Online platforms for language teaching has turned into an indispensable component of educational practice in recent years. Although there is an increasing research on teachers’ experiences with online instruction, little is known about the way language teachers construct their identities in response to online teaching and more particularly, how emotional challenges may influence their identity construction. In this regard, the present study adopts an ecological perspective to explore how language teachers construct their identities as they navigate emotional challenges in online platforms. Through a qualitative exploratory design, we analyzed data from semi-structured interviews and narrative frames with eight teachers selected via convenience sampling. The findings highlight teachers’ emotional labor including increased anxiety, a sense of isolation, and self-doubt at the micro-level, that leads to identity shifts and challenges in adapting to online teaching. At the meso-level, our findings showed the critical role of institutional factors in shaping language teachers’ emotional experiences and identities in a way that the support and criticism they received from their institutions that influenced their feelings and experiences. Additionally, at the macro-level, we found how societal perceptions and pressures influenced language teachers’ emotional experiences and identity construction in online settings in that the external de-valuation of online teaching contributes to a heightened sense of self-doubt and pressure among teachers to perform well in digital learning environments. The study underscores the complex interplay between individual, institutional, and social factors in shaping Iranian English language teachers’ emotional experiences and identity development in digital teaching environments.