Rage rooms are gradually becoming popular spaces for recreational therapy or self-therapy but is smashing, crashing or breaking things actually helping people de-stress?
A glass bottle arcs through the air and meets a hammer mid-flight. It shatters on impact, shards spraying across and inside the room. Notes from a Taylor Swift track playing outside filters into the cacophonic room, where metal clangs with metal and sometimes ceramic cups and empty beer bottles crash over and over again... until there바카라s silence.
A few minutes earlier, Farheen* had been sitting outside, staring at a waiver form. Sign here, it said. She complied. A 24-year-old consultant, she needed an outlet to vent her rage. 바카라A socially acceptable바카라 one, she clarified. She wanted a place where she could let loose, swing a hammer and break things. All in a 바카라controlled environment바카라, so that 바카라nobody gets hurt.바카라
On recommendation from her therapist, she arrived at an establishment that promised just that. 바카라I am not putting on any music and I hope you hear my rage and figure out how frustrated one can be,바카라 she said, just before she walked through the door leading to the 바카라Rage Room.바카라
After 10 minutes of angry metal clanging against the table, walls and sounds of splintering ceramic and glass, she emerged, looking victorious, still, calm and in quiet contemplation. 바카라Now I have to go and attend that meeting at work.바카라 Asked if the cathartic exercise helped, she said she wasn바카라t too sure, but added that it felt better in the moment.
In the Rage Room, one can experience and engage in a socially palatable form of venting anger for a price.
Dhruv, 21, a student, content creator and businessman, and his partner, Khushi, found the Rage Room on Instagram. Delhi natives, they came to create content, bond and 바카라break things to hopefully feel better about their stresses.바카라
바카라Our generation overthinks a lot, about life, career, relationships. This place sounds like a great place to drown those noises and engage in destruction since killing another person is not an option,바카라 Dhruv says.
Rage Rooms are catching on in the city. Visitors step in, take a moment to absorb the chaos, then sign a waiver. Once done, they suit up with safety jackets, helmets, gloves, shoes and get ready to unleash controlled destruction. 바카라People love to play their music and break things to their own tunes,바카라 says Sanjeev Giri, the manager of Rage Room, Delhi. 바카라Arjan Vailly from Animal movie is among the most played songs here.바카라
Sundays see the most footfall at the Rage Room, while weekdays bring a trickle of visitors. Weekends are booming. Generally, two kinds of patrons walk in. Those seeking a thrill and those genuinely angry. Both need an outlet. Content creators also drop by, filming their experiences while promoting the place, says Giri, adding that personal and professional pressures drive people here, making it a therapeutic exercise. Their audience spans 18 to 70 years, but women form a significant share. 바카라Alone or with a group of friends or their partners, women are the ones who come here often to experience the rage room and express rage, which I think comes from all sorts of stresses in their lives,바카라 Giri says.
At 4:30 pm, three friends, Khushi, Aparna and Juhi, walk into the Rage Room, their laughter filling the space, briefly drowning out the chaos inside. 바카라Men are always raging in the streets, on the roads, in the house, at work. It is acceptable for a man to be angry, but women need to keep up the facade of being civilised and 바카라soft바카라. My stresses are immense, but where do I vent without being recommended to a psych ward?바카라 asks Juhi.
While spaces like Rage Rooms offer momentary catharsis, it바카라s worth asking: why are we Always so angry?
Aparna, 28, an IT professional and newly married, came to the Rage Room to cope without judgement. She believes women, with their heightened emotional quotient, naturally gravitate toward a space where they can pay to break things, an outlet society rarely affords them. 바카라There are things one cannot say. Now that I am married, there has been a dramatic shift in my lifestyle. Not everything that can be expressed can be articulated. So here I am, to break things with my best friends and hope the rage subsides even for a little while,바카라 she says, with a glint of hope in her eyes as she turns to her friends.
