Living in the United Kingdom can represent an important change in one’s professional, emotional, and family life. For many Brazilians, the experience begins as an opportunity: to study, work, build a career, or start a new chapter. Over time, however, living abroad brings up questions that were not entirely anticipated.
Adapting does not mean only learning how to navigate the city, understand local customs, or speak English with greater confidence. It also involves finding new ways of relating to others, recognizing oneself, and building a sense of belonging within a different culture.
It is possible to work, study, negotiate, and manage almost every aspect of daily life in English. Even so, this does not mean that every experience can be expressed in the same way in another language.
One’s mother tongue carries memories, emotions, humor, and particular ways of organizing thought. Certain words are connected to childhood, family, and personal history. When translated, they may remain accurate, yet lose part of what they once held.
Some people realize that they have become highly proficient in English, but speak about themselves in a more rational, controlled, or distant way. They can explain what happened, yet find it difficult to say what the experience produced within them.
Living between languages can expand possibilities, but it can also create a division: one language for functioning and another for feeling.
There is a common idea that adaptation takes place during the first few months and then comes to an end. In practice, it may reappear at different moments.
A change of job, the birth of a child, a separation, a professional crisis, or a visit to Brazil may bring back questions that seemed resolved. Belonging has to be reconstructed as life changes.
In the United Kingdom, many Brazilians learn to deal with more reserved forms of social interaction, different social codes, and indirect ways of expressing closeness, discomfort, or conflict.
Even when a person understands these differences intellectually, they may continue to experience distance, loneliness, or difficulty establishing more intimate connections.
As the years pass, Brazil also ceases to occupy the same place.
Family members continue living their daily lives without the presence of the person who left. Friendships change, children grow, parents age, and relationships that were once close may become more distant.
When visiting Brazil, some people realize that they no longer fully recognize themselves in the life they left behind. When they return to the United Kingdom, they may not feel that they have entirely returned home either.
This experience does not indicate a lack of gratitude or an inability to adapt. It is a possible consequence of living between two worlds that continue to exist, while neither remains exactly as it was before.
Belonging may cease to be a fixed place and become something that must be continually worked through.
Many Brazilians move to the United Kingdom for professional reasons. London and other British cities bring together international companies, universities, financial institutions, consulting firms, technology companies, and multicultural environments.
A career may progress, but it may also bring new forms of pressure.
Working in another language requires constant attention. Meetings, differences in tone, ways of disagreeing, and expectations that are not always made explicit all need to be interpreted.
Experienced professionals may feel that they have to prove again what they had already established in Brazil. Some reach important positions and still experience insecurity, isolation, or the feeling that they are constantly being evaluated.
In leadership roles, the space to speak freely may become smaller. A person may discuss decisions with colleagues, superiors, and teams, but not always find a place to talk about what those decisions produce within them.
Life abroad may appear well organized from the outside: work, housing, travel, and financial stability. This does not prevent loneliness from being present.
In large cities, it is possible to be surrounded by many people without developing intimate bonds. A routine may be full of commitments and still remain emotionally empty.
To those who stayed in Brazil, the experience may appear privileged. This can make it even more difficult to say that something is not going well.
A silent demand may then emerge: the need to prove that the move was worthwhile.
Admitting doubt, distress, or the desire to return may feel like a form of failure, especially when the move involved effort, investment, and family expectations.
Moving to another country also changes relationships.
Within a couple, one person may integrate more quickly, while the other feels dependent, displaced, or as though their career has been interrupted. Differences in adaptation may produce resentment, guilt, and conflicts that are difficult to name.
Intercultural relationships introduce further questions: different ways of expressing affection, dealing with money, raising children, relating to families, and facing conflict.
When there are children, decisions arise concerning language, school, identity, and connection with Brazil.
Migration reorganizes roles within the family. Matters that were once supported by a wider network must now be faced within a more isolated household.
Longing does not always appear as a desire to return.
It may be a longing for people, forms of social life, a lost spontaneity, or the feeling of being understood without having to explain so much.
It may also be a longing for the person one was before the move: someone who understood the codes, had their own network, and occupied a more clearly defined place.
At the same time, returning to Brazil may seem difficult or even impossible. Professional life, children, relationships, and projects built in the United Kingdom begin to support the decision to remain.
It is possible to want to stay and suffer because of the distance. It is also possible to think about returning and fear losing what has been built.
These questions do not always require an immediate decision. Often, they require a space in which they can be listened to without haste.
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 English or the life built in the United Kingdom. It means being able to work in a language that carries one’s personal, family, and cultural history.
During the session, expressions, memories, hesitations, and ways of speaking can emerge without having to be converted into a functional language.
For those who live between countries and cultures, therapy can be a place to work through changes, relationships, losses, choices, and the different versions of oneself that emerge throughout life abroad.
The aim is not to teach someone how to adapt better, but to understand what this experience represents 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.