Thanks for this post. I was relocated as a six-week-old child from the USA to South Africa. I lived in 5 different countries by the time I was 11. I am still unraveling the thread of who I am and found your post helpful.
Thank you for sharing your experience. Most conversations about expat identity assume a "before", a fixed version of yourself that existed somewhere, intact, before you left. In your case, the layering started before you could even name it.
For someone who started where you did, the first question is probably not "who was I" but "who am I now" , and being curious about all those parts. An exciting journey!
The idea of “losing the thread” is beautifully put.
I especially appreciated how you connect language, accent, professional identity, and belonging without reducing identity to a simple before-and-after story. Expatriation does not just change where we live. It changes which version of ourselves gets permission to speak.
Thank you! You captured the essence of my message perfectly.
Identity is constantly evolving and made up of many layers. What fascinates me is how flexible and adaptable it can be throughout our lives. Becoming aware of these different layers broadens our perspective and gives us access to a wider range of tools, strengths, and ways of navigating different contexts.
This is also why overadaptation can be so harmful. When we adapt too much, we risk disconnecting from parts of ourselves and losing access to valuable inner resources. The challenge is not to resist change, but to evolve without losing the thread that connects us to who we are.
“The challenge is not to resist change, but to evolve without losing the thread” feels exactly right. Identity is not a fixed object, but it also cannot be endlessly reshaped without cost.
Overadaptation is so subtle because it can look like maturity, flexibility, even kindness. But at some point, if we keep adjusting to every room, we may forget which part of us was supposed to enter the room in the first place.
That thread matters. It lets us change without disappearing.
Thank you, Emanuela, for putting in one information-dense article so many of my thoughts and struggles with the language-persona relationships I have witnessed in myself. This article is something I will have to reread multiple times and I will restack parts of it many more times. Just as an illustration to your point about the language changing our behaviour, I will share that I was shocked to discover that I can say "I love you" in English without even thinking twice of it, but could never and have never said it in my mother tongue, Bulgarian. It isn't that I don't love anyone in Bulgaria, but it's just the cultural specifics that don't allow me to say it just casually or in any other context. I can also swear in English, but not in Bulgarian. It's just as you describe it - I am a different person when I speak anotehr language.
Thank you for sharing your own experience, this is an extremely precise example of how language translates culture. That's about what each language permits you to feel, to express, to become. The cultural frame is embedded in the language itself.
This is a huge part of sociolinguistics. Thank you for covering this so thoroughly. With so much research, it’s often an overlooked yet critical element of how we define our identity so I love how you unpack the different angles to it!
That's an amazing field. We often think that learning a language is about getting the grammar right, but that's just the entry point. What happens after is far more interesting. The way a language reshapes how you think, what you notice, who you become when you speak it. I am happy you enjoyed the piece!
Really enjoyed this, Emanuela! I have been hearing about this concept of how language can alter your personality, and I find it so fascinating! I especially liked this line: "learning to operate in a second language has the ability to affect the individual’s behaviour itself — not just the way they communicate, but the way they are." Wow! I'm excited to see who I am in Spanish once I start speaking more fluently. And I love that you backed this all up with research. Great piece!
Having dabbled in several languages myself, I truly understand where you’re coming from with this one. I definitely have met a different version of myself since starting to focus on speaking Dutch.
I studied and spoke French and Russian before I knew enough about myself to be hesitant with things I didn’t know how to say. With Dutch, I am actively aware of how much less detail and precision in expression I have. I can convey the general meaning of things fine, but don’t have that clarity (or humor) as easily when speaking.
Fascinating! This makes me think that learning a language as an adult, when you already have a formed self, sheds light on the gap between who you are and what you can express.
When you notice you can't access humor or precision in Dutch you're not just hitting a linguistic limit, you're doing an involuntary inventory of yourself, because to feel the absence of something, you have to already know it exists in you.
The language you can't yet speak becomes a mirror in negative: it doesn't reflect what you have, it reveals the outline of what you can't yet bring out.
Absolutely! I have different kinds of observations in Dutch and find myself less confident than I am in my native English. That translates to a whole host of new personality traits coming forward and the appearance of an entirely different individual. It's a wonderful thing to learn about yourself and to better understand what it's like for others when they're learning my language.
Thank you for sharing your beautiful reflections. As a young child I lived in multiple countries and many states throughout the USA. I was regularly needing to adapt and simultaneously learn in school the subjects of my age but also the cultures, language and traditions of where we were. Everyone said "oh you're so lucky to be traveling" and yet as a child all I felt was the strain of not being able to belong while simultaneously struggling to lean into who I was becoming. I believe in the power of traveling and studying abroad and that cross cultural development is essential to human development and interconnectedness ... and as you say it's important to understand the various layers of what's happening in such experiences.
