Living Between Languages: How Language Shapes Emotion and Identity

by Romina Rubino

After living abroad for some time, something subtle can happen: you no longer feel entirely foreign, yet you are not quite the person you were before you left.

A life gradually takes shape in another language. It becomes the language of work, relationships and everyday choices. It may also hold the person you have learnt to become: more independent, more direct, perhaps freer from some of the expectations that once surrounded you.

And yet there may be moments when the words, although accurate, do not seem to reach all the way in. Returning to your first language might bring a memory closer, alter the tone of your voice or evoke a response in the body. At other times, the language acquired later offers precisely the distance needed to speak.

Living between languages is therefore not simply a matter of translation. It can influence how we remember, how we relate to our emotions and even who we experience ourselves to be.

Every language begins in relationship

Language is not only a way of describing experience. It forms part of the experience itself.

Our first language contains some of the earliest words through which we were called, comforted or criticised. It is connected to gestures, tones of voice and the relationships in which we first began to understand ourselves and other people.

Memory can also be shaped by language. Research into autobiographical memory among bilingual people suggests that the language used to recall an experience may influence what emerges and how emotionally close it feels.

This does not mean that memories are stored neatly in one language or another. Rather, language forms part of the emotional, sensory and relational context in which an experience took shape. A word may therefore carry far more than its literal meaning: it can bring back an atmosphere, a bodily sensation or a particular way of feeling in the presence of someone else.

A first language may bring us closer — but not always

Speaking in a first or home language can make certain experiences feel more immediate. Emotional nuances that remain indistinct in another language may suddenly become easier to recognise.

But it would be too simple to assume that the first language is always the most authentic, while a second language merely keeps difficult feelings at a distance.

A home language may hold intimacy and belonging, but it may also carry family expectations, shame or experiences from which we needed some distance. A language acquired later can feel unfamiliar, yet it may also be the one in which we learnt to set boundaries, inhabit a different role or imagine new possibilities for ourselves.

Each language may bring some parts of our experience closer while allowing others to remain further away.

When distance protects

The emotional distance offered by a second language is not necessarily an obstacle. Sometimes it is what makes speaking possible.

An experience may feel more manageable when described in a language acquired later in life. This does not make it less true. The distance may allow us to approach something painful without immediately becoming overwhelmed by it.

This can be particularly important when working with trauma. Coming into direct contact with intense emotions does not automatically make the process deeper or more effective. Before painful experiences can be explored, there often needs to be enough safety to remain present, think and feel at the same time.

Emotional distance should not therefore be removed automatically. It can be more useful to understand its function: what it protects us from, what it enables us to express and whether it is still needed in the same way.

Living between languages can mean living between different selves

Moving to another country changes more than where we live. It can alter our roles, relationships and sense of who we are.

We may feel more confident in the language of the life we have built abroad and unexpectedly vulnerable when returning to the language of our early relationships. Or we may feel that something essential about us becomes less visible when we try to express it in the language we use every day.

This does not mean that one version of us is real and the other false. Different languages can evoke different ways of feeling and relating.

Life across cultures often asks us to hold together the person we were, the person we have become and the person we are still discovering. These parts do not always recognise one another, even though they belong to the same life.

The experience can be enriching, but it can also create a quieter kind of disorientation: the sense of belonging in more than one place and not entirely belonging anywhere.

When the language changes in therapy

People who speak more than one language may move spontaneously between them. This is often referred to as code-switching, and it can also happen during therapy.

Not every change of language carries a hidden meaning. Sometimes a word simply comes more easily in one language. At other times, however, the shift occurs just as someone approaches a particular memory, emotion or relationship.

In my clinical work with people who live between languages and cultures, I do not regard these movements as mistakes or interpret them automatically. They can become something to notice together. What changed at that moment? Did one language bring the experience closer? Did the other restore a distance that was needed?

Tone of voice, pauses and bodily responses may offer further clues. Language becomes part of the therapeutic work because it can reveal not only what we remember, but also how we are able to approach it.

Even when therapy takes place mainly in one language, a word, phrase or memory from another may enter the conversation. What matters is not translating it perfectly, but remaining curious about what it carries and why it appeared at that particular moment.

Making room for a complex identity

The aim is not to decide which language expresses the truest version of who we are.

One language may connect us with an earlier part of our history; another may hold the life we have built since. One may bring an experience closer, while another gives us enough space to think about it. Both can contain vulnerability, freedom, protection and change.

Therapy can offer a place in which these different aspects of experience no longer need to compete. They can be understood as parts of a more complex identity, shaped across relationships, places and time.

If living between cultures has left you feeling divided between different versions of yourself, or uncertain about where you belong, these experiences can become part of the therapeutic conversation.

You can contact me to arrange a free 10–15 minute introductory call and explore whether we might work together.

Further reading