Iceland Wants To Help Your 2020 Mood By Blasting Your Screams Into The Picturesque Void
Everyone has been coping with the last six months in their own ways, but as more plot lines emerge in this dystopic reality tv show we’re all living through, you might need some fresh ideas.
No matter where you’re from, it’s not a stretch to say that this year, you’ve probably wanted to scream at one point or another (read: daily). Now, Iceland is offering up its vast wilderness as the perfect place to blow off some steam.
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Inspired by primal therapy, Visit Iceland have launched the Looks Like You Need Iceland campaign allowing people from across the globe to release their pent up frustration in a variety of stunning Icelandic voids.
You simply record your internal hell via the website and select one of seven remote, open spaces on the island where you’d like it to be played. Then listen via live stream as it’s literally dropped in and blasted on speakers there.
For whatever flavour of rage you’re feeling, there’s an ideal backdrop. Dealing with incessant banging from an upstairs neighbour’s DIY adventure? Try Rauðisandur (Red Beach) in the Westfjords. Can’t sleep thanks to pandemic anxiety? Hit up the Snæfellsjökull glacier. Fighting for the basic human right to live freely and equally on this earth? Unleash what you can at Festarfjall, a mountain on Iceland’s southwestern coast.
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It’s not a random stunt from the tourism board, either. Primal, or scream therapy is very much a thing, and Visit Iceland consulted with London-based Psychotherapist and Mental Health Consultant, Zoë Aston, on the campaign.
“Screaming as a therapeutic tool was developed in the 1970s as a way to release pent-up emotion,” Aston explains on the campaign site.
“What we don’t realise is that the psychological response to wanting to scream lights up a part of our brains called the amygdala. The amygdala activates when we are under threat, something we have all experienced in the past few months”.
When we’re not equipped to deal with the feelings we’re all experiencing and struggle to articulate or process them, scream therapy shines because it’s visceral. It bypasses the logical to the primal, tapping straight into all the built up, stuck emotions we don’t know how to shift.
In other words, screaming is a key that unlocks your amygdala so it can release stored stress and help you move forward.
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“The venting allows that emotional blockage to shift, so that the part of the mind that has been in survival mode for the last several months is then freed up to make really good decisions about what happens moving forward,” she tells cntraveler.
Despite plans for borders to open changing every other day, and international travel still very much up in the air, it’s a clever and mutually beneficial move from Visit Iceland: we get a weight off our shoulders and while we’re on the website, learn more about Iceland’s incredible locations.
“And when you’re ready, come let it out for real. You’ll feel better, we promise,” they say.
(Lead Image: Pexels / Simon Migaj)
