Counseling for academics and researchers in Tennessee

You Dreamed of This Job…

So Why Does It Feel Like It’s Taking Over Your Life?

You remember the first time you walked across campus as faculty. The sense of possibility. The thrill of finally being here, after years of graduate school and the brutal job market. You'd made it.

That excitement is still in there somewhere. You still light up when a student grasps a difficult concept, when you stumble onto an interesting research question, when you have one of those rare conversations with a colleague that reminds you why you got into this field.

But those moments are getting crowded out. You're sitting in your office in Nashville or Knoxville or Memphis, staring at a to-do list that regenerates faster than you can cross things off. The tenure clock ticks in the background of every decision. Committee requests pile up. And the guilt – about the paper you haven't finished, the students you haven't emailed back, the family dinner you missed – has become a constant companion.

You got into academia for the ideas, the teaching, the intellectual community. Lately, it feels like you're spending more time on service obligations and performance metrics than the work that matters to you.

Here's the thing about high-achieving academics: you're used to solving problems through effort and intelligence. More hours, better systems, harder work. That approach got you through graduate school and onto the tenure track.

But it's not making you feel better.

the daily reality for overworked academics

It's Sunday evening, and instead of recharging, you're already thinking about Monday. Your laptop is open. You told yourself you'd take the weekend off, but here you are, "just checking" email, which turned into two hours of work you didn't plan to do.

At the department meeting, someone suggests forming a new committee. Your name comes up. You hear yourself saying yes before you've even thought about it, because saying no feels risky. Later, you add it to your calendar and wonder where the time will come from.

A colleague mentions their new publication, and your stomach tightens. You catch yourself calculating how many papers they've published versus you. You know comparison isn't useful. You do it anyway.

Your partner asks when you'll be done working tonight. You say "soon," knowing it probably isn't true. You can hear the frustration in their voice, and you get it, you're frustrated too. You don't want work to take up this much space.

Sleep doesn't come easily. Your brain cycles through the grant deadline, the course you haven't prepped, the student who needs a recommendation, the paper that's been sitting at 80% done for months. You're tired, but your mind hasn't figured out how to rest.

what productivity advice misses about academic stress

You've tried to solve this the way you solve everything: research, strategy, optimization.

You've read the books about academic productivity. You've tried Pomodoro timers and task management apps and time blocking. You've told yourself this is just a busy season, that things will calm down after tenure, after this grant, after this semester.

They don't calm down. There's always another deadline, another obligation, another thing that needs to be done yesterday.

Here's what the productivity advice misses: the problem isn't your time management. The problem is the impossible standards you hold yourself to, the terror of saying no, the constant comparison to colleagues, and the nervous system that's been running on adrenaline for so long you've forgotten what calm feels like.

You can't optimize your way out of burnout. You can't hack your way to a sustainable relationship with work when the underlying patterns driving your overcommitment haven't changed.

a therapist who knows academia from the inside

I'm Dr. Emily Fornwalt, and I work with academics and researchers across Tennessee who are trying to figure out if they can stay in academia without losing themselves.

I'm not going to teach you productivity techniques or help you squeeze more work into fewer hours. That would just make things worse.

What I do is help you understand what's driving your overwork: the perfectionism that makes "good enough" feel impossible, the fear of being seen as uncommitted, the pattern of abandoning your own needs to meet everyone else's expectations. We work with your nervous system directly, because when you've been in survival mode for years, no amount of planning fixes that.

I use approaches called AEDP and interpersonal neurobiology, which means we work with anxiety, perfectionism, and overwork at the level where they live – your nervous system and emotions – not just your thoughts about work.

Here's why this matters for academics specifically: I know your world. I have a PhD. I've been on the tenure track. I understand the politics, the pressure, the particular flavor of imposter syndrome that comes from being surrounded by brilliant people while feeling like a fraud. You won't have to explain what tenure means or why summers aren't actually time off or why a rejection from that journal felt like a personal failure.

I work exclusively online, so whether you're at UT, Vanderbilt, a small liberal arts college, or somewhere in between, we can meet without adding a commute to your already full schedule.

what recovery from academic burnout looks like

This work isn't about becoming less ambitious. It's about having a sustainable relationship with your ambition:

You say no without spiraling. When that committee request comes, you pause. You check your capacity. You decline when you need to, and you don't spend three days wondering if you've ruined your career.

Weekends become real rest. Your laptop stays closed on Saturday. You go to brunch, take a hike, read something that isn't work-related. When work thoughts intrude, you notice them and let them pass instead of following them down the rabbit hole.

You teach without overprepping. Your lectures are good enough. Your students learn. You stop spending six hours perfecting a single class session because you've realized that "perfect" was never the point.

Comparison loses its grip. When a colleague wins an award or publishes in that journal, you feel genuinely happy for them. Not because you've become a saint, but because you've stopped measuring your worth against their CV.

You make decisions about your career from clarity, not crisis. Whether you stay in academia or leave, the choice comes from knowing what you want, not from burnout or desperation or the inability to imagine any other life.

Your relationships recover. You're present at dinner. You take vacations without secretly working. The people who love you get access to the real you, not the exhausted shell that's left after work takes everything.