I had a dream as a child–not to be a great scientist or an astronaut or a superhero; not to discover a cure for an incurable disease or go to the moon. No, my childhood dream–so much humbler than those–was to break dishes.

To be clear, I was not an angry child, and I didn’t have anxiety issues. Ask anyone who knew me back then. I don’t know where this latent desire came from. All I know is that I remember fantasizing about going out to our driveway or the sidewalk with a stack of glass dishes, and smashing them on the ground, in one satisfying crash after another.

Anyway, I saw an opportunity to fulfill my childhood dream around April 2020, when my cousin Emily and I were texting back and forth, in our “beginning of the pandemic distress,” saying that when things opened back up, we needed to go to a RageRVA, a rage room in our city, and release some pent-up anxiety.

We did, and it was glorious.

There are a number of ways to release ongoing pandemic stress, and we’ll investigate one of the most effective in this episode. It may or may not involve breaking dishes in a rage room.

Listen in if you need a little release these days.

Notes:
Alexander, Heather. 6 Stress Relievers that Work. MD Anderson Center, April 2020.
https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/6-stress-relievers-that-work.h13-1593780.html

Jennings, Keri-Ann MS,RD. 16 Ways to Relieve Stress and Anxiety. Healthline, August 28, 2018.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/16-ways-relieve-stress-anxiety

Rogers, John. Pandemic fever got you down? Smash up stuff at the rage room.
Associated Press, February 11, 2021. https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/wireStory/pandemic-fever-smash-stuff-rage-room-75838402