The Life Of Bryony - The Life of You – How to Detach with Love: Sophie Scott's Expert Advice

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

In this episode, psychotherapist Sophie Scott joins me again to answer listener questions on supporting loved ones with mental health challenges: How do you step back from a parent’s mental health needs when guilt keeps pulling you in? What’s the best way to help a sibling with OCD, beyond just managing their rituals? And how do you avoid feeling completely drained by a friend who’s is struggling? Sophie shares how setting boundaries can actually be an act of love, and why “detaching with love” might be the healthiest thing you can do – for you and for them. If you’ve ever wondered how to balance caring for others while protecting your own wellbeing, you are absolutely not alone – this chat is for you.BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODESophie’s book, You Are Not Alone in This, is available now.LINKS TO SUPPORT GROUPSIf the content of this episode resonated with you today and you would like support, please consider the following charities:Mind – Mental health charity that has resources for managing your own wellbeing whilst caring for someone else.Call 0300 123 3393 or visit https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/helping-someone-else/carers-friends-family-coping-support/support-for-you/ OCD Action – for people with OCD, their families, carers and friends.Call 0300 636 5478 or visit https://ocdaction.org.uk/Al Anon – for anyone whose life is or has been affected by someone else’s drinking.Call 0800 0086 811 or visit https://al-anonuk.org.uk/FamAnon – for family members and friends affected by another’s abuse of mind-altering substances, or related behavioural problems.Call 0207 4984 680 or visit https://famanon.org.uk/SamaritansCall 116 123 or visit https://www.samaritans.org/ for free, 24-hour support.WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOUGot something to share? Message us @lifeofbryonypod on Instagram.CREDITS:Host: Bryony GordonGuest: Sophie ScottProducer: Laura Elwood-Craig & Jonathan O’SullivanAssistant Producer: Ceyda UzunStudio Manager: Sam ChisholmEditor: Luke ShelleyExec Producer: Jamie East  A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to The Life of You, the bonus episode from The Life of Briney, where we answer your questions and explore the real life challenges that come with caring for others while also trying to look after ourselves. I'm joined again by psychotherapist and author Sophie Scott, who shared so much wisdom in our last episode about supporting loved ones with mental health challenges and taking care of yourself at the same time. Today, Sophie's back to tackle your listener questions from setting boundaries with family, to guilt about pulling away, to finding the balance between helping others and protecting your own well-being. Sometimes, you know, the greatest gift that we can do is to, you know, detach with love.

When it comes to boundary setting, people have to experience consequences sometimes to their behaviour. Sometimes someone has to be on their knees in order to have that moment of realisation. Your questions answered right after this. This one is from Charlotte. Okay. And she says, my mom has bipolar disorder. And as much as I love her, she has always been unpredictable. When she's stable, she's amazing.

But when she's manic or depressed, it feels like her entire family is held hostage by her moods. I'm in my 30s now and I feel guilty for pulling away. But I can't keep rearranging my life every time she has an episode. My dad enables her behavior and my siblings look to me to manage things, but I feel like I can't keep doing it. How do you step back from a parent's mental health without feeling like you're abandoning them? My heart goes out to Charlotte. Yeah, me too.

This is a big one. What I would say is that it's really important, Charlotte, that you know that this is not your responsibility. You cannot control this situation, nor is it your job to do so, right? you are you know you've taken a very specific role in your family for a long time but this is a role that you can put down this was one that was given to you not one that you chose so what would it actually look like if you did step down you know would you actually be doing a disservice to your mom or would it enable your other family members to step up and so the only way that you're going to know is through implementing some boundaries and doing some behavioral

experiments. You're trying to do things differently because you're in your 30s now. You know, maybe you have a family of your own or you want a family of your own. And so it becomes about, you know, identifying your own needs because you have a right to needs. And also your mom, you know, she, you know, what you didn't say about kind of what her own relationship with her mental health with her bipolar is, you know, can she be empowered to know more about the warning signs so that she also may be aware if, for example, you know, a manic episode is coming about? And this is something that all the family members should know about, not just you. It's absolutely too much for any one person to be responsible for. This is a really good question from someone called Josh.

