Advertise on podcast: Love, Limits and Aging Parents

You used to be patient. Now your phone lights up with your parent's name and your stomach drops, followed right away by guilt about the dread. If that sounds familiar, this episode is for you. Esther Kane and licensed therapist Laurie Newcomb break down the difference between caregiver burnout and compassion fatigue, and why both can hit harder when the parent you're caring for is also criticizing, guilt-tripping, or manipulating you. You'll hear the warning signs, from dread and irritability to numbness, shrinking social lives, and nagging self-doubt, along with real-life caregiver examples and practical boundary scripts you can use right away. You are not cold, selfish, or failing. You're depleted, and that deserves to be taken seriously. Press play and feel seen. If you need one-on-one professional guidance, reach out to licensed therapist Laurie Newcomb at Transformationcounselingatl.com. Laurie is licensed in Georgia and Florida and works with clients both in person and virtually. If this episode resonated, like and subscribe, and share your experience in the comments. Your story may help another caregiver feel less alone. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you're struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you're in immediate danger, call 911. If you're in emotional crisis, call or text 988.

Caring for a difficult aging parent can feel painfully isolating, especially when friends and relatives do not understand the guilt, resentment, grief, and old family wounds involved. In this episode, Esther and Laurie discuss how the right support group can give caregivers a safe place to speak honestly, feel believed, and learn from people facing similar struggles. They also explain how to choose a healthy group, protect your privacy, and recognize when a group is making you feel worse instead of supported. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you’re struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911. If you’re in emotional crisis, call or text 988.

Abuse by a parent can continue shaping your life long after the individual incidents have ended. It may influence how you respond to anger, set boundaries, accept care, and approach caregiving when that parent grows old. In this episode, Esther and Laurie discuss how therapy can help survivors understand trauma responses, grieve the parent they needed but never had, and decide what kind of relationship, if any, is emotionally safe. They also explain why healing does not require forgiveness, confrontation, or reconciliation. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you’re struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911. If you’re in emotional crisis, call or text 988.

What should you do when an aging parent’s anger becomes physical? In this episode, Esther and Laurie discuss the frightening reality of hitting, pushing, grabbing, throwing objects, blocking exits, and other threatening behavior. They explain how to create a practical safety plan, when to leave, when to call 911, and why dementia or illness may explain aggression without making it safe. This conversation offers caregivers permission to take danger seriously and protect themselves without denying their love for their parent. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you’re struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911. If you’re in emotional crisis, call or text 988.

Your parent just called you a thief, or worse, and everyone keeps telling you, "It's the dementia. They don't mean it." You know that. So why does it still hurt this much? In this episode, Esther Kane and licensed counselor Laurie Newcomb explore what happens when dementia makes an aging parent verbally cruel, paranoid, or physically aggressive toward the caregiver who shows up every day. They unpack why the closest caregiver so often becomes the target, what to do when dementia amplifies a hurtful pattern that was there long before the diagnosis, and how boundaries change when your parent can't remember them. You'll hear real caregiver scenarios, simple scripts for defusing accusations, and clear guidance for when aggression becomes a safety issue. The disease explains the behavior. It doesn't require you to absorb it. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you’re struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911. If you’re in emotional crisis, call or text 988. If you need one-on-one professional guidance, reach out to licensed therapist Laurie Newcomb at Transformationcounselingatl.com. Laurie is licensed in Georgia and Florida and works with clients in person and virtually. Follow the show, leave a review, and share your experience in the comments.

Sometimes the healthiest way to continue caring for an aging parent is to stop providing every part of that care yourself. In this episode, Esther and Laurie discuss how hiring outside help can reduce conflict, protect caregivers from emotional exhaustion, and create safer boundaries with a difficult parent. They explore the guilt caregivers often feel, the resistance aging parents may show, and practical ways to introduce professional support without turning it into another family battle. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you’re struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911. If you’re in emotional crisis, call or text 988.

When an aging parent becomes angry, demanding, critical, or impossible to reason with, even a simple conversation can turn into a battle. In this episode, Esther and Laurie explain why these interactions escalate so quickly and how caregivers can respond without surrendering their dignity or making the conflict worse. You’ll learn practical phrases for lowering the emotional temperature, recognizing when reasoning will not work, setting limits, and knowing when it is time to step away. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you’re struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911. If you’re in emotional crisis, call or text 988.

What happens when staying connected to an aging parent is destroying your emotional well-being? In this episode, Esther Kane and licensed professional counselor Laurie Newcomb discuss one of the most painful decisions an adult child may face: whether to limit or end contact with an aging parent. They explore emotional abuse, manipulation, repeated boundary violations, dementia-related behavior, sibling pressure, and the guilt that can follow reduced or no contact. This is not about punishing a parent or making a decision in anger. It is about recognizing when a relationship has become harmful, understanding what options exist between full contact and no contact, and accepting that love does not require unlimited access to you. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you’re struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911. If you’re in emotional crisis, call or text 988.

