Caring for Aging Parents from a Distance: Preventing Caregiver Burnout with Janice Goldmintz

Episode Summary of “Caring for Aging Parents from a Distance: Preventing Caregiver Burnout with Janice Goldmintz”

Navigating the care of our aging parents is one of the most profound, yet least talked about, transitions we face as adults. This is really common—we rarely sit down to discuss end-of-life wishes or logistics until a sudden medical crisis throws us into an emotional whirlwind. When you are managing this transition from a distance—whether due to life circumstances or the unique demands of military deployment and relocation—the weight can easily ripple into your marriage, leading to invisible strain and emotional disconnection.

In this episode, I sit down with gerontologist Janice Goldmintz to explore how couples can navigate these heavy role reversals, manage complex family dynamics, and protect their relationship bond while honoring their parents’ autonomy. What this really means is that you don’t have to carry this heavy weight alone. You’ll walk away with small, practical tools to stay on the same team with your partner, lean on external resources safely, and build your own emotional resilience toolkit so you can thrive, not just survive.

Guest Speaker Bio – Janice Goldmintz

Janice Goldmintz is an educator, facilitator, and advocate for adult children navigating the emotional and practical challenges of caring for aging parents. Drawing from both personal experience and academic training, Janice brings a rare depth of compassion and clarity to a process that often feels overwhelming and isolating.

With a Master’s degree in Gerontology and firsthand experience supporting both of her parents through Alzheimer’s disease, Janice understands the shifting terrain of caregiving—from anticipatory grief and family dynamics to complex decision-making around care and quality of life. She helps adult children make sense of the maze of systems, agencies, and conversations involved in elder care, while also tending to their own wellbeing.

Janice is also a certified trainer with Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul), integrating mindset and goal-setting tools to help caregivers preserve balance, resilience, and perspective during difficult seasons. Through presentations, family facilitation, and education, her mission is to help older adults live full, dignified lives—and to ensure their children feel supported, informed, and not alone.

Connect with Janice Goldmintz: Website | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram

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Episode Transcript for “Caring for Aging Parents from a Distance: Preventing Caregiver Burnout with Janice Goldmintz”

Hi, I’m Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky, and you’re about to start communicating more clearly and feeling more connected in your relationships with this podcast. As a marriage and family therapist, I help people change relationship patterns that feel automatic, those reactions that just kick in before you even realize that they’re happening.

And for over 10 years, I’ve worked with people who do hard things for a living, and yet they still feel stuck when it comes to connection in their relationships. This podcast isn’t about scripts or formulas or doing relationships the right way. Instead, it’s about slowing down reactive moments, understanding what’s underneath them, and helping relationships feel more like a team again.

So if you want things to feel better, to feel calmer, steadier, and more at ease in your closest relationships, then this podcast is for you. Because here you’ll start to learn how to pause conflict, understand what’s happening emotionally, and then respond instead of react. And when you do that, connection starts to feel more possible.

Quick note though, this podcast is educational only and isn’t a substitute for professional therapy or counseling. If you need individualized support, please consider working with a mental health counselor. Okay, let’s dive in. I’m really glad you’re here.

You’re listening to episode 82, Caring for Aging Parents from a Distance: Preventing Caregiver Burnout with Janice Goldmintz.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: So Janice, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I’m excited to have you here. This caring for parents is really not a topic we’ve gone into, and it’s so relevant for couples. But before we get going, maybe you could just tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do in this area.

Janice Goldmintz: Thanks a lot, Elizabeth. My background is in gerontology, which is the study of aging. So I come to a lot of what I’ve learned academically, but I think my biggest lessons probably came caring for my own parents, both who had Alzheimer’s at different times. I understand the challenges. I understand what it’s like to be that caregiver and be in the middle of it.

Janice Goldmintz: My goal really is to be able to tell you, really, I made lots of my own mistakes. And if I can help you not make those mistakes, that would be great. And to help you go through the challenges you’ll face, ‘ cause it’s gonna be different for everybody. But it’s just to know that there’s no perfect way to do this. And you’re gonna have great days, and you’re gonna have days that are not so great, and it’s all normal, and you’re not alone in it.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah, I think that that idea of making mistakes, it feels like one of those life areas that people are very unprepared for. Like how to care for their parents as they age. Do you have a sense of like, why is it that adult children end up feeling so alone and unprepared for this?

