Rage Retreats Take Wellness to a Higher Decibel

The events, called RAGEher, were 12-person affairs in Chicago. The attendees, all women, opened their arms wide in a vacant retail space McMenamin had rented for $100. They let out guttural screams, pounded their fists into padded bolsters and slammed bats into mattresses with all their might. Later, some collapsed onto the floor in tears, emotionally drained from the effort.

Now, RAGEher regularly hosts retreats at an arts centre in Chicago, as well as in San Diego, where she now lives. There have been pop-up events in other cities across the US, including Atlanta and Austin, as well as in London and Porto, Portugal. It regularly sells out 50-person retreats, often with long waitlists of people willing to pay up to $95 for the 2.5-hour sessions.

When a child throws a temper tantrum, parents usually wonder where they went wrong. When adults have a fit these days, others may ask how they can join in. There’s enough demand for such organised bursts of anger that it’s created a thriving industry focused on releasing rage at gatherings lasting from a few hours to a few days. Some favour a DIY approach. Others charge thousands of dollars to help people let off steam in a group.

People have had reasons for group primal screams going back at least to the women in ancient Greece who retreated to the mountains to scream together as a release from the strict rules that governed their daily lives. More recent examples include the group rage vented early this decade over the pandemic, mandated curfews and the murder of George Floyd.

Monetising it is modern. In 2023, Mia Balducci, also known as Mia Magik, went viral on TikTok when word of her Rage Ritual spread. In the viral video, women were seen thrashing sticks on the forest ground, clawing at their faces and screaming to the heavens as part of a spiritual retreat some had paid upwards of $4,000 to attend. Balducci continues to host six-day retreats.

We All Scream

Some sessions charge much less, or nothing at all. Feeling helpless and angry is what propelled Rachel Mehl, a cancer survivor, to organise free “smash parties” in her Pittsburgh yard. Mehl, who works in financial services, charged $25 for participation at a later rage retreat in a local gym and donated all of the proceeds to Metavivor, a breast cancer advocacy group. She plans to hold more events soon.

Mehl says she felt a bottomless pit of rage during her treatment: at her body, the healthcare system, even the cancer itself. “The anger felt unresolvable because there was no actual person with whom I could address it.”

She tried meditation, journaling and long baths. The only thing that seemed to help was screaming in her car and hitting a punching bag. That surprised her.

“I’m not a violent or aggressive person by any means,” she says. “I’ve never been in a fistfight. I’m not a yeller. But punching and kicking that bag while screaming my face off was exactly what I needed to process and release all of those big emotions that had nowhere else to go.”

Mehl wanted others to feel the same relief she did, and she wanted to release her rage with others who felt equally helpless. While many of those who attended Mehl’s events were also coping with cancer, some also expressed frustration toward jobs, family members and politics, she says.

McMenamin says the demands of everyday life and the pressure to be chronically online can feel crushing. People worry about things out of their control — it could be the rise of artificial intelligence, inflation, the end of long-held political norms. She hopes her rage retreats let people feel an element of community and sense of temporary stability.

More than 20 percent of RAGEher attendees return for repeat retreats. Some devotees have already attended five and plan to attend more. To meet demand, McMenamin is launching a training program in early 2027 to bring on more staff. She’s also piloting a Rage on Purpose virtual program for those who can’t attend in person. The next phase is retreats for specific demographics: moms, veterans, perimenopausal and menopausal women, those undergoing fertility treatments and cancer survivors.

Many rage retreats are created by women for women, to create a safe space for female rage to find an outlet. However, some rage retreats aim for a broader appeal, including a Detox and Destroy Package at New York’s Paramount Times Square hotel. The deal includes a hotel room, two passes to spend 20 minutes in a Lower East Side rage room and a wind-down at the hotel bar with CBD cocktails. Nightly rates start at $297. And the Bay Area CBT Center in San Francisco holds specialised retreats, some explicitly for men or all gender identities.

