At a glance
You can handle a whole working day in Danish and still have no way to say the thing that is actually bothering you. The competent outside and the unspoken inside are both you, and the distance between them is what wears people down here. This article is about closing it.
Clinical insights from 22 years in psychotherapy
I’m Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist in Copenhagen. Qualified at the Psychosynthesis Education Trust and the University of East London. 22 years of full-time, face-to-face clinical practice.
- Fluency hides a lot. Clients who handle Danish meetings all day can describe a terrible week so neatly in English that the feeling never arrives, and I listen for that evenness.
- The explaining is the tiring part. Clients tell me they stop saying what they mean here, not because the words are missing, but because every attempt needs a paragraph of background first.
- The language question is rarely asked out loud. Clients assume working in a later language is simply the price of living here, and they are surprised to be asked which language they would use if they were frightened.
Clinical notes: My observations are anonymised and compounded from my session notes since 2004.
Why does the language I live in not reach the thing I feel?
Because competence and feeling are not kept in the same place. You can run the meeting, follow the jokes, write the difficult email, and still find that the part of you that is frightened, ashamed or furious speaks something else entirely and has nowhere to do it.
What people describe to me is not a vocabulary problem. It is the experience of hearing yourself give an accurate account of a terrible month in a language that leaves it weightless. The sentences are correct. Nothing in you moves. And because nothing moves, you conclude that it was not that bad, and you carry it for another 6 months.
The inside language is not sentimentality. It is where the material is stored, usually from childhood, and a conversation that never reaches it stays a well-run report on your life.
Can I work in English here, or is it a compromise?
You can work entirely in English in Copenhagen, and it is not a second-best arrangement. The first contact, the sessions, anything we agree between them: all of it runs in English, in the room in the city centre or online.
What makes that work is not that English is neutral ground. It is that nothing in the hour depends on you having grown up here. You will not spend 10 minutes explaining what a Danish workplace is like, or why your family does things the way it does, before the real sentence can start.
Who am I talking to when I talk in English?
Someone who has lived the same split, from both sides. I was born in London and raised English. When I was 12 my family moved to Denmark and I was raised Danish too. I speak both languages fluently and at an equal level, and I know both cultures from the inside rather than from study.
I have lived and worked in 9 countries since. I know what it is to arrive somewhere new, not speak the language, and have to build a life anyway, including the version of that which happens to a child who is simply moved and has to start again in a schoolyard. Bilingual is the smaller half of it. Bicultural is the part that matters in the room, because what you bring is rarely only about vocabulary.
The practical effect is that you do not have to translate your life before you can talk about it. When you say that something would be unthinkable at home, or that a Danish colleague said something flat and you have been turning it over for 3 days, I already know both ends of that, and we can spend the hour on what it did to you instead of on what it means.
Is it the language, or is it the culture?
Usually both, and they get mistaken for each other constantly. People arrive certain that their Danish is the problem, and the difficulty turns out to be that nobody told them what the silence after a direct question means here, or how little is said when something is meant warmly.
- Flatness is not coldness. A reply that would be rude where you come from often carries no feeling at all here, and reading it as rejection costs people months.
- Complaint has a different volume. What counts as ordinary venting in one culture lands as drama in another, which is why some people here simply stop saying when they are struggling.
- Family duty does not translate. Obligations that are obvious at home can look to a Danish partner like being controlled, and you end up defending something that was never up for debate.
There is one more thing I see often enough to name. In English, people say things they were raised not to say. The rules you absorbed as a child were laid down in another language, and they bind less tightly in this one, which is why a session in a later language is sometimes the most honest hour of someone’s month rather than the most muffled.
Does working in a later language cost me anything?
Some immediacy, and less than most people fear. A review of 18 studies of multilingual counselling found that clients who could choose their languages felt more in charge of the work, and that meaning thins in translation, with emotional weight the first thing to go.1 Most of that research is qualitative and Western, so it describes a pattern rather than measuring one, and it matches what I hear in the room.
The answer in practice is that you keep your first language with you rather than leaving it at the door. Say the word in it when the English word is wrong, and then tell me what it holds. People do this with words for home, for duty, for a particular kind of shame. It costs a minute and it often changes what the hour is about.
How do I start, and when is English not the right choice?
Settle the language question before the first session rather than during it. A short way through it:
- Ask which language you would use if you were frightened. That is usually where the oldest feelings are kept, and it is worth knowing whether or not you work in it.
- Tell me everything you speak. Including the language you dream in, and the one you avoid.
- Say the hardest sentence twice. Once in English, once in your own language. Notice which version you can finish.
- Decide what happens when the words run out. Silence, your own language first, or a note on your phone. Agreed in advance, it stops feeling like failure.
English is not the right choice when the material is early and barely verbal, when you are tired enough that translating costs more than you have, or when you notice you have described your life in English for years in a tone you would never use at home. In that case a therapist working in your first language is the better arrangement, and I would say so rather than keep the work.
If you would rather test the language in practice than decide it in theory, a session or a free 30-minute call will tell you more than any amount of weighing it up.
Questions people ask
Do the sessions run in English the whole way through?
Yes, from the first contact onwards, and in Danish instead if you would rather. Whatever is written down between sessions stays in the language you chose.
Can I switch into my own language in a session?
Yes, and it is often the most useful thing that happens in the hour. Say the phrase as it comes, then tell me what it carries, rather than hunting for a tidy English equivalent.
Do I need to be fluent for this to work?
No, you need to be understood, which is a far lower bar than fluency. Hesitation and a small vocabulary are not obstacles in a room where the pace is slow on purpose.
Can we do this online if I am not in Copenhagen?
Yes, and for language in particular being at home can help, because that is where your first language lives. Some people switch more easily there, and others find the screen flattens the conversation.
Should I wait until my Danish is better?
No, waiting for a language to mature is usually a way of postponing the subject. If the difficulty is live now, work on it in the language you already have.
I work in English every day, and you can read about my psychotherapy practice or expat therapy to see if it suits you.
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Sources
How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.