Janice Goldmintz: I think the biggest thing is exactly why I called my company Talk About Aging. It’s because we don’t. It’s a subject that we don’t talk about. We don’t sit down with our parents at any point and say, ” Well, if something happened with your health, what would you want?” Or, ” What kind of interventions would be good?”

Janice Goldmintz: And at the end of your life, what kind of life would you like to lead? And would you like to age in place and all of these things. And where’s your lawyer and your accountant and your will and your powers of attorney? It’s not something that we’re sitting around the dining room table and having the conversation or at a holiday.

Janice Goldmintz: But the thing is, that is, I think, the biggest issue is that we wait for a crisis and then we are unprepared. We don’t have a clue what our parent or loved one would want. We don’t know how to react. We’re only in an emotional turmoil. And so we’re not thinking with clarity and logic. We’re thinking with emotion and hoping that we know what our parent or loved one would want.

Janice Goldmintz: And a lot of times we really don’t know.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah. I’m just thinking about like our title of the podcast starts with communicate, you know? And I’m like, communicate about it is what I’m hearing you say.

Janice Goldmintz: And the other part of it is sometimes we even do broach the subject and either the parent or the child goes, ” No, no, no, everything’s good. No, I don’t want to talk about it.” And they think that by talking about it, it’s going to make something happen that wouldn’t have happened. Then again, that’s not the truth.

Janice Goldmintz: So the kids may see something that concerns them and they go and talk to their parent and their parent says, “No, everything’s good.” Or the parent has a concern and they want to talk to their kids, and their kids are not prepared for their parent coming to them and saying, ” I’m getting older. I have some concerns.”

Janice Goldmintz: So even if the subject is being talked about, it’s not always with openness and, receptiveness.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah. And you know, I was thinking about what have I really heard about this? I’ll be honest and I’ll say my parents and I have not talked much about their end of life plans. But I’m thinking the things that I end up hearing about are caregiver burnout. Like that’s kind of the mental association that I have in my mind.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: And I’m wondering in that scenario that you just mentioned where people are not talking about it and then there’s a crisis that kind of emotionality of dealing with the crisis I’m imagining is part of caregiver burnout in some ways, like dealing with the crisis. But are there other aspects of that?

Janice Goldmintz: Yes. So one is let’s say you’re one of a number of siblings. And you as siblings have not sat down and said, ” I’m willing to do the financial, and I’m willing to do the daily care or making sure the doctor appointments.” And another one says, “Well, and I’m gonna coordinate some other things.” If you don’t know what each of you are gonna do, a lot of times nothing gets done or everybody is, ” Oh, I can’t do that, and I’m too busy,” or, ” I have my kids,” or whatever that might be.

Janice Goldmintz: And so things fall through the cracks, and then the situation doesn’t get handled. So then everybody’s running around like chickens without heads on. That’s very stressful. Or if you are not prepared in your work situation to be able to say, ” Okay, if something should happen, I know the HR at my company would give me time off,” or, “I would be able to say to them I need a leave of absence,” or whatever that might be.

Janice Goldmintz: Again, if you’re not aware of what options are for you and all of a sudden you’re thrown into a situation, that’s stressful. Knowing if your spouse is on board with helping, and if you don’t know the effect that that has on your nuclear family or on your social life or, you know, the ripples that that has an effect on.

Janice Goldmintz: If there’s something that is a long-term thing, let’s say your parent has Alzheimer’s, if you’re not set up for the support that you’re going to need, whether you’re living in the same city or if you’re in a military family, which makes it even more stressful because you’re not able to necessarily have the same kind of resources and ability to check in all the time, that’s very, very, stressful and can cause burnout easily.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yes, I’m seeing all of that like the sources of conflict that could happen between siblings, between couples who haven’t talked about it. Not necessarily like conflict that is, we’re really fighting and having big disagreements, but even just the stress of like everybody trying to suddenly figure out what we’re gonna do and the stress of that leading to bickering and conflict.

Janice Goldmintz: And the other thing is a lot of us are not prepared to parent our parents.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah.

