As We Age Mentally, We Should Rehearse Kindness Before It is Too Late

 

Agitation, aggression, and spiteful outbursts occur in up to 90 % of people with Alzheimer’s disease. Let’s take this as a warning. If we carry too much chronic anger, sarcasm, suspicion, or hostility into old age, those traits might outlive our ability to control or explain them. They could become the whole show.

I believe there is a phenomenon where the older we get, the less it makes sense to be rude and ugly to others. I have seen this apply to me. As I’ve gotten older and my cognitive workspace has declined, I realize that I can’t be snappy and angry, and I just have to let things go. Otherwise, my negative emotions can be unfairly displaced onto the wrong people. I have also noticed that my reactions can appear to others to be unwarranted, arbitrary, and nonsensical. What was once righteous indignation is now a pitiful knee-jerk reaction that is socially isolating. If we want to age gracefully, we need to start being nice, so we don’t turn into demented patients with behavior issues who are oppositional and defiant.

 

I’m basically saying that there’s a human tendency for mean people to look foolish as they decline cognitively. This tendency should make us want to be kinder as we age because bitterness ages poorly and cruelty is fragile. But it’s also a gut feeling I get. That if I don’t chill out, stop taking things personally, lower my retaliation apprehension, and assume positive intentions, I’m gonna descend into aggressive deterioration. I don’t wanna get to the point where there’s not much left but anger.

This isn’t just poetic—it’s neurological. The prefrontal cortex, which helps inhibit rude or impulsive speech, weakens with dementia. Working memory really does contract. Large lifespan datasets show linear losses beginning in mid‑adulthood, affecting the speed and amount of information we can hold “online.” This can make it harder to negotiate demanding social interactions especially if we have held on to a tough, mean exterior. The amygdala, the brain’s source of fear and anger, stays more intact. So, when higher reasoning fades, what's left are raw, automatic affective scripts—especially if they were frequently rehearsed during life.

This could be framed as a kind of moral foresight or affective prophylaxis—an early recognition that if you don’t deliberately soften now, then irritability and suspicion may calcify and eventually dominate your identity when your cognitive scaffolding weakens. This vision creates an implicit imperative: to "soften" early, to cultivate generosity, patience, and interpretive charity while one still has the executive capacity to do so. The goal, then, is not just to age with grace but to preserve moral coherence and interpersonal dignity across the arc of cognitive decline.

As I was writing this blog entry over the course of a few days, I watched a PBS special on Alzheimer’s called Matter of Mind: My Alzheimers (2025). Two of the four patients featured had serious anger problems, further burdening their caretakers. Caretaking is a hard job, by the way, and this can make it much harder. The patients were flustered by everything and always had something rude to say. They talked back and turned things negative when they didn’t have to. The men and women would say things like “No, no, I don’t wanna do that. I’m not going to do that. Just leave me alone. I don’t have time for this. Would you just stop? You’re so stupid. Get away from me.” They said these things when people were trying to help them.

That kind of dialogue is chilling—not because the people are “bad,” but because it shows how a mind stripped of memory and reasoning can still lash out reflexively, clinging to patterns that no longer serve any function. What’s left isn’t just confusion—it’s habitual resistance, defensive tone, and reflexive hostility. And the heartbreaking part is: those emotional reactions may have started as protective mechanisms earlier in life—but with cognitive decline, they lose context and proportion. So, I tell myself: “If I don’t let go of unnecessary antagonism now—if I keep snapping, doubting, resenting—it may become the last thing left of me. I don’t want anger to be my final language.”

Long‑term hostility isn’t just unpleasant; it’s biologically costly. Chronic elevations in cortisol, blood pressure, and systemic inflammation correlate with faster hippocampal shrinkage and steeper cognitive decline. Some studies link high trait anger to greater dementia risk, though cause‑and‑effect is still debated. The safer conclusion: emotionally calmer lives track with healthier brains.

Breathing practices, aerobic exercise, healthy diet, consistent sleep windows, and morning sunlight can all help. These practices lighten the working‑memory load, protect vascular and neural tissue, and embed you in supportive networks—collectively buffering against both mood spirals and neurodegeneration.

As I have watched further documentaries about Alzheimer’s it is interesting to see how these people are actually intact in some ways. They weren’t able to care for themselves, and they had severe memory problems, but they could still think and hold a reasonable conversation. These were not people who had “lost their humanity,” as is sometimes assumed in popular portrayals of Alzheimer’s. They were very much still human, still capable of moments of clarity, connection, and reason. And yet, they were stuck in patterns of defensiveness, irritation, and anger that no longer had adaptive justification. Their partners showed patience and care. Their doctors were kind. But the patients were stuck replaying an emotional script that no longer made sense—even to them.

