𝑨𝒕 73, 𝒎𝒚 𝒇𝒂𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒉𝒂𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒓𝒚 𝒌𝒆𝒚𝒃𝒐𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒐𝒓

Gruff moaning, friends far and wide. I greet you well.

Now this is strange.

Virtually the exact same question asked of the British news media's agony aunts, and answered virtually identically by the resident psychologists who make up the breed, in five different news outlets over the past four days.

That seems a tad more than coincidental to me - but maybe I'm one of those conservative nut-job conspiracy theorists?

The question, allegedly posed by clearly liberally-inclined middle-class mums (assuming they actually exist) boils down to - "My father has turned into a right-wing loony, and he spends all his time online being a right-wing loony. When he's not online being a right-wing loony, he's ranting and raving like a right-wing loony to all his relatives and friends. Even the cat's left home."

The psychologist agony aunts all respond with a species of total bollocks like that below, which appears in today's The Times.

I've never had any time for psychologists or their supposed "science".

"Forensic psychologists" and "criminologists" famously bit off far more than they could chew in the English and Scottish courts in the 1990s and early 2000s. Several people innocent of any crime were sent to prison, and in one especially egregious case the man, Paul Britton, who styled himself "Britain's leading psychologist" and the "real-life Cracker" was heavily involved in an attempt to entrap a man - Colin Stagg - into an admission of guilt for a murder he could not have committed. But he fitted Britton's "profile", you understand (the real murderer was a million miles away from Britton's "expert" profile).

Fortunately for Stagg, who was held in prison for a year before the case came to trial, the trial judge read over the evidence and refused to allow the trial to go ahead. He was scathing at the Metropolitan Police (them again), the Crown Prosecution Service, and most of all Paul Britton and his supposed "science", which the judge said had absolutely no place in British courtrooms.

Since then, psychologists, "criminologists", or whatever other self-awarded title they care to sail under, have been kept firmly out of the British judicial process. Such "contentious, scientifically unproven and unprovable evidence, like that put forward by supposed witchcraft 'experts' in the famous, fatal trials of older, more gullible days, cannot be given against the man Stagg - nor any other of Her Majesty's subjects," said the angry trial judge in the Stagg case.

You know, I don't watch true crime programmes anymore, haven't in more than 20 years, because so much of the running time is given over to the psychologists, in their guise as "criminologists".

Most of what they contribute is basically a restatement of the crime, and perhaps a trot through the early life of the criminal - something you already know about because the police participants and the narrator have told you. The "criminologist" will then say that this or that behaviour on the part of the perpetrator is evidence of a psychopathic personality.

In the next episode - wildly different crime, same "criminologists" - suddenly that or this behaviour is evidence of a psychopathic personality, quite contradicting what was said in the earlier programme.

I switch off mentally whenever a psychologist opens his or her mouth. I just don't believe in witches.

This goggledegook from today's The Times...

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𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐬𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞

by Professor Tanya Byron

𝑸𝒖𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏: My 73-year-old father has become obsessed with politics, or rather with shouting about it online. He spends hours on social media arguing with strangers, posting furious comments, and sharing articles that make my wife and me wince.

He used to be thoughtful and kind; now he’s permanently angry, convinced that he sees “the truth” and anyone who disagrees is “brainwashed’’. He rants about “woke nonsense”, “elites”, and that he has a duty to halt “the decline of common sense’’.

He lives with us (Mum died almost 20 years ago), and it’s driving a wedge through our family — my kids don’t want to be around him. I’ve stopped trying to reason with him because it only provokes more rage.

He seems addicted to being outraged, and at times it looks as if he has well and truly lost the plot. I miss the kind, thoughtful and tactful father I used to have. Why has he changed so much, and is there anything we can do?

𝑨𝒏𝒔𝒘𝒆𝒓: Your father has become caught in one of the most powerful psychological traps of our time: the outrage economy, a system in which online platforms profit from anger. Clickbait hooks us in, but algorithms keep us hooked by amplifying moral and emotional content that triggers outrage.

Each click feeds a feedback loop: the more provoked we feel, the longer we stay, the more data we generate, and the more advertising revenue platforms earn. It’s the 21st-century evolution of emotional marketing, only now our attention is the product being sold, and our indignation the fuel that keeps the system profitable.

This has trapped your father inside his own worldview, consuming only the content that reinforces his existing beliefs without exposure to differing viewpoints (called confirmation bias). His social media feed validates his position while supporting a belief that fury equals purpose.

He may genuinely feel he is defending truth or decency, but in fact, biologically, he is chasing a chemical high. Each online clash gives him a brief dopamine hit: a surge of reward that reinforces the behaviour, making outrage feel momentarily satisfying even as it deepens his agitation.

