"I feel like the odd one out in my own family": The family roles we play, and how to rewrite the script
Dial Emma
Emma Reed Turrell
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 13 October 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome back to Dial Emma! Each week, I'll be answering your dilemmas with honesty, empathy, and a few therapeutic truth bombs to help you make sense of life's stickiest moments. If you've ever wished you had a therapist in your back pocket, Dial Emma is here to help.
In this week’s episode, I'm exploring the complex family roles that shape who we become, and how hard it can be to step outside them.
Firstly, we hear from listener has spent her life as “the responsible one” - the organiser, the fixer, the steady sister who always keeps things together. But now she wonders what it would mean to stop playing that part. Can she step into her own light without feeling like she’s abandoning her sister?
Our second dilemma comes from someone who has built a very different life from the one she grew up in - a life of comfort and success that feels at odds with her working-class roots. She finds herself hiding her achievements to avoid standing out, torn between loyalty to her past and honesty about her present.
If you have a dilemma for Emma, please fill out this form.
---
Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook.
---
Social media:
Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell
Dial Emma @dialemmapodcast
Email: [email protected]
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This podcast is sponsored by ProteinWorks, on a mission to help you feel good and smash your goals through the power of nutrition. |
| 0:09.1 | Hello and welcome to Dial Emma, the podcast where your dilemmas meet my therapeutic insights. |
| 0:15.7 | I'm Emma Reed-Torrell, psychotherapist, author, and well-recovering people-pleaser. |
| 0:20.3 | Each week, I'll be unpacking |
| 0:21.8 | real-life questions from listeners just like you. The big ones, the small ones, the ones that keep you |
| 0:27.3 | up at night, offering practical tools and gentle truths to help you find your way through. So if |
| 0:33.6 | you've got a question, you don't know how to ask out loud. You've come to the right place. |
| 0:45.5 | Welcome to Dial Emma. |
| 0:47.6 | Today's Dial Embers take us into family territory, not the Instagram perfect snapshots, |
| 0:53.0 | but the quieter, more complicated patterns that siblings |
| 0:56.4 | can fall into. One listener feels forever cast as the responsible one, and another is wondering |
| 1:03.4 | if she should downplay her financial reality to fit in. Both are about the tension between who we |
| 1:09.9 | really are and the roles other people want us to play. |
| 1:14.5 | Here's our first dilemma. |
| 1:16.8 | I'm the responsible sibling, always in the background while my sister is centre stage. |
| 1:22.4 | How do I step out of this shadow? |
| 1:25.6 | Dear Emma, I'm the eldest of two sisters. |
| 1:28.6 | From as far back as I can remember, I've been the dependable one, the fixer, the organiser, |
| 1:34.7 | the shoulder to cry on. |
| 1:36.5 | My younger sister has always been the more dramatic, more noticed one. |
| 1:41.0 | She's charismatic, pulls focus in any room, and somehow her crises always take priority |
| 1:47.0 | over my needs. I've played this role for so long that I'm not sure who I am without it, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Emma Reed Turrell, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Emma Reed Turrell and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.