📣 Can yelling be cathartic?

I recently found a post-it in a stack of papers on my desk:

For a big part of my life, I wasn’t interested in anything having to do with emotions. When I first went to an acupuncturist in my early twenties, I was incensed when she said I needed to “start feeling my feelings.” 

“But they’re so inconvenient!” I said as she was tapping needles into my body. 

Turns out, she was right. (To be fair, I was, too – sort of. What I’d missed was that not feeling my feelings was even more inconvenient. Womp.) 

Cut to a decade and a half later when I realize my calling is, in large part, helping people feel, process, and understand the root causes of their emotions. Joke was on me, I guess. 

Back to that post-it. 

What is the difference between processing and indulging emotions? 

In short, processing involves movement: it allows the emotion to move through you so you can move forward. 

Indulging is stagnant: you stew in the feelings and stay stuck where you are. 

As a recovering feeling-suppressor, I have found somatic practices – using bodywork and movement – to be incredibly powerful tools for feeling and processing emotions. 

Dancing, shaking, jumping, swaying, yelling, crying, laughing – all provide a channel.

In fact, the first workout I found I really enjoyed is The Class, in large part because there’s an invitation to use sound as a means of moving energy. (I think of this as “cathartic yelling.”) 

So, imagine my surprise when a teacher I really admire, Melissa Tiers, posted this on Instagram: 

Luckily, the caption said to go read the research, which I promptly did. (Here it is, if you’re curious.) 

Both Melissa and the study author seem to be missing one critical piece: the focus is on what I would call indulgent yelling. There is no prompt for or goal of release. It’s the type of yelling that allows negativity to fester and grow. 

Think: Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski. The more he yells, the more amped he gets, until he’s pulling out a gun in a bowling alley. No one wants to be Walter Sobchak. 

Compare that to the energy of screaming into the ocean or sobbing into the earth. All the big messy emotions move through you and are released, making room for something else. 

So, how do you release it? 

Start by setting the intention of letting the emotion move through your body. 
Then go ahead and find a space where you can yell. Your basement, your car, your closet, a field. 

Take a deep breath, deep into your belly. Then open up and let it out. Howl, scream, wail. However it needs to move through you. 

Keep going until you feel a shift. It will come – I promise. 

The good news is, this works even if you’re not in tune with what is making you feel angry or otherwise out of sorts. Your body can still recognize the release. 

What next?

Afterwards, you may feel tired. 

You may burst into laughter.

Or find yourself overwhelmed with grief. 

Trust whatever comes up, and be gentle with yourself. Drink a big glass of water, and then another. If you can take a bath or hot shower or snuggle in for a nap, wonderful. 

You may recognize some further processing that needs to happen. Spend time with your journal, or talk to someone who can witness you in all your messy glory. 

And if you’re afraid that once you start yelling you’ll never stop? That’s a really good clue you’re carrying too heavy a load. You deserve help navigating how to put down or share some of that burden. You can book a free vision casting call to see if my approach is the right fit for you. If it’s not, I can help direct you to other resources.