Janice Goldmintz: Switching roles can be also very challenging to be able to just have to say to yourself, ” Okay, my parent cannot make decisions for themselves. I have to now switch that role and start caring for my parent.” And to be able to wrap your head around that can be challenging as well.

Janice Goldmintz: ‘Cause we’re, again, we aren’t prepared for that. I mean, nobody prepares you for that.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah. do you have any tips for that? Because like the first part can be addressed with communication and some like future planning and negotiating all of the roles among family members and talking about it openly. But that part is a whole nother piece. Like how does somebody cope or come to switch to thinking about themselves as taking care of their parent, parenting their parent?

Janice Goldmintz: So this is where I think having other resources is very helpful. I know for my own parents, I sat down with their physician and said, ” Tell me what’s going on. I wanna be aware. I wanna know.” And sometimes things like when my mother needed to stop driving, it wasn’t me that said to my mom, ” We’re gonna take your license away.”

Janice Goldmintz: I said to her doctor, “You have to be the bad guy. You have to be the one that’s gonna do this because my mother will be very angry.” And she was very angry at the doctor, and I thought, “I don’t care. You be angry as much as you want, but I’m gonna make sure that I have all the resources and help around me.”

Janice Goldmintz: It does make it easier having that power of attorney or living will because when you’re faced with a situation where you have to make sometimes life and death decisions, you wanna think clearly. You wanna be able to not put your thoughts onto what that person would want. So it gives them their autonomy back.

Janice Goldmintz: It gives them their ability even if they can’t speak for themselves to make choices still for themselves, where you’re not placed in that position of, “Oh, my God. Now I have to make those decisions.” Those things are already known and talked about. So it makes it a little bit less onerous that you don’t have to take on that, ” I’m making decisions for my parent.”

Janice Goldmintz: If they are able to make as much decision in advance is very helpful.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: I can see that because I’m thinking also about how guilty I would feel. Like if I had to make huge decision for one of my parents and I didn’t know what they would want, I would be worried about did I make the right choice? Or did I make the wrong choice?

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: And I think regardless of what choice, I might have a little bit of guilt not knowing was it the right or the wrong one, and how that would be helpful. It would remove that feeling from me, to say, “Well, I did what they wanted.”

Janice Goldmintz: Right. And sometimes what your parent wants is not what you would want for them.

Janice Goldmintz: It can be hard when your parent says they want a certain intervention or they don’t want an intervention, and your idea is different. But that’s their choice. Or you have a sibling who says, ” I want everything,” and you’re thinking in your mind, “But I know mom doesn’t want everything.”

Janice Goldmintz: But it’s never formalized. How do you decide who has the say, right? A lot of times people put their children as joint powers of attorney, and you have to make sure that everybody’s on the same page or else you end up at times with one saying one thing another with another, and you don’t get resolution.

Janice Goldmintz: I know for my brother and I, we did ours as joint and severally, which meant I could decide or we could decide together. We didn’t need to have both of us agree.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Okay.

Janice Goldmintz: So it’s all of these things that we don’t think about, that we don’t wanna talk about, that we don’t wanna plan for. But in the situation, it, just rears its ugly head if you don’t do it because you have exactly what you said.

Janice Goldmintz: People become guilty or paralyzed ’cause they can’t make a decision. I had that with my dad. My mom was in the hospital, and they asked if my dad wanted a DNR, which is a do not resuscitate, and my father just looked like a deer in the headlights and said, “I don’t know.” And I said, “No, it’s okay.

Janice Goldmintz: This is what mom wants. Here’s her power of attorney. You don’t have to make the decision.” And he just was able to relax back into it cause he never talked to my mother about it. I did because I had all the paperwork, but he never really sat down and talked to her. And that’s the other thing.

Janice Goldmintz: If spouses don’t talk to each other, and one spouse says, “Well, I don’t know what my wife or my husband would want,” here’s another voice heard, and it can really impact on the care of the person who needs that maybe life or death decision.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yes. I know we’re really focused on like caring for your parents and how that plays a role in couple relationships, but this is like a side plug for how important it is to talk with your partner about it. Especially for military, every couple probably, you never know if there’s gonna be a car crash or, you know, you never know what’s gonna happen.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: But with military service members being in a higher risk of danger group, just like policemen and firefighters and stuff, I could see how that’s really important to have that in place.

