Well Well Well is Seattle Met’s regular health and wellness column, covering the sometimes surprising ways we can support our physical, emotional, social, and environmental well-being.

The moment the glass hit the wall and splintered into a thousand pieces, I felt a small release. Something was broken, and it wasn’t a bad thing. I didn’t have to clean it up or feel upset about the loss. I could just look at the shards and do it again.

At Seattle’s Rage Industry, people file into a brick building on Lake City Way five days a week to relieve stress via smashing stuff.

“Have you ever had the need to just break sh*t?” the website asks.

Yes, yes, I have. My ex apparently had the same feeling. I’d also just finished a year as my building’s homeowners’ association (HOA) president, where there was definitely a few residents trying to break my spirit. So with a lot of things broken in my own life, it felt like the perfect time to go throw a vase or two.

My experience started with selecting a total of 15 items to break, from four different categories. There was a mix of goblets, plates, wine bottles, teacups, coffee mugs, and more. After I carefully piled them into a carton (I wouldn’t want to break them prematurely!), I took my treasures to another room, where I suited up in protective gear, including a face mask and gloves. Then I was shut into the rage room itself, with a variety of implements on the wall, such as a baseball bat, golf club, crowbar, and sledgehammer

In the center of the room was a stack of tires with a wood plank on top, creating a platform for teeing up items to hit. In the corner was a pile of cinder blocks with a mound of breakables at its feet. I couldn’t wait to add to it.

I asked Spotify to create a Rage Mix for me, and it kicked things off with the Kelly Clarkson classic “Since U Been Gone.” I distinctly remember rage-dancing to that in college, so it fit the bill nicely.

For my first item, I went simple—I just hurled a plate at the cinder blocks and watched it explode. Subsequently, I tried a little of everything: swinging glassware off the tire pile with a golf club, throwing it up into the air and hitting it with a baseball bat (a good exercise in hand-eye coordination, too), and smashing it with a mallet. I also took the various implements to the tires themselves, beating them with all my might. It felt a bit like a CrossFit workout.

The toothbrush holder I’d picked out held the most meaning for me—I suspected my ex, a serial cheater, let other people use my toothbrush, and that really grossed me out. It disintegrated into the pile, just like everything else.

It would have been easy to run through the items quickly, so I tried to savor them. I wondered: what would happen when the carton was empty and my anger remained?

After 20 minutes, I emerged a little sweatier—it was over 90 degrees that day, and they had recommend wearing long pants—and with a temporary cathartic release. I was glad I tried it, but was it actually helpful?

Research is only beginning on the benefit of rage rooms. The idea behind the concept is that just as working out provides a physical way to process feelings and reduce stress, the act of physically venting frustration can reduce it.

On one hand, rage rooms do give people a safe space to explore their emotions. On the other, there’s some research showing that blowing off steam through physical acts of aggression could make you more prone to crave that route in the future. I don’t think there’s much danger of that after a visit or two, but it’s probably worth looking at these types of experiences as more entertaining than therapeutic.

I personally think I would’ve felt better channeling my anger into picking up a heavy barbell or hitting a punching bag. I felt bad when I saw some of the housewares breaking—surely this was not their intended purpose when they were created. The destruction made me a bit uncomfortable, and I’m OK with that. The less violence is normalized, the better.  

If I were to go again, I’d probably bring a friend and turn it into something more celebratory than heavy—we could laugh about how bad our aim is and see who actually knew what to do with a crowbar. But for now, I’ll keep searching for stress relief in less breakable forms.