Strength isn’t just about bulging muscles or how much you can lift. It’s not about fitting into some Instagram-perfect mold or checking off a list of “womanly” or “manly” boxes. For me, real strength is something deeper — the kind that makes you stand tall when the world expects you to crumble. It’s the fire that keeps you pushing through pain, doubt, and all the noise telling you you’re not enough. This is how I’d define strength. Not just the physical, but the grit, rage, and pride that build me — every damn day.
Not Your Idea of Strength: What I’m Really Fighting For.
I’m not here to fit into anyone’s idea of “strong.” I’m here to be my kind of strong.
Not just the physical kind — though yeah, I want that too. I want to feel so solid in my own skin that I forget what low self-esteem or doubt even feel like. I want my presence to scream, “I’m here, I can handle my shit”, instead of, “look at that weak, stupid bitch”.
Growing up, I never asked to be born a girl. I was taught to not cause waves and the things I like(d) were mostly masculine — in fact, I was often told to be quiet, to hold my tongue, to not start things I couldn’t finish. I was expected to fit into a box I never chose.
But I Refused to Stay Small
I wanted strength that went beyond appearances — strength to stand tall when everything inside me wanted to collapse. Strength to keep going when my body ached and my mind was exhausted. Strength to say, “fuck this bullshit”, that’s been handed to me just because of my gender or my past.
I’m proud of the scars on my arms, the callouses on my hands, the pure stubbornness that keeps me fighting even when it’s easier to give up. I’m proud of the fact that I’ve carved out my own space in a world that often tries to minimize people like me.
This kind of strength isn’t pretty. It’s raw, messy, and sometimes it’s downright ugly. But it’s real. And it’s mine.
If you’re tired of being underestimated, tired of being the “weak link” in someone else’s story, maybe you’ll find something here too. Maybe it’s time to stop shrinking yourself to fit what others expect and start owning your space, your voice, your story.
I’m not perfect. I’m angry, messy, and still figuring things out. But I’m here. I’m fighting. And I’m not going anywhere.
Maybe that’s where real strength begins.
So here’s to owning your strength, whatever that looks like for you. Whether you’re wrestling with life, pain, or people who underestimate you — don’t let them define your power. Be proud of every scar, every hard-earned callous, and every time you choose to stand when you could have fallen. Because real strength? It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being unbreakable on your own terms. What does strength look like to you?
If you’ve ever felt underestimated, misunderstood, or overlooked—this one’s for you. How do you reclaim your power?
If This Resonated…
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Throughout the entirety of my personal journey – betting on myself and moving ahead with projects I had postponed – I hadn’t been gripped with a shadow of “positive emotion” in a long time.
I sat with the emotions I usually feel: anger, resentment, bitterness, and regret. But beneath them was something else, something subtle, and fleeting, yet it made itself known.
Pride.
Resilient.
Persistent.
In the moments where my demons surface, beneath their screams and shouts is something quieter; when it seems all of the work I’ve been putting in to build something I can call my own, to live my life on my own terms, is for naught, it whispers, “keep going.”
These emotions: my pride, my resilience, and my persistencewill channel my anger and regret into something better, beautiful, and enduring for my life to matter.
A sketch of my job’s mascot representing a person’s (mental and emotional) prison FINALLY getting a chance to be let out in a rage room.
I Would Like To Rage!!! In A Rage Room!
“Ever felt that bubbling rage boiling up from within the pit of your soul? You know the feeling: Your body begins shaking, you feel your hands curling and clenching, your breathing becomes shallower and fast, your vision begins to narrow and sound becomes less noticeable, and you feel the need to exert energy and force.
Many of us keep our emotions bottled up, afraid of judgement and the consequences that will follow if we act on our anger indiscriminately and lash out.
That’s where a Rage Room comes in!
A Smash room, a break room, a destruction room, whatever you want to call them, these rooms will allow you to safely explore these feelings that are commonly frowned upon in civilized society in a safe, controlled, and sanctioned environment.
Observations From A Rage Room Attendant
As a rage rooms attendant, I’ve seen a lot of different people enter the rage room for their own reasons. Many people, after getting everyone comfortable with the idea with breaking and destroying things, are initially visiting for a few reasons:
It’s a company team building experience.
