Living in Switzerland can represent an important achievement. It may bring new professional opportunities, safety, stability, and contact with different cultures. At the same time, moving to another country changes more than one’s address. It also shifts references, relationships, habits, and ways of recognizing oneself.
For many Brazilians, adaptation takes place among different languages, social codes, and ways of building relationships. Even when life appears well organized from the outside, a difficult feeling may remain: being present, yet not fully belonging.
Language is not only a means of conveying information. It also carries memory, humor, affection, and ways of perceiving the world.
It is possible to work in English, manage everyday matters in French or German, and speak Portuguese with family. Over time, each language may begin to occupy a different place in one’s life.
Some subjects become easier to express in one language, while others seem to lose their emotional force when translated. Some people find that they can explain rationally what is happening, yet struggle to say what they feel.
This is not only a matter of linguistic proficiency. Speaking about oneself requires more than knowing the right words. It requires finding a language in which hesitation, ambiguity, and silence can also exist.
Living abroad is often associated with courage, opportunity, and achievement. For those who remained in Brazil, the experience may appear better than it actually is.
This can create a silent pressure to show that the move was successful.
It is not always easy to admit loneliness, uncertainty, or a desire to return when so many expectations were placed on the decision to leave. There may also be guilt for not feeling completely satisfied despite living under conditions considered privileged.
Adaptation does not happen all at once. It is built slowly, through small experiences of familiarity and moments when everything suddenly feels foreign again.
After some time abroad, one’s relationship with Brazil also changes.
A person follows family life from a distance, misses everyday events, and realizes that relationships that were once close have continued along different paths. When returning, they may encounter a country that still feels familiar, but no longer entirely their own.
This can give rise to an experience common among migrants: not fully belonging either to the country of origin or to the country of residence.
In Switzerland, integration can happen in different ways. Some people build connections at work but remain isolated in their personal lives. Others form relationships mainly with Brazilians while continuing to feel distant from local society. Some move among several groups without feeling that they truly have a place in any of them.
Belonging is not only about being included. It is also about being able to exist without having to continually explain who one is.
Many Brazilians move to Switzerland for professional reasons. They work in international companies, universities, organizations, banks, industries, or highly specialized fields.
A career may bring recognition and stability, but it can also intensify demands.
Working in another language, interpreting cultural codes, and demonstrating competence in a new environment require constant attention. Even experienced professionals may feel that they must prove again what they had already built in Brazil.
In leadership positions, isolation can be even greater. Some decisions can be discussed with colleagues, teams, and managers, but there is not always space to speak about what those decisions produce internally.
Performance may remain high while exhaustion, anxiety, or a sense of emptiness quietly increases.
Moving to another country also transforms relationships.
Within couples, differences in adaptation may emerge. One partner may integrate more quickly, while the other feels dependent or displaced. One person’s career may progress while the other’s is interrupted.
When there are children, other questions arise:
Migration reorganizes roles within the family. Conflicts that once seemed minor may become more intense when a couple or family loses its usual support network.
Longing can take many forms.
It may be a longing for people, food, places, or ways of being together. But it can also be a longing for who one was before the move.
Not every feeling of longing means a desire to return to Brazil. Sometimes, it points to something that has not yet found a place in the new life.
It is also possible to want to remain in Switzerland while suffering from the distance. These experiences are not contradictory. Migrant life often requires holding feelings that cannot be resolved through a single choice.
Having therapy in Portuguese can offer a space in which there is no need to continually translate one’s own experience.
This does not mean rejecting the languages one has acquired or the life one has built abroad. It means being able to work with words that carry one’s personal, family, and cultural history.
During a session, expressions, memories, and ways of speaking can emerge without the need for constant explanation. Some experiences become clearer only when they find the language in which they were originally lived.
For those living between countries and languages, therapy can become a place to work through the changes, relationships, losses, and choices that accompany life abroad.
The aim is not to teach someone how to adapt better, but to create the conditions for each person to understand what this experience means within their own history.
I work with Brazilians living outside the country who wish to undertake psychotherapy in Portuguese.
Sessions are held online from São Paulo and may take place in Portuguese, English, or Spanish. Each situation is considered according to the person’s location, time zone, and the conditions applicable to the provision of care.