In psychotherapy, words are more than tools for communication – they are the very fabric of psychic life. The way we speak, shift tone, choose vocabulary, or even hesitate point to complex internal states. For those who have lived across borders, whether physically or symbolically, language becomes intertwined with belonging, identity, and loss.
As a psychologist in Melbourne and psychoanalytic therapist working in both English and Farsi, and across cultures in my practice and also my research groups and colleagues here with Europe, US and Tehran, I see how profoundly language mediates a person’s access to their inner world. The mother tongue often holds earlier, more intimate layers of emotional experience – those formed before we could fully interpret our own speech. For bilingual and plurilingual individuals, therapy that allows movement between languages can unlock deeper places for thinking, speaking and saying more in our work together.
Whether someone seeks a Farsi-speaking psychologist or a therapist who understands the nuance of living across cultures, feeling genuinely heard in the language of one’s earliest memories can be transformative.
Language and Emotional Expression: Why the Mother-Tongue Matters in Therapy
The unconscious speaks in fragments – intonations inherited from loved ones, childhood sayings, and words whispered in moments of fear, joy, or longing. When therapy takes place only in a second or third language, some of these emotional traces can be harder to reach and I know this from working across two very different spoken languages.
For many, English serves as a functional language – a language of education, professionalism, and adaptation. It lends structure and sometimes emotional and psychological distance. But the language in which one cried as a child or fought with a sibling or dreamed of love carries another quality entirely. Vulnerability often reappears through the mother tongue. Laughter can come more freely. Mourning is felt more viscerally.
I often notice a shift in the consulting room: a patient might start their session in English, and when we approach a deeper, more affectively charged topic, native words from one’s mother tongue flows back in, and finds its place in the English sentences, which I may ask you to describe in English. This return of the native language is not a regression, it is a contact with origins, with parts of the psyche that have remained alive yet unspoken.
In psychoanalytic work, we pay attention to these shifts. They tell us where experience or truth is residing.
Our work across spoken languages and cultures, matters
For those who speak Persian whether they migrated recently, grew up multilingual at home, or have family histories that cross cultures the possibility of speaking in therapy can bring a profound sense of relief and recognition. Having a second culture means I know about the duality of words, their meanings, humour across culture and even how it may give rise to misunderstandings.
After all, as Lacan said, one addresses speech to the Other, and this is the Other of language, the symbolic laws, upbringings, family traditions, and East Asia as well as Europe share aspects of these nuances which can create a sense of familiarity and ease to speak in sessions. Many bilingual individuals live with multiple identities. A culturally experienced therapist who can hold these complexities creates space for both continuity and contradiction.
Respect for linguistic multiplicity
Therapy does not force a patient to choose one language. Sometimes English allows distance; another language invites speech about the intimate or difficult moments in one’s life, in the past and in the present. Both languages can coexist and increase ability for expression and working through in sessions.
Working with someone who shares language and cultural frames is not about similarity – it is about creating space for difference to unfold in our sessions.
Shared Challenges in Multicultural and Migrant backgrounds
Those living between cultures often face particular tensions. Some of the common themes I encounter are:
Seeking therapy may be perceived as weakness or airing “private matters” outside the family.
Histories of displacement, political unrest, family upheaval, or sudden migration impacts emotional life across generations – even when not explicitly spoken.
Identity fragmentation – Who am I here? Who was I before? Which parts of me must I leave behind to survive or succeed?
Loneliness – Living in a new cultural environment can bring deep isolation – even in the midst of opportunity or accomplishment.
Psychoanalytic therapy does not demand that the conflicts between cultures be resolved. Rather, it explores how these tensions give space to desire, love, inhibition, and enjoyment.
Our work together in Therapy
Taking the step to start therapy is momentous. Working with someone who knows bilingual and bicultural experience can be grounding.
In my private practice, what may be offered:
- Psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapy across cultures
- Sessions in Farsi, English, or fluidly between both; and if you speak another language we can work in our second language of English, we can explore how your other language and culture has effects on your presenting difficulties and experiences
- Support for trauma, anxiety, depression, addiction, and relationship difficulties
- A confidential and respectful therapeutic space where every aspect of a person’s background is welcome
Many individuals choose online sessions because stability and continuity often matter more than location. However, this is a therapeutic consideration and something that we can discuss on the outset.
Living Between Culture and Language
My own experience of navigating life and work in more than one language informs my clinical practice in a real way. When I listen in Farsi, despite knowing the context of certain cultural master signifiers such as “Mehrieh”, “deltangi” , cultural and religious experiences, I may still ask you about these. Therapy is a particular conversation based in my many years of training, and therapy is about how the culture and aspects of your life has impacted your own very unique and personal experience, which cannot be reduced. When I listen in English, I may ask about the master signifiers in the English speaking spaces that appear in your speech, “anxiety”, “mental health”… and even shyness or excessive social politeness can be explored, which may be, but not always, masking underlying suffering. In therapy space is given for these experiences to be spoken and worked through together.
In the therapy room, I listen to how bilingual patients access different affective registers depending on the language chosen. Some words can only be said in one language and not the other. And some truths only emerge in the oscillation between the two.
Giving voice to both can give space to explore unspoken experiences stuck in the past, as an unmovable history. We make the unmovable move through speaking, by giving time to your speech to emerge from what has remained silent too long.
Your Speaking Is Welcome in my practice
You deserve therapy that honours your experience spoken in your own words, in your own words, all of your voices.
If speaking in Farsi feels more natural, or if you are curious about how shifting languages might deepen your therapeutic journey, a bilingual therapeutic environment can support that exploration.
There is no single “right” language for speaking. I receive patients from diverse cultures living in Australia, what matters is that your internal world can speak, with nuance, hesitation, humour, and contradiction.
If you are looking for psychotherapy in Melbourne that recognises the importance of language, identity, and cultural experience, I invite you to reach out. Your words, in whichever way language comes, will be heard.
Disclaimer
These writings are not therapy; they are general information about therapy. They are not a substitute for therapy or professional psychological advice. While care has been taken to ensure accuracy and reference to published research, therapy and psychoanalytic work are domains of ongoing study. A written text cannot replace the conversation that takes place in therapy sessions, which are dynamic, evolving, and centred on individual experience. Each person’s situation is unique, and meanings can only be spoken and explored within one’s own sessions. If something in these writings resonates with you and you are considering therapy, you are welcome to book a session.