As a man of his generation, raised on clear moral frameworks — right/wrong, respect/disrespect — your father is now navigating an information world defined by fluidity and ambiguity. This clash fuels what is called intolerance of uncertainty, where, as seen during the pandemic, conspiracy theories flourish and anger becomes a coping strategy. Online spaces can then act as surrogate communities, and outrage may have become your father’s way to feel engaged and relevant.

So has your dad “well and truly lost the plot”? He’s in allostatic overload, meaning his stress system is stuck in fight-or-flight mode, exhausting the brain’s ability to reset, risking negative health outcomes. Anyone challenging his beliefs is “woke” or “elite” and becomes a perceived threat, fuelling his self-appointed “duty to defend common sense”.

In threat mode, survival trumps reflection. Your father’s prefrontal cortex (the brain’s reasoning and empathy centre) shuts down, while the limbic system (the brain’s emotional threat centre) takes charge, driving instinctive fear and anger. Nuance then feels unsafe and everything is reduced to binaries, eg right or wrong, us or them, because rigid certainty gives the illusion of control.

In therapy, we see anger functioning as a secondary emotion, protecting a more vulnerable one beneath. Your father’s fury may mask sadness, loneliness, or even something more existential — a fear of change, of being irrelevant and dismissed. The keyboard warrior stance gives him status again: a participant, not a bystander.

However, rage threatens others and, of course, you and your family are instinctively distancing yourselves. This withdrawal may confirm his sense of siege — that you’ve all been “brainwashed” and only he sees “the truth”. This is the psychology of polarisation, driven less by ideology than by the brain’s threat response to difference, where perceived rejection activates the limbic system, turning disagreement into danger.

So what can you do without escalating the situation? Don’t directly respond because reason rarely penetrates a system in fight-or-flight mode, primed for survival. Remember, in this state, your father’s prefrontal cortex has gone offline, and so his ability to rationalise is diminished. Indeed, any discussion or action will be interpreted as an attack and so only fuel the fire.

The goal is to de-escalate. By staying calm while he rants, you signal safety to his mirror neurons (brain cells that fire when we act or observe others act), allowing his brain to register your steadiness and, in time, mirror it. Once his emotion subsides, gentle curiosity, such as asking when he began feeling so outraged or why, helps to re-engage his prefrontal cortex, shifting him from black-and-white survival thinking back towards reflection and reason.

Managing his behaviour means also setting calm but firm boundaries. When he begins to escalate, avoid debate, disengage, and redirect him/you and your family to another space. Consistency matters more than confrontation, and repeated and calm withdrawal signals that rage no longer gets a reaction.

Help your children by giving them a simple, truthful context, for example that their grandfather’s unacceptable moods are about his frustration or confusion, not their behaviour. Keep their routines steady and their spaces emotionally safe. Try to ensure they still have positive time with him when he is settled (make sure his phone isn’t around), but end interactions the moment they turn volatile — protecting your children’s sense of security must take precedence.

However, when an older adult becomes more argumentative, rigid or politically obsessed, it can sometimes point to changes in the frontal lobes of the brain rather than simply a change in ideology. These regions govern inhibition, empathy and social awareness, the necessary abilities that keep anger and impulsivity in check.

Damage here, as in frontotemporal dementia or vascular cognitive decline, can cause what looks like a personality transplant. As with your father, a once measured or humorous person changes, becoming uncharacteristically angry, even aggressive.

Such changes are often subtle at first. Your father may appear sharper in some ways: debating politics, reciting facts, arguing with conviction, yet at the same time he is losing flexibility, empathy and tact. The combination of neurological disinhibition and algorithmic amplification can become a perfect storm where an ageing brain, overstimulated by constant emotional triggers, loses the neural brakes needed to slow down and see nuance.

It’s important not to jump to conclusions, but to notice patterns. Has this anger appeared alongside forgetfulness, apathy, or self-neglect? Are there changes in sleep, appetite, or initiative? A GP can do a brief cognitive screen and blood tests (for thyroid function, vitamin B12, infection or medication side-effects), which could reveal any treatable causes as well as whether further tests are needed.

It’s hard to feel compassion for someone shouting across the dinner table, but your father’s behaviour means something. Is he feeling sidelined as he ages, or could this out-of-character conduct indicate cognitive or neurological change? If it’s the former, help him to reconnect offline because the less he depends on virtual validation, the less grip outrage will have (ageuk.org.uk).

As his behaviour may stem from brain changes, support him to see his GP. Many families struggle here because insight is often the first thing to fade, and so someone with frontal-lobe decline may not realise anything is wrong or may become defensive when told.

A gentle approach is to frame the visit as a routine health check, while you discreetly alert the GP beforehand. Most practices welcome this information, although confidentiality means they can’t discuss his care without his consent.

Whether his outbursts are rooted in a changing brain and/or in a deeper fear of no longer being relevant, the response required is the same: compassion. What looks like stubbornness or outrage is often anxiety and an attempt to retain identity and control. Meeting that with patience and understanding allows dignity while finding ways to help his unsettled mind. I wish you well.