Strength In Numbers

These retreats make sense to LaMont Moss, a psychiatrist with Kaiser Permanente in Colorado. The wish to release anger is natural and doesn’t end when we reach the age when temper tantrums are no longer socially acceptable, he says.

“The desire to scream or break things can come from emotions being repressed or overwhelming, even the combination of the two. It can also be enticing to engage in something that is taboo, that we would never do alone,” Moss says. “In the hands of knowledgeable and reasonable people, it could be a healthy cathartic experience.”

That was Caroline Golko’s experience. The clinical social worker and therapist from Chicago attended a RAGEher retreat in 2025 after seeing an ad on Instagram. At the time, she says, she was coping with feeling helpless because of the state of US politics and because her co-workers called her difficult to work with when she disagreed with them.

She’s since attended two other retreats, with plans to attend more. Her husband and others have noticed she’s calmer and more present lately, something she attributes to giving herself permission to have an outlet for her anger and frustrations without fear of judgment.

“There is something profound about experiencing that kind of collective hurt without having to fix it, minimise it, explain it or make it more comfortable for anyone else,” Golko says.

The desire to express rage with others is what prompted Lumalia Emmy Armstrong to organise her first rage retreat in the Oregon woods near Portland. As an abuse survivor, Armstrong was used to living with anger, but she got tired of constantly having to manage her emotions to get through the day.

Armstrong learned that when she expressed her rage, it stopped being something she needed to keep under control to get by. Instead, she could channel her feelings into photography and art.

Her experience led her to organise Holy Rage Retreats. Designed for women, they cost up to $600 for a half-day experience. Each retreat begins with a meditative session and culminates in a guided ritual where women are encouraged to express their rage through screams, growls and other “expressive behaviors.”

During the retreat, women might bang the ground or pound on trees. Later, Armstrong leads a fire ceremony where participants write letters expressing their anger, then burn them.

As long as no one gets hurt, almost any manifestation of rage is acceptable, Armstrong says. Nearly all women who attend Armstrong’s retreats are going through a difficult time in their lives, like divorce or illness. They’re often searching for a way to cope with their deep anger.

“Most women coming aren’t ready to live in vengeance,” Armstrong says. Instead, rage retreats are about “taking back the mic to your story and saying, ‘I’m the one who gets to say how this goes.’”

Proceed With Care

Participants in rage retreats should be mindful that their rage doesn’t spill over into their daily lives.

One risk is that rage retreats could lead to fixating on a person. “You don’t want acting in this way to become normalised,” says Moss, the Colorado psychiatrist. He also cautions that expressing rage with others could lead to a “group mentality” that could spiral out of control.

McMenamin acknowledges that “no space can be fully safe.” To guard against the possibility that someone might harm themselves or others, RAGEher’s facilitators and what it calls rage doulas keep a close eye on participants and offer support and suggestions if they see anyone who might be losing control. Similarly, Mehl had a therapist on hand during the rage retreat she held at the gym in case participants needed additional support or intervention.

As cathartic as rage retreats can be, the relief participants feel might be short-lived.

“If someone feels relief after screaming into a pillow or smashing an object, that’s great,” but it won’t last long, cautions Kati Morton, a licensed therapist and author of Are u ok?: A Guide to Caring for Your Mental Health. “The most helpful programs would ideally combine emotional expression with reflection, insight and practical regulation strategies.”

McMenamin says RAGEher retreats aren’t meant to be a one-time experience that offers a permanent fix. “There is no magical pill or band-aid,” she says. Instead, she hopes participants leave with greater awareness of their emotions and learn techniques to manage their anger at home.

Therapists and organisers of these events stress that rage retreats should not serve as a replacement for therapy.

“Healing is a slow process, and there are no quick fixes,” says Elizabeth DeVaughn, a licensed professional counsellor in Nashville who specialises in trauma. She encourages would-be ragers to approach the activity with the right questions about the providers’ training, studies related to their approach and potential risks.

“If a practitioner cannot or will not answer these questions, beware,” she says.

By Jamie Davis Smith

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