Janice Goldmintz: And to have communication between the children of the aging parent, whether the spouse the actual child. Because if the person who is being deployed is not there, then you want to make sure again that everybody is aware this is what mom or dad would want, and you’re leaving it in somebody else’s hands possibly, and that can be very stressful.

Janice Goldmintz: And again, it’s not conflict that they’re fighting, but it’s taking on a responsibility and duty that when your loved one is being deployed, that’s already stressful.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: That was actually the story of my parents. They were dual military and then when they had me, my mom got out. And my dad was deployed when his dad was starting to decline. And my mom was caring for my grandpa at his end of life and thankfully my dad was able to come back from deployment to see my grandpa before he passed.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: But what a stressful experience even as the child, I can’t even be there really to be involved. Even though the responsibility would be stressful, and maybe I’d have guilt, but to not even have a say and to have to pass it over to my partner would be hard.

Janice Goldmintz: And even for the person that is deployed, you don’t have your support system. You’re somewhere else, whether it’s out of the country or somewhere else in the country. You don’t have your resources. You don’t have your family and your friends. Now you’re with other people who have their own stresses and to try and navigate that on your own that’s causes burnout because you don’t have your own outlet to deal with other things that are going on.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah. do you have tips for military couples or couples who are in this situation where they are doing this from a distance, whether just because they live far away or they’re doing it at a distance because someone’s deployed? Like, how can they start getting all of this together and advocating for their parents and taking care of everything when they are at a distance?

Janice Goldmintz: So luckily we have Zoom, that is gonna be able to bring people together. So that if you have to have a family meeting, you can do that by Zoom. You don’t have to worry, or by WhatsApp or whatever methodology that works for you. A lot of the larger disease-related organizations have support groups.

Janice Goldmintz:  And I’m sure they have online support. So if you are away somewhere and somebody says to you, “Oh your father started to decline,” or whatever. You can go on and get some online support and get some questions And get some questions answered.

Janice Goldmintz: And I think that’s really important is having your own mechanisms whether that’s meditation or reading or whatever that might be for you. Because in that moment where you are in distress, having a little toolkit with yourself.

Janice Goldmintz: To be able to say, “Okay, I know I’m really stressed. Okay, I’m gonna go for a run or I’m gonna do some meditation or I’m gonna color in a coloring book,” or whatever that is for you, just to dissipate some of that tension. Because when you’re not with your family, you have to be able to figure out how to do that.

Janice Goldmintz: And the other thing is to feel your feelings. Like you can’t hide and pretend, “Oh, I’m, everything’s good,” because again, that’s gonna cause more stress and burnout. So I guess if you’re deployed, you would need to tell somebody that you’re with that, ” This is my situation. I want to be at the top of my game here, but this is what it is.”

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah, and there are actually counselors that go on deployment with military servicemen and women called deployment resiliency counselors. I have a really good friend who’s doing that. I actually applied once, they didn’t accept me at the time, and now I’m doing my own thing. I like it.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: But they do non-medical counseling for like grief and stress and life changes that don’t involve being diagnosed with a mental health diagnosis or a situation like this where your parent is all of a sudden facing the end of life or having a very serious medical situation happening.

Janice Goldmintz: And there’s online counseling services. There’s so many options now that they didn’t have before that are available. That are helpful. I know there’s Facebook groups and other things where caregivers can have peer support, which I think is important. And my hope is that in the military is that they can start providing peer support.

Janice Goldmintz: Because I can assure you that if one person is caring for their aging parent, there’s a whole bunch. And nobody is saying, ” I’m in the middle of being pulled 100 different ways because I’ve got a parent and my kids and my spouse and, you know, whatever it is. And my duty here to try and make sure that I can be aware, you know, and in my top form for everything.” It’s hard. It’s hard work.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yes. Yeah. I do know that sometimes they have that. I’m not sure what it’s called in the Army and in the Air Force. But I know for the Navy, it’s Fleet and Family Services. And then there’s also Military OneSource, which are resources that sometimes have support groups like that. And of course the chaplains and the pastors of military are great resources for all of that as well.

Janice Goldmintz: Yeah, yeah. It’s stressful.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: And yes. Yeah. Yeah. So if someone’s listening to this podcast and they’re feeling really overwhelmed is, what would you want them to know?

