Counseling for academics and researchers in South Carolina

You chose this career for a reason.

Somewhere Along the Way, that got lost.

There was a version of you that was excited about this job. The teaching, the research, the chance to shape how people think. You remember what it felt like to be genuinely curious, to lose track of time working on a problem that mattered to you.

That version still exists. But they’re buried under committee obligations, grading piles, and the persistent feeling that you're disappointing someone no matter what you do.

You're sitting in your office in Columbia or Charleston or Clemson, toggling between a half-written email and a document you've been "revising" for weeks. Your door is closed, not because you're deep in thought, but because you can't handle one more interruption. The semester feels like it will never end. And when it does, summer will arrive with its own pressures: the research you didn’t have time for during the academic year, the courses you need to prep, the sense that everyone else is being productive while you're just trying to catch your breath.

Academia can be isolating in ways that are hard to explain to people outside it. You're surrounded by colleagues, but real conversation is rare. Everyone's busy. Everyone's stressed. Everyone's "fine" while quietly wondering if they're the only one struggling.

You're not the only one struggling.

the daily reality for overworked academics

You wake up already behind. Before your feet hit the floor, your brain is running through everything that didn't get done yesterday and everything that needs to happen today. The list is impossible. It's always impossible.

You spend your morning in back-to-back meetings that could have been emails. By the time you have an hour to yourself, you're too depleted to think clearly. You stare at the document you're supposed to be working on, move a few sentences around, and wonder why this is so hard.

Students need things from you constantly: recommendation letters, extensions, emotional support you weren't trained to provide. You want to help. You also want to silently scream. Instead, you smile and say yes, then add another task to the pile.

Your department has "opportunities" that are really obligations. You've learned that saying no has consequences; subtle ones, but real. So you say yes to the committee, yes to the extra service, yes to covering for a colleague, and then you resent all of it while doing it anyway.

The work follows you home. You check email at dinner. You grade papers on the couch while half-watching TV with your partner. You bring your laptop on vacation "just in case." The boundaries between work and life dissolved so gradually you didn't notice until they were gone.

And underneath all of it, there's a question you don't want to ask out loud: Is this sustainable? Is this even what I want anymore?

what productivity advice misses about academic stress

You've tried the fixes. You're an academic; problem-solving is your job.

You've experimented with different systems: time blocking, the Pomodoro technique, "eating the frog." You've read articles about work-life balance and wondered if the authors have ever actually worked in academia. You've told yourself things will calm down next semester, next year, after this deadline.

They haven't calmed down. The deadlines keep coming. The demands keep expanding. And no matter how efficiently you work, there's always more than can reasonably be done.

Here's what the productivity advice misses: the problem isn't how you're managing your time. It's the impossible expectations you've internalized—about how much you should produce, how available you should be, how perfectly you should perform every aspect of this job. Those expectations don't respond to better scheduling. They live in your nervous system, driving you to overwork even when you know better.

You can't calendar-hack your way out of perfectionism. You can't optimize your way past the fear of being seen as "not enough." That work happens at a deeper level.

a therapist who knows academia from the inside

I'm Dr. Emily Fornwalt, and I work with academics across South Carolina who are trying to build a sustainable relationship with their careers.

I have a PhD. I've been on the tenure track. I know what it's like to feel like you're failing at everything simultaneously: the research, the teaching, the service, the life outside of work that keeps shrinking. You won't have to explain the politics, the pressure, or the particular exhaustion of this career. I already get it.

I'm not going to give you a new productivity system. What I offer is something different: the chance to understand what's driving your overwork at the root. The perfectionism. The fear of judgment. The patterns you developed long before you ever set foot in a classroom.

I use approaches called AEDP and interpersonal neurobiology, which means we work with your nervous system directly – the part of you that can't stop saying yes, can't stop overworking, can't turn off at night – not just your thoughts about work.

I practice exclusively via telehealth, so whether you're at a large research university, a small liberal arts college, or somewhere in between, we can meet without adding another commitment to your already overloaded schedule.

what recovery from academic burnout looks like

You set boundaries that hold. You stop checking email after 7 pm and the world doesn't end. You protect time for your own work, your own thinking, your own life. The guilt that used to accompany every "no" starts to fade.

You do your job without over-functioning. Your lectures are prepared, not perfected. Your feedback to students is helpful without being exhaustive. You stop spending three hours on something that needed thirty minutes.

You're honest about your capacity. When someone asks you to take on something new, you consider whether you can do it well, not just whether you can technically fit it in. Sometimes the answer is no. You say so without apologizing and without guilt.

The comparison quiets down. You stop measuring yourself against colleagues who seem to have it all together. (They don't, by the way. No one does.) You focus on your own work, your own goals, your own definition of enough.

You're present when you're not working. Evenings and weekends feel like actual time off, not just guilt-ridden intervals between work sessions. You remember what it's like to enjoy things without a voice in your head saying you should be doing something else.

You figure out what you want. Maybe that's staying in academia with better boundaries. Maybe it's a different kind of role. Maybe it's leaving altogether. Whatever you decide, the choice comes from clarity—not exhaustion or desperation.