Surviving (barely) the Mental Toll of Living in a Foreign Language
This article was first published on Illumination’s Mirror on medium. If you’re a Medium member, you can read it here ->
Moving abroad sounds idyllic: quaint cafés, obliging locals, and charming conversations in a language you barely speak. In practice, it’s mostly awkward, occasionally soul-crushing, and full of tiny disasters — like trying to order a sandwich without accidentally insulting someone’s grandmother. Suddenly, the charming image of expat life fades the moment you’re quietly panicking in a boulangerie because “s’il vous plaît” has disappeared from your memory. Learning French isn’t just a skill; it’s an emotional rollercoaster of grammar-induced breakdowns, small wins, and moments that make you reconsider all your life choices. Here’s how it nearly broke me — and how I got through it, one meltdown at a time.
“Picture trying to explain a complex medical symptom to a doctor using gestures that look like an interpretive dance routine”
The Good, the Bad, and the Utterly Confusing
The “good” bits are obvious: the sheer thrill of ordering a coffee without resorting to frantic pointing (yep, been there more times than I’d like to admit), the satisfaction of understanding a joke (even if it’s five seconds after everyone else), and the joy of knowing I’m growing with every new word. We’re basically linguistic superheroes, one awkward pronunciation at a time.
But then there’s the “bad.” And by bad, I mean the moments where it feels like my brain has been scooped out and replaced with a dictionary from 1962. Picture trying to explain a complex medical symptom to a doctor using gestures that look like an interpretive dance routine. Or the fights with your other half when just at the right time (obviously!) the precise vocabulary has abandoned you, leaving you sounding like a robot with a limited emotional range?
Yep. It’s like a linguistic straightjacket, and your inner eloquent self is aching to break free (queue Queen’s song).
But beyond the hilarious misunderstandings, there’s a more problematic side. The inability to articulate your thoughts and feelings with the natural ease and precision you would in your native language can be incredibly isolating and tiring.
And this applies to everyday life too. Just working in a second or third language will always have a mental toll. And this is assuming you do love your job. I can’t imagine doing it like every other office bot, just surviving a Monday to Friday routine while not understanding half of what’s going on.
Personally, I can say that I do enjoy my job. I work at the front desk in a hotel, where I get to learn and test my new language, and also use my own occasionally. It’s not a hard job. But when you do it 40 hrs a week, by the time my weekend arrives, I’m absolutely exhausted mentally.
Imagine trying to explain a bad day at work to a close friend. Or the subtle anxieties eating away at you when you can’t remember the right way to say something you know very well how to in your language. Or creating relationships that usually remain on the shallow side because you can not go deeper in that language.
All juggled with a vocabulary that feels like it belongs to a toddler–I can confirm that sometimes it was less exhausting to chat with a 3-year-old in French.
This constant effort to translate your inner world can take a toll. Mental health, a topic that’s already difficult to discuss even in your mother tongue, becomes an even more significant challenge.
How do you best express the levels of anxiety when you’re struggling to find the basic words for “sad” or “anxious”? The fear of being misunderstood, of not being able to truly connect, and the mental drain from making this constant effort. It all can deepen feelings of loneliness and frustration, deprecating your mental well-being in the process, which can also become a minefield. Believe me, I can confirm it!
Misunderstandings multiply, jokes fall flat, and heartfelt and open conversations become rare– which is already hard enough for any expat because we’re constantly longing for connection, and feeling more at home.
As for me, I hate it. I love making conversation out of the most random topics in life, with new and old friends. It is simply not something I get to enjoy as often while living in France.
This emotional distance created by the language barrier can be painful, leaving you feeling less connected to the very people you rely on for support.
And the problem here is that you need to practice. “Let’s speak only in French”, everyone kept telling me –as a way of helping me improve, of course. But I didn’t realise the detrimental damage I was doing to myself. I was losing one bit of myself, one gallon of joy for each successful new slang word learned and applied in French.