Hi Deborah. nice to meet you; Thank you for sharing this. What strikes me is the gap between what others saw - "you're so lucky" - and what you were actually living: the strain of adapting while trying to figure out who you were becoming, all at once, as a child who didn't choose any of it.
That gap is exactly where the invisible cost lives. And it's rarely acknowledged, because from the outside it looks like privilege.
You hold both truths at the same time - the deep belief in cross-cultural development, and the honesty about what it costs. That's the whole picture!
Indeed! And whether it's travel or health or any other perceived privilege, if we don't take the time to really get to know people and care about them and their lived experience, we can make assumptions and judge what others have. Life is not binary. It is a myriad of layers and experiences. Real humanity needs curiosity and compassion.
I am curious now. When you sit back and relax which of all these language do you find your thoughts freely flowing in it. I have failed at most the languages I was taught Chinese, French, German I tried Italian but I wasn't a committed learner.
Nice question! I’d say Italian or French, but honestly, I can’t really control it. My thoughts seem to emerge in the language of the context I’m in.
As for your language journey, let me share something: when I was in high school, I was told I wasn’t good at languages. Then life changed the grading system.
Living in a country is a completely different experience from learning a language through books or in a classroom. Life becomes your teacher, and it finds countless ways to help you become fluent 😊
Thank you for this. I really related to the sections on language and accent, especially: “For me, it was the anxiety linked to accent. The question of intelligibility: do people really understand me? Are they listening, or are they stopping at the way I speak?”
I’m Asian American living in Japan, so people often assume I’m Japanese until I start speaking. Then they hear my American accent and there’s always a brief moment of surprise.
I also feel like switching between English and Japanese changes my demeanor and personality. I’m more careful in Japanese and sometimes feel like a quieter version of myself. Your piece helped me think about that in a new way.
Thank you for sharing your experience, that's truly interesting. That moment of surprise when you start speaking, that's exactly where the bias lives. Before the words, before the meaning, there's already a recalibration happening in the listener.
And what you describe in Japanese, that's the language asking something different of you.
I hope you find your way back to the thread. It doesn't disappear, it just gets buried under layers. Sometimes it takes one conversation, one reading, one unexpected moment to feel it again!
Accent is a stronger predictor of interpersonal judgment than either race or gender or looks. This is so true and I wish more people would talk about it. I once worked with a women of colour educated in a great school in England. She spoke the Queen's English and that alone opened doors for her.
Colleagues subconsciously identified with her speech patterns, equating her linguistic style with their own, which made them more likely to trust her and accept her into the fold. She just went with the flow, never being able to bring her whole self into work.
Thank you Maria for sharing this experience: it's a perfect illustration of what the research points to, but lived. She found the code that worked. And it did work, in the sense that it opened doors. But there's a cost in that too, when the version of you that gets accepted is a carefully curated one, belonging never feels fully real. You're in the room, but not entirely there.
This is such a thoughtful piece. The idea of “losing the thread” really resonates especially how easily adaptation can slide into quiet assimilation without us noticing.
I loved how you grounded it in research while keeping it deeply personal.
How do you help clients distinguish healthy integration from identity erosion in real time, not just in hindsight?
Thank you for stopping by and for such a thoughtful question.
In practice, I dig into the environment, and the values and needs of the person, and check whether those are being met, and by what. If they aren't, that's usually a good sign that the current situation is asking for over-adaptation. The gap between what you need and what you're getting is often where the erosion is quietly happening.
As somebody who has lived in a few different countries, I can relate to this piece. I remember when I first moved to Spain at 10 years old, experiencing the new culture. Now been living here on and off, as went home to Canada for many years, later returning to Spain. After many years in Spain, it feels like a second home to me.
France feels like a second home to me too, which is exactly what made over-adaptation so easy, and so invisible for a long time. This piece comes from that acquired awareness: learning to recognize when you've drifted from yourself, and find your way back to the thread.
Sure, relocating is a challenge not only when moving abroad, but even within the same country. When I moved from Southern Italy to the North, I experienced some of the same transitions that I later recognized when moving abroad.
Every change of context calls for adaptation. The scale may differ, but the process of learning new codes, building new connections, and redefining your sense of belonging is often surprisingly similar.
Thanks for this post. I was relocated as a six-week-old child from the USA to South Africa. I lived in 5 different countries by the time I was 11. I am still unraveling the thread of who I am and found your post helpful.
Thank you for sharing your experience. Most conversations about expat identity assume a "before", a fixed version of yourself that existed somewhere, intact, before you left. In your case, the layering started before you could even name it.
