One of the prior threads here made me curious about how a person may use a second language for helping with emotions.  I read an article which indicated that bilingual people in psychotherapy have been found to frequently switch into their second language when addressing issues which are more emotional or sensitive, instead of continuing to talk in their native language.  I also read articles that indicated many people expressed believing their second language allows them to develop different parts of themselves or act in ways they are less comfortable behaving when speaking their native language.

On a different site I am taking Spanish lessons from many teachers who are fully bilingual in Spanish and English.  One of my Spanish teachers started a lesson telling me he was so sad he could hardly teach and shared with me what he was sad about.  Instead of canceling the lesson, we decided to continue with a conversational lesson instead of one on grammar, with me thinking it was fine to talk about anything in the lesson.  I had not read the above article then, and was surprised that I had to keep asking him to speak to me in Spanish for our lesson, because I could understand him perfectly well in Spanish and did not need him to speak English.  Now I believe that he was switching to English to keep more constraint over his affective expression while he received some emotional support for me. 

I then had another lesson with the another teacher who had also switched into English after I had shared stories about my work with grieving families in a Hospice and he had told me stories about the death of his grandparents.  Today I had another lesson and  I asked this teacher about this phenomenon which he had also read about before, which he called ¨affective filter¨. He was aware that this is a real phenomenon and is common for bilingual people,  and agreed that although he did not do this consciously, that he had switched into English in order to have more emotional distance while he told me the personal stories about emotionally difficult times of his life.  He also told me he has noticed this behavior of switching into English on many other occasions.  He said when he argues with his girlfriend, he often finds himself switching out of Spanish (their usual language of conversation) into English.

I am also wondering about whether learning a language of a culture that is more emotionally expressive or less emotionally expressive than your own can have it´s own benefits.  I am an American but my ethnic background is Swedish/Norwegian.  I was taught in my family to be very contained about verbal emotional expression, so much so that I do not think it is healthy.  I am wondering if learning Spanish might eventually have emotional expression benefits for me if it develops my willingness/comfort level with more directly and openly expressing emotion without feeling like I need to clam up if I start feeling painful emotions.  

So:  1.  If you are bilingual, have you noticed yourself switching into your second language in order to verbally express something that is emotional?  I would love to hear about how this works in your experience.

2.  Have you felt like a language you have been learning is helping you develop your personality or balance out things that may be overvalued in an unhealthy way in the culture you were raised in?