Do Hasslers (Difficult People) Speed Aging and Shorten Lifespan?

Most of us know someone who makes life difficult. Scientists call these people hasslers (difficult people). Perhaps it’s a coworker who criticizes everything and everybody. Or an aggressive sibling who derails family gatherings by dredging up old grievances. Sometimes even a friend leaves you feeling worn out instead of refreshed. Such interactions may do more than spoil your day. New research published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, Feb. 24, 2026) suggests these “hasslers” may actually influence how fast your body ages.

How Can You Recognize a Hassler?

Some people bring a smile to your face whenever you think about them. These are individuals who brighten your day. You look forward to seeing them because they leave you feeling calmer, happier and energized after spending time together.

Others (hasslers) are hard on the nerves. They make you tense, irritable and exhausted. You are happy to get away from them. They may do more than ruin your mood, however. Difficult people may raise blood pressure, disturb sleep, trigger headaches, give you heartburn and leave you feeling demoralized. They could also be speeding up biological aging. In a moment I will tell you how to recognize those individuals who might be more difficult than you think.

How Do Hasslers Shorten Lifespan?

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on February 24, 2026, analyzed data from 2,345 participants ranging from 18 to 103 years old. The researchers looked at people’s close social networks and identified “hasslers” as network members who “often” caused problems or made life difficult. They then compared those reports with sophisticated saliva-based DNA methylation measures of biological aging, including DunedinPACE and AgeAccelGrim2.

The numbers were striking:

On average, participants reported that 8.1% of the people in their network were hasslers. Nearly 28.8% of respondents had at least one hassler, and about 10% had two or more. Each additional hassler was associated with about a 1.5% faster pace of biological aging and roughly 9 months of extra biological age compared with peers of the same chronological age.

That does not mean one difficult cousin automatically steals a year from your life. But biological aging is cumulative. Small changes, repeated year after year, can add up.

Hasslers and Lifespan

I do not want to overstate the case. This study shows an association, not conclusive proof of cause and effect. The authors themselves are careful about that. They adjusted for many potential variables, including smoking, health status, adverse childhood experiences and occupation, and the relationship still held up. But they did not claim that hasslers definitively cause accelerated aging.

Even so, the findings fit a large body of stress research. Chronic social strain can repeatedly activate the body’s stress response, driving up stress hormones and contributing to inflammation.

People who have to drive on mountain roads that require a lot of braking while going down steep grades are going to experience a lot more wear and tear on their brakes than someone who lives in the lowlands. When the body is frequently put into fight or flight mode because of challenging interactions with difficult people, it will also experience physiological challenges.

Which Hasslers May Matter Most?

Not all difficult people affect biological aging in the same way. Close family hasslers seemed particularly consequential. Kin hasslers: parents, children, siblings and other close relatives showed the strongest and most consistent associations with accelerated aging. Non-kin hasslers also mattered, especially for one of the aging measures. Spouse hasslers, interestingly, did not show a statistically significant association in this study.

Does any of that make sense? I think we all realize that it can be hard to distance yourself from challenging family relationships. There are holiday gatherings, weddings and funerals when it is almost essential that you participate. Such get-togethers can be highly emotional and challenging, especially if cousin Charlie wants to vent about politics.

Friends are often elective. Kin are not. A parent, child or sibling may be impossible to avoid completely, and old patterns can be remarkably durable. That makes such relationships especially capable of becoming chronic stressors.

The study also found that coworkers and roommates were more likely to be hasslers than friends, which also makes sense. Repeated exposure plus shared space can be a recipe for stress.

How Would You Know if a Hassler is Shortening Your Life?

A lot of people are not very good at reading their own internal state. They may say, “Oh, she doesn’t bother me,” even while their shoulders are tight, their sleep is disrupted and their blood pressure is creeping up. Others have lived with hasslers for so long that the stress almost feels normal.

Mood Rings to the Rescue:

This will sound simplistic, but a simple external cue might be surprisingly helpful. Decades ago we attended a health conference at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. A physician gave a talk that really impressed us. He advocated for a simple test to determine who we should hang out with and who we should avoid.

His message was simple: people who make your hands warm should be your friends. That’s because being in their presence makes the tiny blood vessels in your hands dilate and warm your hands. People who make your hands cold and clammy are to be avoided, if possible. That’s because they are constricting blood vessels and making your hands cooler.

This doctor added that not everyone pays attention to the temperature of their hands. He suggested buying an inexpensive mood ring. This low-tech stress monitor changes color depending upon skin temperature.

When you are relaxed and your fingers are warm, the ring may shift toward colors associated with higher peripheral circulation. When you are anxious and your sympathetic nervous system is activated, blood vessels in your fingers may constrict, your hands may feel cooler and the ring may change accordingly.

In other words, a mood ring may offer a crude but useful clue to your physiological response when you are around hasslers. If you have trouble recognizing what difficult people are doing to you internally, a ring that reflects warmer or colder fingers may serve as a kind of biofeedback prompt: What just happened? Why did my hands suddenly go cold?

That is the real value of the mood ring. It can help people notice a bodily stress response they might otherwise miss.

Using a Mood Ring to Spot Hasslers

Suppose you are at work and a certain colleague strolls over. Five minutes later, you feel edgy, distracted and vaguely uneasy, but you tell yourself it’s no big deal. Or imagine a family phone call that leaves you rattled, but you minimize it because “that’s just how my sister is.”

A mood ring may help make the invisible visible.