For someone who started where you did, the first question is probably not "who was I" but "who am I now" , and being curious about all those parts. An exciting journey!
Glad the post helped you!
The idea of “losing the thread” is beautifully put.
I especially appreciated how you connect language, accent, professional identity, and belonging without reducing identity to a simple before-and-after story. Expatriation does not just change where we live. It changes which version of ourselves gets permission to speak.
That line will stay with me.
Thank you! You captured the essence of my message perfectly.
Identity is constantly evolving and made up of many layers. What fascinates me is how flexible and adaptable it can be throughout our lives. Becoming aware of these different layers broadens our perspective and gives us access to a wider range of tools, strengths, and ways of navigating different contexts.
This is also why overadaptation can be so harmful. When we adapt too much, we risk disconnecting from parts of ourselves and losing access to valuable inner resources. The challenge is not to resist change, but to evolve without losing the thread that connects us to who we are.
Thank you — I love the way you put this.
“The challenge is not to resist change, but to evolve without losing the thread” feels exactly right. Identity is not a fixed object, but it also cannot be endlessly reshaped without cost.
Overadaptation is so subtle because it can look like maturity, flexibility, even kindness. But at some point, if we keep adjusting to every room, we may forget which part of us was supposed to enter the room in the first place.
That thread matters. It lets us change without disappearing.
Thank you, Emanuela, for putting in one information-dense article so many of my thoughts and struggles with the language-persona relationships I have witnessed in myself. This article is something I will have to reread multiple times and I will restack parts of it many more times. Just as an illustration to your point about the language changing our behaviour, I will share that I was shocked to discover that I can say "I love you" in English without even thinking twice of it, but could never and have never said it in my mother tongue, Bulgarian. It isn't that I don't love anyone in Bulgaria, but it's just the cultural specifics that don't allow me to say it just casually or in any other context. I can also swear in English, but not in Bulgarian. It's just as you describe it - I am a different person when I speak anotehr language.
Thank you for sharing your own experience, this is an extremely precise example of how language translates culture. That's about what each language permits you to feel, to express, to become. The cultural frame is embedded in the language itself.
This is a huge part of sociolinguistics. Thank you for covering this so thoroughly. With so much research, it’s often an overlooked yet critical element of how we define our identity so I love how you unpack the different angles to it!
That's an amazing field. We often think that learning a language is about getting the grammar right, but that's just the entry point. What happens after is far more interesting. The way a language reshapes how you think, what you notice, who you become when you speak it. I am happy you enjoyed the piece!
Really enjoyed this, Emanuela! I have been hearing about this concept of how language can alter your personality, and I find it so fascinating! I especially liked this line: "learning to operate in a second language has the ability to affect the individual’s behaviour itself — not just the way they communicate, but the way they are." Wow! I'm excited to see who I am in Spanish once I start speaking more fluently. And I love that you backed this all up with research. Great piece!
So happy you enjoyed it! Looking forward to reading which layer Spain and Spanish will add to your identity !
Having dabbled in several languages myself, I truly understand where you’re coming from with this one. I definitely have met a different version of myself since starting to focus on speaking Dutch.
Gillian! I'm curious to hear more about this new version of yourself 🤗
I studied and spoke French and Russian before I knew enough about myself to be hesitant with things I didn’t know how to say. With Dutch, I am actively aware of how much less detail and precision in expression I have. I can convey the general meaning of things fine, but don’t have that clarity (or humor) as easily when speaking.
Fascinating! This makes me think that learning a language as an adult, when you already have a formed self, sheds light on the gap between who you are and what you can express.
When you notice you can't access humor or precision in Dutch you're not just hitting a linguistic limit, you're doing an involuntary inventory of yourself, because to feel the absence of something, you have to already know it exists in you.
The language you can't yet speak becomes a mirror in negative: it doesn't reflect what you have, it reveals the outline of what you can't yet bring out.
Absolutely! I have different kinds of observations in Dutch and find myself less confident than I am in my native English. That translates to a whole host of new personality traits coming forward and the appearance of an entirely different individual. It's a wonderful thing to learn about yourself and to better understand what it's like for others when they're learning my language.
Really interesting piece, thanks Emanuela x
Happy the piece resonated with you!
Thank you for sharing your beautiful reflections. As a young child I lived in multiple countries and many states throughout the USA. I was regularly needing to adapt and simultaneously learn in school the subjects of my age but also the cultures, language and traditions of where we were. Everyone said "oh you're so lucky to be traveling" and yet as a child all I felt was the strain of not being able to belong while simultaneously struggling to lean into who I was becoming. I believe in the power of traveling and studying abroad and that cross cultural development is essential to human development and interconnectedness ... and as you say it's important to understand the various layers of what's happening in such experiences.