A family or friend outing.
Are looking for novelty.
Celebrating something significant.
Going through a lot of stress and emotions.
Had been hurt, betrayed, or been through a break up.
After they pick their items, are suited up, given the safety rules, and put into the rooms, depending on the size of their party, it’s usually free game within their 30-45 minute time slot.
Some people are awkward and don’t put too much force behind their swings or throws that I tend to find a lot of things left unbroken that I can give to the next group to break.
Although, most visitors are military, so they fall into one of two categories:
They are either so efficient that they are in and out of the room in under 5 minutes, likely due to their efficiency and training, while others take their time and enjoy themselves after being on tour.
Then there’s those who are doing this for fun with friends and family, or people who are celebrating a huge win for their company and they actually like and enjoy their coworkers enough to do an outing, and or someone is leaving their company and this is a farewell gift(a pretty cool and memorable one in my opinion).
I’ve seen the people who have had their hearts broken. There is nothing more painful and rage inducing than hurt, pain, and loss. When they enter, some are willing to share that they’ve gone through a break up, they still have a smile or neutral expression on their face, but others you can tell only by the type of music they play when the room door closes. It’s pretty obvious and we can see their behavior on the cameras to make sure they’re doing okay.
Real World Examples In Action
I remember a group of women, three friends, came in because one friend was going through heartbreak. All three were extremely enthusiastic when in the room that I saw they were stomping on a CPU unit after being told not to in the safety briefing.
Fun can make people myopic, but they knew what they were getting themselves into and we made sure they didn’t do anything to really hurt themselves or each other.
Another visitor was a high school boy and his good friend. He was visiting because he was going through a break up, and from what the dad, and the boy’s choice in music, told me.
The second I heard, “Photograph, Thinking Out Loud, and Perfect” by Ed Sheeran, ‘I’m Not The Only One” by Sam Smith, “It Will Rain” by Bruno Mars, and other sad sounding love songs, I knew what was happening.
The Pro’s of A Rage Room
I may be a rage room attendant trying to endorse people to try something I work at, but I’ve seen the benefits of people taking their frustrations out with us than outside in the world. Besides novelty, a Rage Room:
Allows for safe and immediate release of anger and excess emotions: Why destroy things outside and get arrested, when you can do so someplace designed for this kind of release?
Accessible and low-commitment: Unlike therapy or martial arts gyms, you don’t have to commit to scheduled sessions. You can walk in, smash and scream, drink water, and leave and return whenever you want.
Provides cathartic support: You don’t have to talk, no one has to listen, it’s just you in a room with things to break, a few lead pipes and sledgehammers, and the world doesn’t have to bat an eye to you in that room. Except us employees. Whatever happens in the rage room, stays in the rage room(unless you’re recording on your phone).
What Are the Downsides?
The cons are just as important to know as the pros. They do make a difference if you want to give it a try or not, but it’s not always a make or break deal. Visiting a rage room isn’t always the best solution. A rage room:
Can be expensive: It’s a better investment than bail, but the money could be better used towards therapy or a martial arts classes.
It doesn’t address the root cause or emotion for the visit: rage rooms are meant to be fun, novel, and an outlet for sublimation, but it’s not a solution. Rage rooms can’t provide skills or strategies to deal with anger or excess emotions that professional help is better equipped to do.
It could reinforce destructive behavior: Ironically, though we do have repeat customers, a rage room might reinforce someone’s inclination to deal with their emotions through destructive means. I’m not suggesting that these repeat customers fall into this assumption, but people are interesting and might cling to this outlet as the only solution they can get.
Not readily available in your area: Rage rooms are a growing trend, but aren’t everywhere. My workplace is the only one in my state, so some people have to take a drive down or need a plane ticket over. It’s another reason to consider long-term and local alternatives instead.
Do Rage Rooms Have Anything Else?
Yes, as far as my job goes, Rage rooms do have other means of letting excess energy out. People don’t have to come in angry to enjoy the services my job can offer, though some people are usually in need of a different kind of release. One not catering towards destruction, rather one that’s more creative.