If your fingers are warming up when you are walking the dog, gardening or chatting with a friend, but repeatedly cooling down during an interaction with a particular person, that is a clue worth respecting. Again, this is not a diagnosis. It is a self-awareness tool. It may help you connect the dots between a social interaction and your body’s reaction.

Other High-Tech Wearable Devices:

There are now a number of fancy (and pricey) high-tech wearables to detect stress responses. The Oura Ring measures pulse, heart rate variability, and sleep data. Here is how the company describes one feature of its expensive high-tech ring:

“Additionally, when exposed to stress, your peripheral body temperature (measured at the base of your fingers), can dip. This is because the blood vessels in your hands and fingers can constrict and reduce blood flow.”

Fitbit Sense 2 monitors “electrodermal activity” (EDA). Small electrical changes in skin perspiration can reveal emotional upset. It also measures skin temperature, heart rate and heart rate variability. The Apple Watch can also measure heart rate variability and pulse. When paired with an app such as StressWatch you can monitor your anxiety level.

Other Ways to Monitor Your Reaction to Hasslers

A home blood pressure monitor may be another useful tool, especially for people with hypertension or borderline high blood pressure. The American Heart Association recommends home blood pressure monitoring for people with high blood pressure and advises using an automatic, upper-arm cuff rather than wrist or finger devices for the most reliable readings.

They also note that stress can temporarily raise blood pressure, which is why it is important to sit quietly for at least five minutes before measuring and to avoid caffeine, smoking and exercise for 30 minutes beforehand.

This means you can use blood pressure thoughtfully as a pattern-tracking tool. You would not want to take your pressure in the middle of a shouting match and assume that single number defines your health. But you might notice that certain meetings, family visits or phone calls are reliably followed by higher-than-usual readings.

A blood pressure journal can make those patterns harder to ignore. The AHA specifically notes that a series of readings over time provides a more complete picture than a single snapshot.

None of these electronic gadgets can diagnose a toxic relationship. But they may help some people recognize that a “difficult” encounter is not just annoying. It is having an impact on the body.

Practical Tips for Dealing With Hasslers at Work

When a difficult person is a coworker, avoidance is not always possible. Still, there are ways to reduce the damage. Keep interactions brief, calm and task-focused. Email or text messages may be a better way to communicate than a hallway confrontation. Never respond on the spur of the moment! If a message triggers you, give yourself some time to cool down before firing off an emotional reaction.

Limit unnecessary disclosure; chronic critics do not need fresh material. Build in a buffer after stressful meetings. That could include a short walk, a few minutes of deep breathing, or simply stepping away before diving into the next task.

And if you use a stress-tracking method—a mood ring, blood pressure log or wearable—pay attention to what it teaches you. Some people are much easier to handle when you are rested, fed and not rushed. Others are physiologic land mines no matter what. That is useful information.

Difficult People in Your Social Circle

Friends should not consistently leave you feeling smaller, shakier or more exhausted. Of course every friendship has occasional friction. But there is a difference between a friend going through a rough patch and a person who repeatedly brings criticism, chaos or drama into your life. The study’s broader message is not that all relationships should be effortless. It is that chronically negative interactions may carry a physiological price.

Try asking yourself a simple question after spending time with someone: do you feel steadier, warmer and more like yourself—or more depleted, tense and off balance? For people who struggle to answer that question, external clues like finger temperature, blood pressure, sleep quality or wearable stress metrics may be helpful.

Extended Family Hasslers

This is where things get challenging. You may not want to sever ties with an in-law, cousin, aunt or adult child. But “family” should not mean unlimited access to your nervous system. Boundaries matter.

If political arguments lead to shouting matches, try to create ground rules that avoid politics. Shorter visits, neutral locations, fewer inflammatory topics and a built-in recovery period afterward can all help.

Some people also benefit from planning ahead: deciding in advance how long they will stay, what subjects are off limits and when they will leave. If you know a particular relative always sends your stress soaring, do not wait until you are trapped at the dinner table to come up with a de-stressing strategy.

Close Family Hasslers

When the difficult person is a parent, sibling, child or spouse, the situation is more emotionally loaded. This is where self-monitoring can be especially valuable. People often normalize longstanding family stress. They say, “That’s just my mother,” or “My brother has always been like that.” Maybe so. But if every interaction leaves your body in a state of alarm, that matters.

A mood ring may sound whimsical, but it can be a reminder to respect your body’s verdict. So can a wearable showing repeated spikes in stress and poor recovery. Sometimes the first step is simply accepting that your body is telling the truth, even when family history tempts you to brush the whole thing aside.

What This Means for You

This new study does not prove that every difficult person is stealing years from your life. But it does suggest that hasslers may do more than sour your mood. They may contribute to faster biological aging, and the effect appears to grow as the number of hasslers increases.

That should make all of us think a little harder about the people we allow into our inner orbit. The take-home message is not isolation. In fact, supportive relationships are crucial for health, and loneliness carries its own serious risks. The real lesson is discernment. Seek out the people who leave you calmer, steadier and more resilient. Limit exposure to those who reliably make your body brace for impact.

And if you have trouble sensing your inner state, do not dismiss that problem. Use a tool. A mood ring. A wearable that tracks stress and recovery. A blood pressure monitor. Sometimes an external signal can reveal an internal truth.

If your hands go cold every time a certain person walks into the room, your body may be trying to tell you something important.

A Small Favor Please:

Did any of this make sense? If so, please share your thoughts in the comment section below. If you think it is a tempest in a teapot, please share why you think this research is meaningless. Have you experienced a hassler in your life? What was that like? How did you cope with a difficult person? We would love to learn about your success stories.

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