Janice Goldmintz: You know, the first thing that I want to tell people is you’re not alone. Because we think we need to do this on our own and nobody’s going to understand. There’s lots of people who understand. I have an Instagram, Aging Parent Journey. Ask questions. I’m happy to answer questions.

Janice Goldmintz: You can go to my website, which is talkaboutaging.com. I have some videos. I have some information there that might be helpful. If you need resources for Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease or whatever it might be, happy to provide that for you wherever you live. I think just knowing that there’s somebody out there who’s a soft place to land is important. And knowing that you can be connected to other people.

Janice Goldmintz: Because I think when people talk to each other, you’re gonna hear their great ideas of things that work. And you’re gonna go, “Wow. Yeah, that would work for me,” or, “Yeah, I had that challenge too and this is what I did,” or, ” Oh, I made a mistake,” and it’s okay. It’s all right. We make mistakes or whatever that might be, to have the knowledge that you’re not doing this by yourself.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah. Wonderful. We’ll include those links like to your Instagram and to the resources you mentioned in our show notes. So if anyone’s listening to this right now, they can easily click and find you and find those. And I’m wondering if there’s any last words of wisdom that you’d want anybody to know before we end?

Janice Goldmintz: What I tell people is, sometimes the journey can be challenging, but this is an opportunity for you to make lifelong lasting memories. Take videos of your parents, FaceTime them, whatever it is. Because I will tell you, once they’re gone, you will cherish those things. And even if what they’re saying is a little bit out there.

Janice Goldmintz: I have my father who’s sitting in a retirement residence telling me he’s on a farm. And I’m like, “Great. Tell me what the farm looks like.” And I asked him, and this is a really fun thing to do too, I asked him, “Tell me what tips you have for older people,” ’cause my father was in his 90s at the point. I said, “Tell me how did you live to the 90s and, what should people do?”

Janice Goldmintz: And it was a little bit funny and a little bit nonsensical. But again, creating those memories, whether it’s pictures, videos, audio. It’s priceless. It’s priceless.

Janice Goldmintz: And while people were in the holidays, I always tell people to try and capture those wonderful moments, Because there’s gonna be enough times where you’re gonna have challenges and you’re gonna forget that those wonderful moments happened. But they did.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: I really like what you’re sharing. It’s making me think right now. Cause I do a lot of training for therapists, and part of what I train them on is how to end therapy and the importance of having a good goodbye. So often we have really bad goodbyes in life, or we don’t even get the chance to say goodbye.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: And that’s what’s coming up to me right now is, like, how can we have these memories and these moments together towards the end so we can end in a good way together, that our relationship is a good goodbye?

Janice Goldmintz: Yeah. The only other thing that I want to say is, you know, the reality is not everybody has a wonderful relationship with their parents, and that’s understandable. And if you feel that you’re not capable of doing that caregiving, again, nobody’s gonna judge, nobody’s gonna say anything. As long as your parent is being taken care of, it doesn’t matter if it’s you or a sibling or somebody that you have brought in to help them into your home.

Janice Goldmintz: As long as they’re cared for, it’s okay. There’s no one path. So don’t think, “Oh, well, I’m not doing it right.” There is no right. You do what works for you and your family. That’s the goal. The goal is, I use this all the time, highest quality of life, any age, any stage. But it’s not just for your parent, it’s for everybody.

Janice Goldmintz: Everybody deserves to have that highest quality of life, and everybody working together, however that looks, can create it.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: I like hearing that because it’s their highest quality but also the adult child’s highest quality.

Janice Goldmintz: Yes. We always use the airplane thing. When that oxygen comes down, you have to put it on you first or else you can’t help the person beside you. If you’re not helping yourself and maintaining your mental, physical, spiritual health, you’re not gonna be able to help your parent or anybody else.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: I love those as a parting last thought of like take care of yourself first as you are taking care of them also.

Janice Goldmintz: Yep.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah. Well, Janice, thank you so much for being on this podcast. It’s been lovely to have you, and I’m sure people are gonna get a lot of value out of this

Janice Goldmintz: I hope so. And like I said, feel free to contact me. I’m always happy to answer questions. And you can go on my link. I have a Calendly. I’ll do a 15 minute conversation if you want to have something more in depth as well.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Okay, wonderful.