12/19/2025
The Psychology of Carrying Home Inside You
“What we learn in relationship, we later carry in thought.”
I often find myself wondering why my first instinct, when I am overwhelmed, is to endure rather than to speak. Even with years of studying psychology learning the language of emotions, trauma, and healing; I notice how quickly I silence my own distress. There is a familiar voice inside me that says, be strong, don’t make it a big deal, you should be grateful. For a long time, I assumed this was simply my personality. With reflection, however, I have come to understand that this voice did not originate within me alone.
Lev Vygotsky’s theory that thought develops through language and social interaction offers a meaningful framework for understanding this experience. From a Vygotskian perspective, cognition is first shaped externally, through relationships, culture, and language; before it becomes internalized as inner speech. As an immigrant, this resonates deeply. Long before I learned to label emotions through psychological frameworks, I learned how suffering was meant to be held within my family and cultural context. I absorbed unspoken rules about endurance, responsibility, and emotional restraint values shaped by histories of survival and sacrifice. These lessons were not explicitly taught; they were communicated through everyday interactions, silences, and expectations. Over time, these external messages became internal dialogues. Home did not remain behind it became embedded within my inner world. Even now, with an intellectual understanding of trauma and intergenerational transmission, I can hear these inherited dialogues surface during moments of vulnerability. There is often a quiet guilt attached to my pain, as though acknowledging it might diminish the struggles of those who came before me. Vygotsky’s concept of inner speech helps make sense of this tension. If inner speech is internalized culture, then it follows that my emotional responses reflect not personal inadequacy, but socially learned adaptations. My reactions are not irrational; they are historically and relationally shaped.