my brother has OCD and I feel like I have to enable his rituals to keep him calm. How do I help him without feeding the cycle? This is such an important question. So to understand, Josh, that it's your brother, yeah, that your brother's compulsions are a symptom of something else that's going off. So these are ways that he's finding to ward off his own anxiety, I would suspect, right? So perhaps to let him know that you understand this and that you love him and give him that reassurance that you love him and that you're there to support him

but that it's not about kind of short-term relief and that you actually don't think that that's serving him or helping him. Instead, how can you help him to get longer-term, you know, solutions in place? If you can encourage him to see a therapist, you know, that would be, in my view, the very best thing. So looking at longer term strategies rather than that kind of putting a band-aid over something, that doesn't mean that you're going to sort of rip that band-aid off and, you know, don't try exposure therapy or do anything like that yourself. You know, be really patient and slow. Don't give him any surprises. But just let him know, perhaps in a moment where

he's not overwhelmed, kind of what you're thinking is. And if you can try and help him to find longer term strategies and much deeper insights as to what's going on for him, that would be much more beneficial. So a conversation when he's not in the compulsions about maybe what next time we find themselves in this? Can we agree to? This is what I'm going to do instead. Yes, yes. Very helpful. Okay, final question from Toby. I love my friend, but their mental health struggles mean I feel constantly, emotionally drained. How do I balance supporting them with protecting myself? So can you come up with things, maybe not a conversation,

but activities that you enjoy doing together, you know, so slightly divert the energy away from maybe needing to talk and support them? You know, I don't know what you're into, right? So I won't, I won't let you know, Toby, but this idea of like, you know, something that you would actually enjoy that maybe brings out a lighter side to the relationship and to them as well. And also, this is a really, like, simple one, but kind of quite hard to execute. Can you take up a bit more space in the relationship? Can you just start sharing a little bit more about yourself and what's going on for you and your own life, even if it's unprompted?

Because there are friendships like that, aren't there? Yeah. where they can become quite wonky. One side. And it's very difficult. Once a friendship has got into that one-sidedness, it's quite difficult to pull it out of it. It is, but it's never too late to set a new precedent.

And the only way that you do that is just through trying something different. Yeah. And I guess also, this is a hard question to ask, and this is from me, that if someone is, if you love someone who is unwell, but who doesn't, refuses to help themselves and refuses to get help, it is okay to step back from that person because you can't enable them anymore.

Absolutely it is. Absolutely. Sometimes, you know, the greatest gift that we can do is to, you know, detach with love and recognize that somebody, you know, you can't force somebody, they know their own path, you know again it comes to like respecting a person's autonomy even if they're not well the sense of you know we've each got our own garden to tend to and i'm here to support you and i have been

but actually there is a limit to what i can do if you're not willing to come to the table and help yourself and also you know when it comes to boundary setting people have to experience consequences sometimes to their behavior. Sometimes someone has to be on their knees. You know, maybe we've all experienced this. Like, sometimes you have to be on your knees in order to have that moment of realization. If someone keeps trying to rescue you or save you, you may actually sort of never get to the point where you've really got to find that autonomy and that sense of, I can only do

this for myself. So you may be doing a disservice to them. Right. So detaching with love is a love that phrase. It's yeah, it's wanting from Coda and people in relationships with people struggling with alcoholism. It's really hard to practice. I'm not saying it isn't, but actually one more thing can I say. It's a model that I talk about in the book and it's the idea of the good enough mother. And as a mom, it's definitely something that I need to keep in reminding myself. But basically, so Donald Winnicott was this guy's, this like pediatrician, I think, and psychiatrist. And he came up with this idea of watching moms with their infants. And what he realized is that, yes, an infant needs, you know, responsiveness and love and consistency,

but also they need to gradually experience frustration, disappointment. And actually that builds the sent the child's sense of their own independence and their own autonomy and learning and actually if a mom is trying to be perfect and you know jumping in if the child is you know ever in trouble all the time then that child never learns for themselves and I think as I said as a mom to a toddler it's something that I'm like constantly trying to remind myself but also it's a really good model as a therapist you know if I give you a solution and I don't have to help you to facilitate you finding that for yourself, then I am sort of stunting your growth. And I think it's the same actually in any relationships. You do not have to be the perfect

partner or sibling or friend. What's it like to just be good enough? Yeah, let people learn from their mistakes. Yeah, learn for them. Instead of saving them from them. Yeah. and reminding us that sometimes stepping back with love is the kindest choice for everyone. Her book, You Are Not Alone in This, is available now, full of guidance for navigating the complex realities of caring for someone, while also honouring your own needs. If anything in this episode resonated or gave you permission to protect your own well-being, please share it.

And don't forget to follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Most importantly, take care of yourself and I'll see you next time. Thank you. Thank you.