At a glance
Therapy in your second language makes painful material easier to approach and harder to feel, because words learned later carry less emotional weight than the ones you grew up with. That distance helps in some moments and hides things in others. Tell your therapist which languages you have and which one your childhood happened in.
Clinical insights from 20+ years in psychotherapy
I’m Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist in Copenhagen. Qualified at the Psychosynthesis Education Trust and the University of East London. 20+ years in practice.
- Fluency in the mother tongue. When the individuals I work with switch to their first language, their so-called mother tongue, feelings and expressions tend to become that much more fluent, especially desperation, pain, frustration and helplessness.
- The emotional language pours out. Rather than working in a second, third or fourth language, the emotional language pours out in the therapy room.
- Talking to a best friend. When somebody apologises for their English in a first session, I encourage them to close their eyes and imagine they are talking to their best friend rather than to me, their therapist.
Clinical notes: These observations are anonymous and compounded from session notes since 2004.
Why does your own pain sound flatter in a later language?
The words were learned in a narrower set of situations, so they carry less. You describe the worst year of your life in fluent English and feel almost nothing. Then you say one sentence in the language your grandmother used and your throat closes.
- A later word carries the classroom. You met it in lessons, at work and in polite conversation.
- A first word carries a childhood. The same word in your first language holds a kitchen, a playground, a funeral and everything since.
- Deeper storage. The psychologist Daria Diakonova-Curtis describes first-language emotion words as held at a deeper level than their later equivalents, because they were experienced in many more contexts.
- Vocabulary has nothing to do with it. You know the English word perfectly. It simply arrives without the body attached.
Diakonova-Curtis offers no rule. She asks therapists to notice the pattern of switching and discuss what it means for that particular person.
What does the research show?
The research shows that a later language changes how you respond to emotional material, and none of it shows that therapy in a later language works less well.
- The footbridge experiments. In one set of experiments, people were asked whether they would push one man off a footbridge to save 5 others. 18 per cent chose to push in their native tongue, against 44 per cent in a foreign one.
- The researchers’ reading. They put the difference down to a weaker emotional response in the later language. That is a laboratory dilemma, a long way from a therapy room.
- The image study. A separate study of 22 German speakers with medium to high English asked them to regulate their reactions to unpleasant images in both languages.
- What it found. Categorising the picture worked better in the second language. Reinterpreting its meaning was the most effective strategy in both.
- The pictures hit equally hard. The strength of the response did not depend on the language. In those 22 people, language changed what helped and left what was felt untouched.
When does the distance help?
The distance helps when a memory is still too hot to handle directly. People arrive apologising for not working in their mother tongue. They have no reason to.
- It lets you begin. A language that holds the memory slightly further away lets you say the first sentence at all.
- It sidesteps the shame. Some people say a thing in English that they could not say in their first language to any living person, because English is not where the shame was installed.
- It gives you a second route. You approach in the later language, then test one sentence in the first when you are ready.
When does the distance get in the way?
The distance gets in the way when you sound calm to your therapist and are not calm.
- Fluency reads as composure. A therapist who does not know you are working in a later language moves on from something you needed to stay with.
- The work flattens into explanation. Second-language speech tends to be more careful, more general and better organised.
- Tidy sessions. In my experience a session that stays entirely tidy has often not reached anything yet. Some people think best in order and get to the hard thing by a neat route.
- It is tiring. An hour of precise emotional work in a later language costs more than the same hour in your first. Say so when you fade.
Read more about how to know if a therapist is right for you.
What happens when a couple argues in a shared second language?
Both of you are slightly muffled, and neither knows by how much.
- One partner sits closer to home. Whoever is nearer their first language has the advantage in every difficult conversation.
- Guessing replaces saying. When the word will not come, you settle for a nearby one and your partner answers the wrong sentence.
- Agree what happens then. A pause instead of a guess, and permission to say the sentence in your own language first.
Read more about expat couples therapy.
How do you make therapy in a second language work?
Tell your therapist about your languages in the first session, and use your first language whenever it holds the true word.
- Name your languages. Say which ones you speak and which one your childhood happened in.
- Name the private ones. Say which language you dream, count, swear and pray in.
- Report earlier therapy. Say whether you have done therapy in another language and how it went.
- Plan for running out of words. Tell your therapist what you want them to do when it happens.
- Say the key sentence twice. Once in the working language and once in your first, even if your therapist does not understand it. Then say what changed.
- Switch mid-sentence. If a Danish or Arabic word is the accurate one, use it and translate afterwards. The switch is often the moment something important arrives.
- Describe the gap. Say the phrase, then say what the translation misses. I work in English and Danish, and I will still ask for your first language when it holds the true word.
These steps fail when the later language has become the place you hide, and from inside you cannot tell. That is what the session is for.
Questions people ask
Is therapy less effective in my second language?
No study cited here shows that it is. A later language makes difficult material easier to approach and easier to keep at a distance, and naming which is happening is the useful part.
Should I look for a therapist who speaks my first language?
A shared mother tongue helps, and for most internationals in Copenhagen it is not available. How the therapist handles your languages matters more.
Is it a problem if I switch languages in a session?
No, switching often marks the moment something important arrives. Say the phrase, then describe what the translation loses.
Why do I cry in one language and not the other?
Emotional words carry the situations you learned them in. Your first language carries far more of them than a language acquired later.
Is therapy in English available in Copenhagen?
Yes, I work in English and Danish, in central Copenhagen and online.
You may also find these helpful
Sources
- Costa and colleagues, Your morals depend on language, PLOS ONE, 2014
- Morawetz and colleagues, Second language use facilitates implicit emotion regulation via content labeling, Frontiers in Psychology, 2017
- Daria Diakonova-Curtis, Bilingualism as a tool in psychotherapy, Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, 2016
How this article was written. I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. Nothing is published until I have read it, corrected it and stood behind every clinical statement in it. The professional and clinical judgement is mine and mine alone.