We have a Zen Lounge where people can relax, talk stories, and chill after a rage room session or before entering the Splatter Room.
A Splatter Room is an open paint room where you can shoot paint at the walls, the provided canvases, or each other with paint guns or the paint kits.
It’s a different and creative release some people appreciate instead of wanting to break things when they don’t feel compelled to.
We do provide safety gear: ponchos, eye wear, and boots to protect people’s clothes and eyes as best as possible, but friends and family make that difficult when fun’s involved.
Being creative can be just as cathartic as the rage room as it lets you be physical and you don’t have to care what you create, compared to painting a masterpiece or someone’s house.
What About The Overly Enthusiastic Individuals?
Some people have asked, other than what items they are allowed to bring to smash from the outside, if they could bring the person who hurt them in to smash. Other than an obvious, “no”, I’m able to suggest another alternative.
An Alternative To Rage: Martial Arts
I’ve done wrestling and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu prior to working at the rage room, so I suggest that people can visit a sparring gym.
Any gym that offers sparring:
Boxing.
Kickboxing.
Judo.
Muay-Thai.
Wrestling.
BJJ.
ANY MARTIAL ARTS GYM.
Any good gym will teach you new physical skills and how to ensure you keep a level head. Anger doesn’t make a person stronger, no matter how much of a fan of Dragon Ball Z or Naruto: Shippuden you are.
Those are animes; we don’t live in an anime where we’re the main characters with plot armor. I know this intimately and from experience that anger makes you sloppy, predictable, and a sore loser who refuses to learn or adjust their approach to the sport and to life.
True Strength Lies Within
I had spent more than 10 years wrestling with my anger. During BJJ training, I didn’t care what happened to me, I wanted to see what I could do. Even if that meant enduring some locks or chokes because I didn’t want to tap out and I wanted to see if I could get out. My personal motto was, “If I can talk, I’m still breathing.”
However, I’ve been dealing with emotional numbness for years that a professor at my gym told me some people, and himself, thought something was wrong with me.
That kind of hurt because that told me people thought I was damaged in some way and it showed in my training. I was eager to learn and use my wrestling experience to help me learn a new sport, but I needed to FEEL something, anything, because I struggled to that wasn’t anger. So, once being told this, I tried to tap more, but my habits always kicked in, unless something really did hurt.
My training would suffer when I got mad; I would be blind to the countermoves, to the opportunities to attack and defend. I needed more energy, and my trade off was horrible in the end.
I hated training, I hated myself, and that hate made it difficult to learn or pay attention to the lessons being taught, in BJJ and in life.
I would rather train and spar than deal with the real reasons for my anger, but I did it anyways. I needed to because doing nothing would have gotten me into real trouble. Then what? I’d be in jail and have that on my record for life, making a lot of opportunities impossible and out of reach than it already is for me.
Therapy wasn’t the best fit for me when I tried it, but I’m not averse to trying again. Money is kinda tight right now, so I’ve started taking notes, noticing any changes in myself and what could have caused it, setting boundaries, having standards for myself, while pursing new outlets at home and on a budget.
Seeking professional help, even learning new skills, to redirect anger through a sport or art is more powerful than anger ever could be. It takes more strength and courage to do the things that scare us and I know well that facing my own demons are terrifying.
I’ve been noticing that some places in my life ignite the rage I’ve been keeping under wraps. It emerges when I feel disrespected, looked down upon, or made a fool of because I’m not conventionally successful or in a position of authority. I’m just a grunt at my full time job and it drives me up the wall.
Anger and sublimation are signals, not long term solutions, and are trying to tell you that something is wrong. Don’t let it consume you because you might do something you could regret.
Reflection
Have you ever gone to a rage room for its novelty, creative outlet, or needed to break something that wasn’t going to hit you back? If you did, share your experience with 1 word that described what it was like or how you felt when you visited.
I’d love to know what your opinions on them are in the comments below. No pressure. No clickbait. Just curious. Thank you, Fellow Archivists, I’ll see you all in another post.
Call to Action
If any part of this resonated with you — the release, the rage, the quiet that follows after — consider sharing this piece with someone who might need a reminder that it’s okay to break before you rebuild.
