Go On and Scream!

You have to hand it to those Londoners, they certainly seem to come up with some nifty little studies which are... interesting to say the least. According to a study conducted in London, one of the most effective ways of alleviating stress is by just screaming. Now I'm sure many of you out there are probably wondering why a study had to be conducted to confirm that fact. I mean it should be pretty obvious that when you're feeling stressed you scream! Apparently over in London, there has been an increasing level of stress due to heatwaves, commuting times, stresses at work, Prince Harry groping women party-goers, and so much more. Stress is something in abundance over there; so after interivewing 1,000 individuals in London, they realized that the majority were less stressed after having a good scream.

Now let's just stop and consider this for a few moments. In the old days, (and despite having worked in offices for over 14 years it's even older than that) stress was often alleviated by smoking. To hear my mom and dad tell it, you could tell when the stress level was up in the office based on the size of the smoke clouds emanating over someone's cubicle. If they were short bursts of smoke as if in normal breathing, then you could be sure that the person was fairly calm and was enjoying their smoke. If you saw clouds, yup, stress! These days, smoking is more or less a no-no in the office and one must go outside to light up if that is what you so desire. Some of us have other stress reducing methods such as guzzling coffee or taking soda to the point that it would be faster just taking it intravenously.

If we were to promote the idea of screaming to alleviate stress in the workplace or anywhere for that matter do you realize just how loud things would get in short order? I mean we'd be experiencing screaming almost all the time! You'd have screaming to relieve the stress of screaming too! I mean it would start out simply enough. One person has read about the study (or this blog! -- shameless plug) and decides to test out the theory. The once silent office is now suddenly punctuated by the occasional scream. Naturally, people will ask what the reason for the scream is. Word spreads and a new phenomena is born. What starts out as an occasional things eventually becomes a regular thing. Every so often you'll just hear a scream.

Soon you'll have screaming breaks in addition to coffee and smoking breaks. There will be rooms set aside at airports for screaming. In this day and age of air travel, you best believe that you need a place to scream and relieve that stress. You never know when you'll be travelling next to someone who will begin murmurring about Pakistan or start peeing in the aisles as you wait to reach Manhattan, Kansas! I think this study provides some good outlets for stress we may all be experiencing but it may be setting a 'dangerous' trend. I don't know about you, but I think I'll stick with coffee and some relaxing music to relieve my stress.