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This Saturday, the 24th of April, is National Scream day.
This might seem like a bit of a strange awareness day - but, did you know that screaming creates a chemical reaction that is similar to the dopamine hit and release of endorphins you get when you exercise?
In fact, screaming is actually an ancient form of Chinese medicine, as part of Traditional Chinese Medicine practice which has been passed on from generation to generation. This is because it is believed that yelling is good exercise for your lungs and liver.
This isn’t the only example of screaming being used as part of wellbeing and health care either – screaming was used as a therapeutic tool in the 1970s as a way to release pent up emotions and frustrations. This is important because when we feel like we want to scream, our brain’s psychological response to this urge is to light up the amygdala.
The amygdala is the part of our brain that deals with the processing of memory, decision-making and emotional responses, like fear, anxiety, and aggression. It’s this part of the brain that has a central role in anxiety responses to stressful situations as it activates when we believe we’re under threat.
As the amygdala prompts a different part of your brain to flood you with cortisol, also known as the stress hormone, when you’re in stressful situations, by screaming you’re releasing this buildup of cortisol. This also signals to the amygdala that you’re okay, so it stops asking for more of the stress hormone and allows you to release all those confined negative emotions.
Did you know that you can take part in national scream day by submitting a recording of your scream at screamday.com? But that’s not the only example of people creating places for you to share your screams! Here are some of our top picks.
Using the ideology behind ‘scream therapy’, Promote Iceland unveiled a campaign that allowed people all around the world to visit the website and capture their screams, yells, and shouts.
These recordings were then released through speakers into seven of Iceland’s stunning wide-open spaces. This campaign was geared around providing people with a space to vent their frustrations and anxieties around the coronavirus pandemic
Starting in October 2020 and running until January 2021, Just Scream gave people the chance to call, scream, and hang up. This led to over 130,000 people screaming with joy, rage, frustration, loneliness, and just about anything else you can think to scream about - that’s a lot of screams!
They’ve since finished recording screams and are instead collecting words of hope, but you can always listen to the screams they’ve collected. They’ve even made different playlists of the recordings such as ‘LOL’ where you can listen to screams that feature laughter or ‘RAWR!’ with screams that feature people and their animal friends making animal sounds.
That’s right - there are even screaming jars and boxes that you can buy to muffle your screams so you don’t disturb those around you, while still allowing you to vent your frustrations! Alternatively, you can even make your own.
So screaming is actually very beneficial and we recommend giving it a go and screaming into your pillow, in your car, or in your bathroom! (Although, if you are planning on screaming outside or around other people, it might be a good idea to forewarn them!).
Or go ahead and submit in your scream at Scream Day!