With a gut-wrenching scream that erupted from her body, Amber Walker joined about a dozen screaming people in West Seattle who channeled their frustration through Paget’s Voice.
This was just the beginning. The two groups of screams that followed, each longer and more intense, spread the pain from Walker’s latest job loss. Her added stress from raising two small children melted away as it mixed with the sound of water dripping, and a deep sense of calm washed over her.
“I had the feeling that in that moment, all your senses are heightened,” Walker said. “From then on, I was hooked.”
That day was the first meeting in September of Seattle’s Scream Club chapter, one of 17 chapters that have popped up around the United States in less than a year, including Palm Beach, Florida; Austin, Texas; Pasadena and San Francisco, California; Atlanta; Detroit and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
How it all started
The first chapter, in Chicago, begins as a result of a couple’s rough patch.
Co-founders Manny Hernandez and Elena Soboleva recently moved in together after dating long distance for a year and a half. They were walking along Lake Michigan when Hernandez, a breathing exercise practitioner and men’s trainer, suggested they let out all their frustrations with a scream at the finish line.
When they asked for permission from a few people around, they all decided to scream in unison, their raw emotions echoing through the water.
“After we did it, some people were crying, including Elena,” Hernandez said. “That’s when we looked at each other and said, ‘This might be something we should start doing.’
This is how it works
Depending on the season, Scream Club meetings can be weekly or monthly, but they are always held in a park or near a body of water to minimize distractions. Sessions usually begin with participants releasing what they want to release on biodegradable paper.
This is followed by a series of group deep breaths and vocal warm-ups, such as humming while inhaling and exhaling.
“You can really squeeze your throat if you just do it,” said Soboleva, a personal brand and business mentor. “So it’s gradual, breathing from your diaphragm and carefully starting slowly and warming up louder and louder.”
Everyone shouts three times together, takes a few deep breaths in between, and drops their paper into the water.
“That third scream, you have to feel it in your body,” said Walker, who started the club’s Seattle chapter. “Get down, get into the starting position, whatever feels right for you at that moment.”
What is there to achieve?
Scream Club techniques are descendants of the original scream therapy, a theory developed by Los Angeles psychologist Arthur Janoff in the 1960s. Janoff believed that childhood trauma caused neurosis in adults, which could be treated by numbing the pain and screaming and crying under the supervision of a therapist.
Decades of research, however, has not found scream therapy to be an effective treatment for mental health conditions, said Ashwini Nadkarni, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Still, it’s a wonderful stress reliever.
Nadkarni said that yelling itself engages circuits in the amygdala and hippocampus — “the oldest part of our brain” responsible for processing stress and emotion. Screaming also activates the sympathetic nervous system, or the fight-or-flight stress response. Once the screaming stops, the parasympathetic system kicks in, which signals the body to relax.
“It’s the same cycle of regulation that happens when you exercise,” she said. “Your heart stops, you get short of breath, and then you relax and you feel relaxed.”
In addition to the physical release, the simple act of getting together to do something with others offers benefits.
“The idea of people coming together to grow a community that helps them blow off some steam is incredible,” she said.
Why do people come?
Hernandez said it’s not standard practice to share reasons publicly, but many people stay behind and talk about their problems. Some in the Chicago chapter recently lost a loved one, one person was battling cancer for the second time and many were struggling with relationships.
Walker noted that some people even come to scream for joy. Whatever the reason, the Seattle chapter usually meets before sunrise to watch the sun go down.
“It kind of calms everything down,” she said. “And that everyone knows this is the end of it, and we can all start fresh.”
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