The tragedy isn’t that they became negative—it’s that the world they created with those emotional habits kept echoing back to them, even when others offered warmth. And perhaps worse, they couldn’t remember why they felt threatened, upset, or indignant—so they couldn’t recontextualize or let it go. Their emotional baseline had been “trained in” over decades and was now being expressed without reflection. They weren’t monstrous, but trapped inside affective inertia. They couldn’t bathe or remember where they lived, but they could argue and resist and insult. Their anger didn’t seem like psychosis. It seemed like habit. A hardwired emotional posture that had survived long after memory and logic had eroded. Thus, as we age, we should shift motivational priorities from “work, defense, and competition” to “meaningful, harmonious relationships.”

 

I’m rarely rude to people, but I have a tough exterior that can be jarring to people and I’m realizing that as I age, I have to do some mental gymnastics to make it work socially at this point in my life. These gymnastics included reframing, active self-monitoring, and anticipatory adjustment of tone to make sure my exterior doesn’t misrepresent my interior. But I don’t have the mental bandwidth for all this anymore. I have had to intentionally soften previously adaptive hard traits (e.g., stoicism, bluntness, cynicism) to foster warmth and reduce social friction. And I realize that I have to start doing this now before aging and cognitive thinning makes those adjustments harder.

 

We need to address these personality traits as we age so that they don’t intensify even after reason and context fall away. We need to build a graceful scaffolding now. This is why I have formulated the:

 

The Emotional Aging Protocol (EAP)

A preventative intervention to cultivate warmth, flexibility, and affective grace in aging adults.

Goals

• Preemptively shape the emotional default state before cognitive decline.
• Preserve dignity, kindness, and interpretive generosity into late life.
• Reduce risk of behavioral and affective dysregulation in dementia.
• Support caregivers by reducing oppositional behavior and emotional volatility.

Target Population

• Adults aged 55+
• Especially those with:
• Family history of dementia
• Mild cognitive impairment (MCI)
• Longstanding negative affect patterns (anger, hostility, suspicion)
• High caregiver burden anticipation

Core Components

0. Psychoeducation on Cognitive Decline and Emotional Residue

Goal: Give people the big picture—why this work matters.

• Teach how frontal lobe degeneration affects inhibition
• Show how emotional tone outlasts memory
• Share case studies of “emotional persistence” in Alzheimer’s
•  

1. Emotional Awareness and Pattern Mapping

Goal: Identify entrenched affective habits and begin reframing them.

• Semi-structured self-interviews and journaling:
• “When do I snap? What types of things set me off?”
• “What’s the voice in my head during minor conflict?”
• “Compassion journaling”: daily note on someone’s effort or kindness
• Tracking default responses to discomfort or frustration.
• Introduction to the concepts of “emotional legacies”: how daily tone becomes long-term character.

2. Interpretive Generosity Training

Goal: Shift assumptions about others’ intentions.

• Cognitive reappraisal practice:
• “What are 3 other ways to interpret this event?”
• “Assume good intent” exercises: partners or caregivers play out ambiguous scenarios.
• Gratitude reframing: turn everyday interactions into opportunities for thankfulness.

3. Mindfulness and Response Delay Practice

Goal: Increase the gap between stimulus and reaction.

• Deliberate pause practice:
• “Wait 10 seconds before responding to frustration.”
• “Drop the thought, not the issue.”
• Mantra development:
• “Kindness is clarity.”
• “I don’t have to follow every feeling.”
• 5-10 minute daily breath-focused mindfulness (e.g., body scan or compassion-based)
• Loving-kindness meditation (targeting self, then others)
• Role-play:
• Responding kindly to irritation or help
• Practicing de-escalation tone with caregivers

4. Relationship Repair and Buffer Building

Goal: Strengthen social connections and reduce isolation (a driver of paranoia/hostility).

• Conflict closure exercises: structured apology and forgiveness rituals
• Relationship maintenance plans:
• Weekly “kindness call” to a friend
• Schedule shared experiences
• Cognitive rehearsal of positive interactions

Goal: Help people envision what emotional reside they want to leave.

• Letter-writing exercise: “How I want to sound when I forget everything else”
• Personal tone mission statement

Optional Adjuncts

• Caregiver inclusion: teach them to reinforce soft responses and not personalize aggression.
• Group therapy / peer support: normalize these fears and provide mutual encouragement.
• Neurological follow-up: monitor for early executive deficits and adjust plan.