The Anger Room:
Customers can smash away frustration,
DALLAS—Marcia Dykes had never been to the Anger Room before, but she signed up earlier in the week after reading about a place where people could wreck things.
It was just what the 41-yearold Richardson, Texas, resident said she needed after an exhausting day at work and the added annoyance of backed-up traffic on Central Expressway. She picked out her weapons of choice: a crowbar and bat.
“I’m ready to smash some things. I’m frustrated,” she said, standing with protective goggles and a helmet.
Donna Alexander, owner of the Anger Room in Deep Ellum, first gives Dykes a rundown of the safety rules and then walks her into a large warehouse-style room where a television, rolling chair, love seat, dresser and dinner plates await Dykes’ destruction.
Alexander considers the Anger Room a safe place where visitors can take out their frustrations without judgment.
Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, Alexander saw friends go to jail for slashing tires or destroying property. She thought she could help the next friends avoid jail time by having a place where they could hammer their anger away.
She was 16 at the time. Now, at 34, she’s created a trademarked business in Dallas that’s also heading to Las Vegas. Just eight years ago, Alexander started the Anger Room in her two-car garage on Ross Avenue. She charged people five bucks a session. Most of her first clients were friends but as word spread, strangers started to arrive.
Alexander looked for a bigger location and ended up in Richardson in 2011. She moved around a few times since, then got her dream spot on Commerce Street just over three weeks ago.
The beginning was like a “trial run where I saw what worked and didn’t work,” Alexander said. “It let me establish like how long a person can actually last in there and how I wanted to set up my pricing structures.”
The average person tends to last two to three minutes in the Anger Room, according to Alexander. About three minutes into her session, Dykes slowed her momentum but kept going until her five minutes were up.
“I feel like I just went to the gym,” Dykes said afterward.
Anger Room sessions start at $25 for five minutes, $45 for 15 minutes and $75 for 25 minutes.
“We do offer sessions up to 25 minutes, but no one has lasted that long,” Alexander said.
Custom room arrangements start at $500. Customers in the past have asked for office, kitchen and living room setups. Special requests have ranged from balloons to pianos. One time, Alexander watched a man re-enact an entire scene from a movie.
“I always wanted to be able to relate to what people are angry about,” Alexander said. “Most people have stress from work or home-related issues.”
Between the election and the holiday season, the Anger Room has been busy. Alexander had to introduce Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton mannequins out of popular demand.
“People have some serious frustration built up,” Alexander said. She jokes she’s had access to the Anger Room for eight years but has only had to use it four times.
But some experts feel that allowing angry people to break things might actually increase aggressive tendencies.
Brad Bushman, professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University, researched catharsis theory, which says that releasing angry emotions can help diminish them. But Bushman said the scientific evidence indicates otherwise.
Breaking things “keeps angry feelings and aggressive thoughts active in your memory,” Bushman said. “It’s like using gasoline on a fire: It just feeds the flame.”
Ron Stein, a psychology professor at Mountain View College in west Oak Cliff, said people might enjoy the thrill of breaking items but warns that it shouldn’t replace behavioral treatment.
“It’s not therapy. It’s not anger management. The anger management that I teach my clients takes long-term therapy,” Stein said. “We are not doing very well expressing our emotions that help our stress. We always look for ways, and I think [the Anger Room] is like a guilty pleasure.”
Alexander acknowledges the criticism but said she doesn’t see people leave angrier.
Her business is getting national attention, too. Reality shows have reached out to her about filming, and people have traveled from out-of-state and other countries for a chance to blow off some steam. Alexander expected some success, but not to this extent.
“[Advisers] thought it would be a trend like something that would be hot right now, but then it would fizzle. They’d always tell me, ‘You need to strike while it’s hot, because after a while it’s going to die out and no one is going to know what the Anger Room is,’ ” Alexander said.
“Well, that was 2011. And it’s 2016 and we still have the same fire.”
“I’m ready to smash some things. I’m frustrated” —Marcia Dykes