“I feel ecstatic!” I screamed the loudest I could, overlooking the green Vardzia mountains in Georgia, from the edge of one of the many caves across the cliff.

The thrill of standing on the steep edge accompanied with the vastness of the mountains below overwhelmed me with ecstatic joy. And as I screamed, I somewhat transcended the confines of my own body and encapsulated a vestige of that vastness within me, as I heard my voice wander to places I yet had to explore.

In moments of ecstatic joy, fleeting triumph and bewildering surprise, I scream.

But adrenaline and dopamine aren’t my only scream triggers. I scream in moments of despair when I can’t find solace, when my chest feels empty and feelings of incompleteness take over. I then scream in search for wholeness, to evacuate a certain hollowness from within me.

A scene from an Indian movie, “Life in a Metro,” I watched eight years ago comes to mind. Amid life’s struggles and getting betrayed by her boyfriend, Shruti Ghosh is pissed at the world.

“Shout, shout,” her friend Monty says, when he takes her to a skyscraper’s rooftop.

“It’s not that easy,” she says.

“Watch after screaming. Scream once,” he urges. “Scream. Try it.”

Ghosh screams, and Monty joins her. She holds her head in the palms of her hands as she howls and breaks into tears, feeling relieved. Screaming helps her unleash the pent-up anger she had held on to far too long.

I made a friend do something similar last semester, to help her free herself of some of the damage her mother and ex-boyfriend had done to her.

“I’ve never screamed in my life,” she told me.

“Okay, I can’t wait for it anymore,” I told her. “We’re going out and screaming.”

We then strolled out of Education City onto the main road. I shouted and told her to shout back after me.

That’s the first time she’d ever screamed, and it served her well. It didn’t just give her an emotional release, but brought us closer too.

Artist Cierra Goldstein suggests workplaces should have soundproof screaming rooms where employees can go and scream their frustrations out. Alicia Framis’s “Screaming Room” lets people transform their screams into a 3D printed cup: A microphone records screams inside the cone-shaped room and a computer software uses a 3D printer to print a unique potato-starch cup outside.

Primal therapy, introduced by Dr. Arthur Janov in 1970 in his book “The Primal Scream,” helps liberate many such pent-up feelings. The patient reenacts a traumatic childhood experience, only this time he or she doesn’t repress any emotions and lets them out in spontaneous bursts of hysteria, screams and maybe even violence. This resurfaces hidden pain within the person and gives it an exit. John Lennon, Steve Jobs and James Earl Jones are said to have benefited from this therapy.

Perhaps this is what inspired one of Northwestern’s many traditions, Primal Scream, that takes place thrice every year. For a minute, students scream their hearts out from their dorm rooms at 9 p.m. on the doleful Sunday before finals week. The whole campus seems to mourn the tragic week ahead.

We have an altered version of Primal Scream here in Qatar. The week before finals is the Stress Buster events week. Students gather outside the studio building and after enjoying some snacks and drawing on the road with colored chalks, they scream the loudest they can.

“You just get rid of all the stress,” sophomore Omaima Es-samaali said. “Makes me feel better.”

So let screaming soothe you. Let it contain a trace of this world’s vastness within you. Let it rid you of excess garbage. Scream your heart out, in sadness and joy.

Rhytha Zahid Hejaze is a sophomore studying journalism at Northwestern University in Qatar. She can be reached at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].