Cartharsis

Everyone knows what cartharsis is even if they don't recognize it by name. The definition is the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions. Venting is a form of cartharsis. This is quite popular, and there have even been places that you can go to just hit things to make you feel better. The interesting thing is that cartharsis doesn't work. Many people swear by it (pun intended) but studies have shown that it does not

actually make you calmer.

What I believe is going on with cartharsis is that when someone is angry, their insides are fired up, but their physical body is not. Therefore, they feel a disconnect and they don't like that feeling. By employing cartharsis, they are amping up their body to match what their insides are feeling, so that they both are running on high energy. This eliminates the disconnect so you feel better because now the body is in harmony with the emotions. However, you still are angry or fired up, but you feel more justified about it. The better thing to do is to do breathing exercises or leave the room or do something very calm. This will bring the emotions down and will still eliminate the disconnect, but now you will actually be calm.

This applies to media because lots of people use media for cartharsis. Now with this knowledge that it doesn't work, we can choose to use media for the opposite of cartharsis and calm down instead of getting more fired up.