Most caregivers never make a safety plan — because making one feels like an accusation. Like you're saying something out loud about your parent, or your family, that you're not ready to say. So instead you improvise. You read the room. You get very, very good at hoping today is a good day. In this episode, Esther and Laurie talk about the two kinds of safety every caregiver needs to plan for — the physical and the emotional — and why the second one gets ignored almost every single time. They talk about the difference between a parent whose behavior has changed and a parent who has always been this way, why understanding the reason for someone's behavior doesn't obligate you to absorb it, how to recognize your own body's early warning signals, and what it actually looks like to build a plan before the day you need it. Because a plan isn't a prediction. It's the thing that keeps the love from costing you everything. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you’re struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911. If you’re in emotional crisis, call or text 988.

You walk into your parent’s home carrying nothing — and walk out hours later carrying all of it. Their fear. Their anger. Their despair. You take it home, and it becomes your evening, your sleep, your Monday. In this episode, Esther and Laurie explore healthy emotional detachment: how to care for a parent without absorbing their every feeling as your own. They reclaim “detachment” from the cold, numb thing people assume it means, explain why so many daughters became emotional sponges in the first place, and offer real ways to stay yourself in the room — and to set the weight down when you leave. Because feeling all of their pain never actually rescued anyone. You can hold what they’re going through without making it your home. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you’re struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911. If you’re in emotional crisis, call or text 988.

Everyone tells you to “just set a boundary.” As if it were simple. As if the person on the other side weren’t your aging parent — the one who needs you, who raised you, who can make you feel like a bad daughter with a single sigh. In this episode, Esther and Laurie get past the slogan and into the real work: what a boundary actually is (and the crucial thing it is not), why guilt shows up the instant you try to set one, and how to say the hard thing clearly and kindly without over-explaining your way back into saying yes. They walk through the boundaries caregivers most need, what to do when a parent pushes back — and why holding the line is not the opposite of love. It’s often the only thing that lets the love last. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you’re struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911. If you’re in emotional crisis, call or text 988.

Somewhere in you, quietly, there’s a hope you may never say out loud: that this time — with age, with illness, with time running short — your parent will finally soften. Finally see you. Finally become the person you needed all along. And every time they don’t, it lands like a fresh wound. In this episode, Esther and Laurie sit with one of the hardest truths in caregiving: you cannot change your parent. They explore why we keep trying anyway, why aging so often makes a parent harder rather than gentler, and what acceptance really is — not approval, not giving up, but the moment you stop fighting what’s real. Because peace rarely arrives when they finally change. It arrives when you can stop needing them to. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you’re struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911. If you’re in emotional crisis, call or text 988.

Some of us learned early that love had to be earned — by being helpful, agreeable, undemanding. The child who never made waves. The one everyone could count on. Now that same child is grown, doing most of the caregiving, and still quietly waiting for an approval that never quite arrives. In this episode, Esther and Laurie explore the “good child” expectation: how the role gets handed to us in childhood, why it so often drops the caregiving onto one person’s shoulders, and why saying no can feel like proof that you’re bad. They untangle being a genuinely good person from performing “the good one” — and offer a gentler way forward. You get to keep the love. You’re allowed to put down the role. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you’re struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911. If you’re in emotional crisis, call or text 988.

You show up for your parent every single day — patient, steady, endlessly kind. So why is the one person you’re hardest on always yourself? In this episode, Esther and Laurie sit with the quiet cruelty caregivers turn inward: the guilt, the second-guessing, the relentless inner critic that says you’re never doing enough. They unpack what self-compassion actually is (and the things people wrongly assume it is), why caregiving daughters find it nearly impossible, and where that harsh inner voice really comes from. You’ll learn why kindness toward yourself won’t make you selfish or lazy — and what self-compassion can look like in the middle of an ordinary, exhausting day. Because the person holding everything together deserves to be held, too. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you’re struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911. If you’re in emotional crisis, call or text 988.

Caregiving can bring up more than exhaustion, worry, and responsibility. It can also uncover a quieter kind of grief: the pain of realizing you never had the parent, or the relationship, you needed. In this episode of Love, Limits and Aging Parents, Esther and Laurie explore what it means to grieve a parent who is still alive. They discuss the emotional absence, criticism, instability, conditional love, or role reversal that may have shaped childhood, and why caregiving can bring those old wounds rushing back. They also talk about ambiguous loss, the guilt that often comes with acknowledging what was missing, and the toll this unprocessed grief can take through resentment, burnout, irritability, physical symptoms, and emotional numbness. Most importantly, this episode offers permission to tell the truth about your experience. You can recognize the ways your parent failed you without denying their humanity. You can grieve what you never received and still care for the person in front of you. Both can be true. And making space for that grief may be one of the first steps toward caregiving with greater clarity, compassion, and freedom. Please note: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Esther and Laurie share their experiences and perspectives, but nothing here is medical, mental health, or legal advice, and listening does not create a professional relationship. If you’re struggling or feel unsafe, please reach out to a licensed professional. If you’re in immediate danger, call 911. If you’re in emotional crisis, call or text 988.