Every read, like, subscribe, and share helps this small corner of the internet grow a little louder in a world that keeps trying to quiet us down.
Below are other reflections I had on feeling anger, redirecting it, not feeling enough, and doing something different.
Many words have been used to the point that hearing it provokes a visceral reaction. I know that I tend to feel myself: tense up, I feel a noticeable thumping hitting the front of my skull, I’m mentally rolling my eyes, and letting out a heavy huff. It’s the only way that I’m able to release the bubbling irritation boiling within me, before returning to emotional numbness, especially when I’m at work.
The few words or phrases that tends to get a rise from me, in the sense that I want to drop kick whoever is talking, are:
Can you go do X? (Either I’m already or about to do it, or the person asking bypasses more than half a dozen people standing around just to ask me? That’s infuriating.)
Have you seen so-so? (I’m not getting paid to babysit young adults, no. Go bother the people who’s supposed to be training the new hires.)
[S/he’s] not doing anything! (Have you EVER noticed you’re doing the same thing? It’s irritating, nothings going to change, just do your job and leave. Still working on taking my own advice too.)
I want to go home already. (Me too, but we have to finish sorting the freight, then we can leave. But that’s wishful thinking on good days.)
These are other words and phrases I can’t think of at the top of my head, though it does make me want to drop kick people, but it also depends on how it’s being said.
Think of it like this; we all have our preferences and it will differ from the people we know and don’t know, right? However, have you ever heard one person speaking and their voice is pleasant, soothing, and makes you want to listen more intently? Okay, keep that in mind.
Now, imagine the most irritating, nail scratching, metal grinding metal, and obnoxious sounding person you can muster and saying the words you absolutely despise and are repeating it over and over again until you start to think your ears are bleeding. That makes those overly used words even more difficult to tolerate.
There’s nothing that can be done about it, sadly, it’s another lingo, and the best I can do for myself is to tune everything out and do what I have to do. No matter how angry, bitter, and resentful I feel, no matter how much I want to drop kick people, I just have to exist and let go.
For more posts like this, I have a few recommendation below, and I’ll see you over in the next ones!
Welcome, Co-conspirators, the Stratagem’s Archives are now open for perusing. Today I will be starting a series called, “Starting Over.” To put it simply, let me ask a single question.
“What skills or hobbies did you want to learn, but stopped MOSTLY because of an awful experience?”
That is essentially what “Starting Over” is going to be about; returning to pick up the skills and hobbies I gave up on and didn’t pursue for years. All thanks to the experiences I had that convinced me I wasn’t smart enough to learn, or that, because I had no prior knowledge or experience or skill, I shouldn’t have pursued those skills or hobbies in the first place.
As you already know, “The Stratagem’s Archive,” is a place where I document my interests, thought experiments, what I’m learning, what I’ve learned, and what I’ve tried so far. Despite not having credentials, formal education or a mentor, or prior skill and knowledge, I didn’t want the obvious to prevent me from trying again.
Fear, criticism, boredom, lack of money and time and energy, and every other obstacle under the sun already dictates majority of our lives.
As a lifelong learner, a person, and an Autodidact, I am choosing to say, “No More”, and start my journey with picking up the things I gave up on because I “failed to learn it the first time.” (HEAVY AIR QUOTES).
Anyways, each “Starting Over” installment will be different and broken up into parts:
My previous experiences and what made me stop.
The resources I’ve chosen to get back into learning.
And what I’ve learned and made so far to showcase here on the blog.
I am extremely excited to begin this project; I had stood in my own way for a long time, believed people who knew better tell me to give up, but I only have this one life.
When will I ever get the chance to do anything ever again if I keep letting myself waste time with sulking and wishing?
When will any of us finally decide that NOW, choosing to try again, to start again, will be the only time we have now?
Whether we are “Starting Over” or trying something new for the first time, we get to decide to:
shift our perspectives and psychology.
adjust our relationships with success and failure with learning and ourselves.
be proactive with our learning anyways.
That is the beauty, and challenge, of being a lifelong learner and a fellow autodidact, polymath, renaissance person, and everything in-between. I have a similar post down below that you could check out, and I’ll see you in the first installment. Thank you.
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