Appetite for destruction
Ever felt like hurling your computer out of the window? A Spanish company has come up with a way to help stressed out office workers vent their pent up aggression. Who needs shrinks when you have a sledgehammer?
words by Emily Drew / TCS
photography by Abel F. Ros / Granangular / TCS
Once in a while, things get out of hand. You sleep through the alarm. You spill your coffee on your shirt. Your car breaks down. Your computer crashes. You lose your wallet. And sometime mid-afternoon, you flip out and lose control. You smash your coffee mug into your computer screen, take a brick to your car windshield, and run around the office yelling at the top of your lungs. Perhaps you don’t, but you’d like to.
We’ve all felt the urge to let go and release our inner maniac, especially at work. Unfortunately, the boss isn’t going to be very forgiving if he comes back from lunch to find you’ve taken a crowbar to the photocopier after one jam too many. For most, frustrations like these are just a part of modern-day life, but for three Spanish entrepreneurs, they were a gap in the market. In 2003, Jorge Arribas, Francisco Pérez and Hani Charwani founded Destructoterapia (destruction therapy), to help people take out their rage on the tools of office existence, albeit outdoors in a supervised environment.
So how does the ‘therapy’ work? It’s pretty straightforward. ‘Patients’ are offered a variety of tools with which to break things and a slew of things to break. With guidance from Destructoterapia employees, they go through a series of violent actions to release the beast within. “It’s a safe and controlled way to liberate stress and anger without hurting or shouting at people around you, like your family, friends or colleagues,” says founder Charwani. He calls it “supervised anti-violence”. The idea is that the destruction therapy helps relieve pent up physical tension and, after a while, the act of destruction becomes something of a game. Sessions are usually about one hour long and cost €200 to €300 per group, and although the Destructoterapia team is based in Soria, in central Spain, they’ll travel to requested locations. If your head needs seeing to, there are also licensed psychologists available on-site, though mostly these sessions simply revolve around smashing things up.
If this sounds like a butch activity, it’s not just men who feel the need to wield a sledgehammer. About 40% of participants are women. Cars are the most popular items to smash, says Charwani, followed by computers and phones. Although clients aren’t allowed to bring along their own items to destroy “due to safety measures,” they put in a request for objects to break before they arrive. The rules? The object needs to be causing you personal stress. And – just in case this needs clarification – it has to be inanimate. Your boss is not fair game.
When groups schedule a session, the Destructoterapia gang buys the materials from stores or junkyards, or scavenges for already-broken equipment. Then, when the ‘patients’ arrive, they’re kitted out in hard hats, boots, goggles and fetching blue overalls. Once properly attired, they’re let loose on the objects, venting their spleen to heavy metal or rock. Local thrashers El Petardo Infecto have proved a particular favourite.
The company most often finds themselves hosting these sessions of allout mayhem for corporate teams. Apparently it’s extra-therapeutic to break the things that stress you out around the people who stress you out. Just don’t try taking a swing at that waste of space from accounts.
It all sounds a bit like lunacy but, in defense, Charwani counters that life today offers very few ways of relieving feelings of anger or frustration. Drinking, drugs and eating are not long-term solutions, he says. Maybe he’s got a point. At least if you get addicted to destruction therapy, you won’t pile on the pounds or get cirrhosis of the liver. You may even tone your biceps with a little wrecking workout.
Charwani and his colleagues Arribas and Pérez seem to be on a mission to de-stress the world. Destructoterapia is just one branch of their umbrella group Stop Stress, which has developed activity-based franchises and programs, as well as zero-activity retreats, throughout Spain. All have the goal of getting people out of the rat race, or at least alleviating the symptoms of it.
The company’s homepage states its sympathy with stressed, down-trodden people everywhere, calling on them to rise up against the machine. “Being stressed is no cause for shame. You are a victim of stress,” it says earnestly. “Our activities are aimed at freeing you from your current oppression.”
The group claims to be a “revolution in tourism”: no time limits, no schedules, you do whatever you want, whenever you want. They also offer structured activities like paintball and tugof-war, though Charwani admits that these are not always best for relieving tension. Either way, he says, “the stress relief provided by Stop Stress is always therapy that’s childlike and fun.”
They may be on to something: the scheme is proving increasingly popular. Since its inception in 2003, around 15,000 to 20,000 individuals have smashed and sledgehammered their tension away. The group is now looking to open new franchises in Europe and beyond.
So what makes Destructoterapia the way to go when seeking relief from the daily grind? Isn’t it possible to get the same relief by simply breaking things at home?
“If you want, you can smash whatever you like at home, but that is not the Stop Stress way!” says Charwani emphatically. Stop Stress, he says, is about creating a playful, safe and supportive environment for clients, however violent the therapy may appear at times.
Customers seem to be enjoying themselves – it’s not every day that you can cause havoc and get off scot-free. When a group of co-workers at a recent session used a catapult to launch a computer into a car, the resulting cheers and camaraderie were a clear sign: the office had been cured – at least until Monday.
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