To take it even further (because why stop there?) I started going to therapy to help me release all these questions and growing anxiety. For approximately 7 months, I went to see my psychologist on an every-3-week basis. A lovely French woman of, probably, about the same age as me.
Her French was wonderful–of course; her English and Spanish, not so much. But I continued. I was determined to get it out, especially because we were having very fluid conversations in each session. Sometimes I had to use a full range of hand gestures, other descriptions, and sometimes the supposedly universal word in English, in the hope that she would understand it. And she did, she was following and asking all her questions. I felt like I was getting it all out there.
But what I didn’t realise is that a deeper chunk of the things I needed to deal with were still very comfortably sleeping, because it would have been too tricky to try to land it across. So I stayed in the surface.
And I kept going and going until, one day, something else happened, not too big nor too small. But it all burst out–like how good ol’ buried trauma loves to make an appearance: when you least expect or are less ready to handle it.
So I went down.
I had to take some time off to slow down, to reconnect with friends and hobbies I had unintentionally abandoned. I didn’t mean to; I never planned on it. But it was only then, when I look back to the previous months –if not years—, and saw how their appearance in my life had been decreasing exponentially.
How could I let that happen? With every “I’m exhausted”, “I just want to get distracted” and “I have to socialise in French” excuse I kept telling myself.
The reality was that an ordinary day felt like carrying a considerable weight. By the end of each day, addressing hotel guests in French, my mental reserves were thoroughly depleted. I had effectively withdrawn into myself and no longer had the energy or inclination to maintain a social façade.
The Comeback (or the“reprendre vie”)
So, after a couple of weeks retreating inwards, putting myself back together from within, I started to see the difference and understand where I had gone wrong –so wrong it’s pathetic to even write about it.
I forced myself to slow down and stop trying to be or say something if it simply didn’t feel right–enter cancelling plans! I understood that there is a time to learn and absorb information, and there are also times to express and share information. And we can not be going all the time in one direction only.
Boundaries? I know! It’s almost funny how obvious it is. But I guess the answers always seem an awful lot simpler once you already have it in your hands.
So, how did I survive it? Well… not exactly “easy-peasy” but after a lot of trial, error, more error, and occasional panic, things started to click.
I discovered a few go-to strategies that became my emergency kit for keeping my sanity while living abroad. And of course, this is based on my experience, and it might be different for someone else…But, hear me out, OK?
- Take the time to stop and listen to what you’re feeling, instead of what you’re supposed to be doing. There’s no right amount of time to learn a language. Everyone is different.
- Accept that, at times, you simply won’t have the word in that language. You can’t manage them all, and that’s OK.
- Don’t lose contact with your roots and the people back home.
- Get a therapist that you feel comfortable talking to. And I mean entirely comfortable, language and all.
- High-five yourself on every 2nd or 3rd language phrase you get out mistake-free! Every small win deserves a trophy, or at least a pat on the back. And being hard on yourself doesn’t help you learn faster. Believe me, I’ve tried.
“Every new word learned, every conversation navigated, every cultural quirk absorbed is a small victory.”
But despite the linguistic battles, the embarrassing typos, and the quiet struggles, there’s an undeniable beauty that comes from experiencing this. Every new word learned, every conversation navigated, every cultural quirk absorbed is a small victory.
You’re quite literally rewiring your brain — stretching your empathy and showing yourself that you can adapt and flourish even when things feel daunting.
So next time you trip over a verb ending or accidentally inform someone that their cat is a hat, pause and savour the fact that you’re on a remarkable, demanding and ultimately rewarding journey. You’re not simply learning a language; you’re evolving –Insert X-Men reference here, if you’re a nerd too.
Just remember, every so often, we should stop and catch our breath before we march on again. No, scratch that, it’s MANDATORY to do so!
You don’t want to find yourself there –it’s not very fun, believe me.
If you’ve been through something similar, I’d love to know your thoughts.
Little Chilean 