us out of balance.”
“Just as we might adjust our body in a yoga pose, we can also adjust the flow of energy – Prana, our life force – through conscious breath, movement, sound and awareness,” says Mellican. “For me, this looks like practices that return me to myself, for example: pranayama (breath practices), mantra and embodied conscious movement.”
Moving through rage can be as simple as breathing deeply, reciting a verbal statement to yourself and moving your body mindfully. These actions aren’t about suppressing unpleasant emotions, either.
“Rage asks to be moved, not suppressed. In yoga, I might turn to a strong, rhythmic breath, shaking, stomping, or flowing sequences that let the energy move out of the body,” says Mellican. “The rituals remind us that rage doesn’t need to be feared. It can move through us and return us to stillness, clarity and spaciousness.”
“Rage has long been demonised, especially in women, yet it can be one of the most spiritual forces we hold,” says Mellican. “It is fire – transformative, purifying, awakening.”
When we experience rage as an unpleasant emotion, it can be deeply unsettling and cause us to react in ways we may later regret. This is a normal part of being human. It is not dramatic, or an overreaction, it is innate.
“Rage is not the enemy. The suppression of rage is what creates suffering. When we honour rage as part of our energetic landscape, it becomes a doorway to freedom,” says Mellican. “Energetic realignment and spirituality is not about being calm all the time… it’s about creating the capacity to feel the full spectrum of being human and then returning to balance.”
Women are angry and why wouldn’t they be? Expressing anger is a normal part of the human psyche.
Instead of suppressing rage, we should listen to it and use it as an internal compass to guide us in a different direction. The next time you feel angry, don’t be ashamed of feeling deeply. Take a deep breath, recite a mantra, scream into a pillow, go to a smash room or move your body mindfully.
By finding your own rage ritual, you can heal yourself both emotionally and spiritually.
Read more of our Health & Wellness articles here.