Ashima Gupta, a clinical psychologist and emotion-focused therapist, is of the opinion that the expression of anger in a healthy manner is something that is neither taught nor accepted; therefore, the rage bottles up and manifests itself in ways that might be unsafe. 바카라Ours is a shame-based society. A failed marriage, a child바카라s poor grades or losing a job are seen as personal failures one should be ashamed of. To make it worse, the relentless pace of life leaves little room to cope,바카라 she says.
We live in the age of social media, where outrage is universal, regardless of who you are or where you stand politically. What doesn바카라t kill you only makes you angrier. From personal struggles to work stress to the looming global crisis, anything can trigger rage. 바카라Social media acts as a catalyst, or rather, adds fuel to the fire. It has weakened, questioned, and threatened our already fragile self-esteem. It has made humiliation, ridicule and belittlement effortless. We바카라ve grown desensitised to these subtle forms of aggression, creating an unsafe environment that often manifests as rage,바카라 says Gupta. It바카라s a loop, she explains. 바카라Internalised shame makes us prone to outbursts, and those outbursts, in turn, lead to further embarrassment.바카라
Gupta believes Rage Rooms create a false perception of a safe space where people can express anger without being seen as 바카라crazy.바카라 Anger, she says, signals a violation and the inability to express that pain in a non-judgemental space can lead to loneliness. 바카라Rage Rooms aren바카라t necessarily a product of this loneliness, but they might offer a space to ventilate,바카라 she adds.
바카라Killing a person is not acceptable바카라 is a phrase one rarely expects to hear, yet many visitors to the Rage Room mention it. Some say it in jest, others matter-of-factly. Either way, it remains unsettling. While this sentiment was common among several visitors, Aparna and her friends came seeking a non-judgemental space to experience power, relief, control and catharsis. To the beat of a song, they tore the room apart in 15 minutes. When they emerged, visibly spent, Juhi said nothing when asked if she felt different, while Aparna replied, 바카라I바카라m not sure if I felt better, but it was something to do.바카라
Rachana Johri, visiting professor at BMU바카라s School of Liberal Studies, Gurugram, acknowledges that Rage Rooms may provide a coping mechanism, but she doubts their transformative potential. 바카라The idea of processing rage therapeutically has existed for a while. It can be helpful to express anger, but breaking things in an unfamiliar setting, without an interlocutor to listen, assist or help unpack that anger, can be cathartic but not therapeutic,바카라 she explains. Catharsis, she adds, has its limits. Johri sees the rise of Rage Rooms, especially among women, as a sign of the times바카라where safe spaces for open conversations about anger remain scarce. She believes a sense of powerlessness drives people to these rooms but questions whether venting rage in a controlled setting offers lasting relief.
Anger and rage are natural emotions, but acting them out may not be the solution. While spaces like Rage Rooms offer momentary catharsis, it바카라s worth asking: why are we so angry? One answer could be late-stage capitalism, which thrives on our rage while selling us a place to vent it, offering temporary relief, depending on who we are and what fuels our fury.
Anger and shame can be isolating, says Gupta. 바카라Instead of seeking compassion, which foster healthier responses, people are turning to temporary outlets for their anger. We need to create spaces where people feel heard without being made to feel like failures. As social beings, we rely on each other to survive. If raging becomes a leisure activity, it only pushes people further apart. Breaking things in a room doesn바카라t help in the long run바카라it only breaks something within,바카라 she says.
On the way to a Rage Room, one might expect raging death metal playing in the background, pieces of glass from beer bottles and ceramic cups crashing everywhere in slow motion, the metallic banging of the hammer on the walls and tables and importantly, a visceral outlet for emotions raging. As cinematic as it sounds, one is forced to wonder about the times we live in, when even rage can be viewed through the prism of leisure.
(Divya Tiwari is a video journalist based out of Delhi)
(This article is a part of Outlook's March 11, 2025 Women's Day special issue 'Women at Work'. It appeared in print as 'Rage Against The Machine바카라)