Language and therapy

There are varied opinions on the topic of how language affects therapy. Some claim that nonnative therapy is less effective than therapy in your mother tongue, and some say that nonnative therapy is more analytical than native therapy.

In relation to my profession as a therapist, this means I do around 80% therapy in English and 20% in Danish. There are simply many more English-speakers seeking therapy than there are Danish. And of the English-speaking clients I have, more than half of them have English as a second language. So, this means that most of my sessions are done in my second language with people who are also speaking in their second language. What does this mean for my work and my clients?

At least in the US, psychologists are increasingly advising foreigners to seek psychotherapy with a bilingual counsellor to minimize missing nuances or emotional implications. But isn’t it also possible that doing non-native therapy comes with benefits?

If the main distinction is native emotionality versus foreign rationality, the question becomes what we want out of therapy. But certainly non-native therapy shouldn’t be seen as inferior to mother tongue therapy, rather different — a type of therapy which might allow us to comprehend and analyse situations from a bit of a distance.

Based on the above-mentioned findings, the most important consideration when looking for a therapist, is what you need from therapy. For instance, if you need some behavioural and cognitive tools to sort out specific current difficulties in your life, and your second language is English, there is reason to believe that English therapy would be helpful in teaching you logical, reason-based methods of dealing with your problems — even more so than native therapy.

However, if you need a therapist who can join you on an emotional journey to where your problems and your pain started, and if you know of professional counsellors doing therapy in your native language, opting for someone who speaks your language, both culturally and semantically, seems to be the way to go.

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