Hi Deborah. nice to meet you; Thank you for sharing this. What strikes me is the gap between what others saw - "you're so lucky" - and what you were actually living: the strain of adapting while trying to figure out who you were becoming, all at once, as a child who didn't choose any of it.
That gap is exactly where the invisible cost lives. And it's rarely acknowledged, because from the outside it looks like privilege.
You hold both truths at the same time - the deep belief in cross-cultural development, and the honesty about what it costs. That's the whole picture!
Indeed! And whether it's travel or health or any other perceived privilege, if we don't take the time to really get to know people and care about them and their lived experience, we can make assumptions and judge what others have. Life is not binary. It is a myriad of layers and experiences. Real humanity needs curiosity and compassion.
I am curious now. When you sit back and relax which of all these language do you find your thoughts freely flowing in it. I have failed at most the languages I was taught Chinese, French, German I tried Italian but I wasn't a committed learner.
Nice question! I’d say Italian or French, but honestly, I can’t really control it. My thoughts seem to emerge in the language of the context I’m in.
As for your language journey, let me share something: when I was in high school, I was told I wasn’t good at languages. Then life changed the grading system.
Living in a country is a completely different experience from learning a language through books or in a classroom. Life becomes your teacher, and it finds countless ways to help you become fluent 😊
An excellent piece on the intricacies of cross-cultural work.
Thank you, Happy it resonated with you!
Thank you for this. I really related to the sections on language and accent, especially: “For me, it was the anxiety linked to accent. The question of intelligibility: do people really understand me? Are they listening, or are they stopping at the way I speak?”
I’m Asian American living in Japan, so people often assume I’m Japanese until I start speaking. Then they hear my American accent and there’s always a brief moment of surprise.
I also feel like switching between English and Japanese changes my demeanor and personality. I’m more careful in Japanese and sometimes feel like a quieter version of myself. Your piece helped me think about that in a new way.
Thank you for sharing your experience, that's truly interesting. That moment of surprise when you start speaking, that's exactly where the bias lives. Before the words, before the meaning, there's already a recalibration happening in the listener.
And what you describe in Japanese, that's the language asking something different of you.
Glad the piece opened something!
I am on a journey coming back to myself.. and it feels wonder..
I hope you find your way back to the thread. It doesn't disappear, it just gets buried under layers. Sometimes it takes one conversation, one reading, one unexpected moment to feel it again!
Accent is a stronger predictor of interpersonal judgment than either race or gender or looks. This is so true and I wish more people would talk about it. I once worked with a women of colour educated in a great school in England. She spoke the Queen's English and that alone opened doors for her.
Colleagues subconsciously identified with her speech patterns, equating her linguistic style with their own, which made them more likely to trust her and accept her into the fold. She just went with the flow, never being able to bring her whole self into work.
Thank you Maria for sharing this experience: it's a perfect illustration of what the research points to, but lived. She found the code that worked. And it did work, in the sense that it opened doors. But there's a cost in that too, when the version of you that gets accepted is a carefully curated one, belonging never feels fully real. You're in the room, but not entirely there.
That's the part that rarely gets named.
This is such a thoughtful piece. The idea of “losing the thread” really resonates especially how easily adaptation can slide into quiet assimilation without us noticing.
I loved how you grounded it in research while keeping it deeply personal.
How do you help clients distinguish healthy integration from identity erosion in real time, not just in hindsight?
Thank you for stopping by and for such a thoughtful question.
In practice, I dig into the environment, and the values and needs of the person, and check whether those are being met, and by what. If they aren't, that's usually a good sign that the current situation is asking for over-adaptation. The gap between what you need and what you're getting is often where the erosion is quietly happening.
As somebody who has lived in a few different countries, I can relate to this piece. I remember when I first moved to Spain at 10 years old, experiencing the new culture. Now been living here on and off, as went home to Canada for many years, later returning to Spain. After many years in Spain, it feels like a second home to me.
France feels like a second home to me too, which is exactly what made over-adaptation so easy, and so invisible for a long time. This piece comes from that acquired awareness: learning to recognize when you've drifted from yourself, and find your way back to the thread.
Relocating is difficult. I hope to do so one day.
Sure, relocating is a challenge not only when moving abroad, but even within the same country. When I moved from Southern Italy to the North, I experienced some of the same transitions that I later recognized when moving abroad.
Every change of context calls for adaptation. The scale may differ, but the process of learning new codes, building new connections, and redefining your sense of belonging is often surprisingly similar.