Online in Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, & Virginia
Counseling for Professional Moms
For Moms Who Run the Meeting at 2pm and the Bedtime Routine at 8pm
From the outside, you have a life most people would envy. The career, the kids, the house that somehow stays presentable enough for the occasional playdate. You are competent, organized, and so good at holding everything together that nobody notices the cost.
But you notice.
You notice it at 6pm when your kid asks you a completely normal question about their day and you snap, without meaning to and without knowing exactly why.
You notice it at 11pm when you should be sleeping but instead you are replaying a comment your boss made in a meeting and simultaneously wondering if your kid’s teacher thinks you are a neglectful parent because you forgot it was pajama day. Again.
You notice it on Sunday nights when the dread starts pooling in your stomach and you cannot figure out if you are dreading the work week or the parenting week, because honestly the answer is both.
Why You’re Exhausted, Reactive, and Running on Fumes
You have been running on adrenaline and to-do lists for so long that you have forgotten what it feels like to just sit somewhere without mentally triaging the next twelve hours. Your body is constantly braced for the next thing: the next email, the next meltdown, the next deadline, the next school pickup, the next urgent text from your co-parent or your mother or your babysitter.
And the anxiety? It does not look like anxiety to anyone around you. It looks like being really, really good at your job, always being three steps ahead, packing the backup outfit and knowing exactly which kid has a half day on Friday.
What nobody sees is what it takes to keep all of that running. The racing thoughts at 3am, the jaw you unclench twelve times a day, the fact that you cannot remember the last time the weekend felt restful.
You are not lazy or ungrateful or bad at this. Your body learned a long time ago to stay ready for anything, and it never learned how to turn that off. So now it treats a whiny kid at 6pm with the same urgency it would treat an actual emergency, and you do not get to decide otherwise. That is why you snap. That is why you cannot sleep.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, you lost track of yourself.
You used to be funny.
You used to have opinions about things that had nothing to do with school schedules or quarterly reports.
You used to have energy left over at the end of the day for a conversation, a book, a thought that belonged only to you.
Now there is the version of you that runs things at work and the version of you that runs things at home, and you are not sure there is anyone left underneath those two. When someone asks how you are doing, you say “fine” and keep moving, because the honest answer is a run-on sentence that starts with “I haven’t slept” and doesn’t end.
And then there’s the cycle you can’t seem to break. You snap at your kid over something small, a spilled drink, a whiny voice, a request that came at exactly the wrong moment. The guilt hits before they even start crying.
You spend the rest of the evening being extra patient to make up for it, which exhausts you even more, which means you are more depleted tomorrow, which means you snap again. You lie awake that night running through it, wondering if this is the version of you your kids are going to remember.
You have started to wonder if maybe this is just the deal. If this is what it costs to have a career and kids and a life that looks like yours, and you just need to stop expecting it to feel any different.
If every other mom who seems to be holding it together knows something you don’t.
She does not. And this is not just the deal.
Why the Books, the Apps, and the Last Therapist Didn’t Fix This
You read the books, downloaded the meditation app and used it twice, maybe tried therapy before.
And therapy may have helped with some things, but you are still snapping at your kids and lying awake at night.
That is usually a sign that the work hasn’t reached the part of you that is doing the snapping and the spiraling. That part is not in your thoughts. It is in your body, in the way you brace before you even know what you are bracing for, and it doesn’t respond to insight or willpower.
The problem is not your schedule, and it is not that you need better boundaries (although you probably do). No amount of calendar blocking is going to fix what is happening in your body.
How I Help Professional Moms Who Are Doing Everything and Feeling Like It’s All About to Come Apart
I’m Dr. Emily Fornwalt, and I want to say something that might be hard to hear: the anxiety and stress that is making your life hard today is the same thing that made you successful. The constant readiness, the drive, the relentless need to stay three steps ahead didn’t come from nowhere.
At some point, your brain learned to stay on top of everything. And it worked. It got you the grades, the career, and a reputation as the woman and mom who always has her shit together.
I won’t assume your ambition is the problem, or that the answer is to scale back and simplify. You built this life on purpose. I will help you be present for it without it costing you your sleep, your patience, and your sense of yourself.
I am warm, and I am honest.
You can bring me the tired version of yourself, the angry version, the version that just yelled at her kid in the Target parking lot and is convinced she is ruining her children.
I will not flinch, and I will not judge you.
I have sat with dozens of women who are carrying exactly what you are carrying, and not one of them was a bad mother. Not one.
This work goes beyond talking about your stress.
I have a PhD in counseling, which means I’ve spent a lot of time studying why this kind of change is so hard and what works, and what works is not more insight. You already have insight. You can probably narrate exactly why you snap at your kid, and yet you still snap.
We work with the part of you that reacts before you have time to think, because that's the part that's actually driving the bus.
I keep a smaller caseload on purpose, around ten clients at a time, so I’m not losing track of what you told me last week. I know your situation, I am thinking about it between sessions, and if something comes up during the week, you can reach out. I will not tell you to hold that thought until next Tuesday.
What Your Life Looks Like When You Aren’T Running on Anxiety…
You are at dinner with your family on a Thursday night, and your kid is telling a long, winding story about something that happened at recess. You are following it, not mentally composing tomorrow’s presentation, not calculating whether you remembered to switch the laundry. Just there, eating pasta, hearing about the drama between Lila and Marcus on the monkey bars. It is the best part of your day.
Your partner says something about the division of labor that would normally send you straight into defensiveness or silent resentment, and instead you feel the heat rise and let it pass. You say what you really mean, calmly, without rehearsing it first or regretting it after. The conversation is hard but you do not shut down or escalate. You just stay in it.
Your kid melts down at pickup and you feel the flash of irritation move through your body and keep going. You crouch down, you handle it, and on the drive home you are not replaying it or rehearsing an apology to the other parents who saw. You are thinking about whether you want tacos or sandwiches for dinner (hint…the answer is always tacos).
You realize on a Saturday afternoon that you have two free hours and you do not fill them with errands or meal prep or catching up on email. You read something, or you call a friend, or you sit on the porch and drink your coffee while it is still hot. And you don’t feel guilty about it.
You go to bed on a Wednesday night and fall asleep. No mental checklists, no doom-scrolling to quiet your brain, no replaying the day’s failures on a loop. Just sleep.
i’m Emily.
About dr. emily fornwalt
Therapist for Professional Moms
I’m Dr. Emily Fornwalt. I’m a licensed therapist with a PhD in counseling from UNC Charlotte, and I specialize in working with women who are functioning on the outside and exhausted on the inside.
I’m trained in approaches that work with the part of you that reacts before you have time to think — the part that snaps at your kid or tightens up before a meeting — which is where the real changes happen.
I see clients exclusively by telehealth in Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.
Schedule, Fees, & Logistics
Sessions are 45 minutes, typically once per week, and are $225 per session. Initial sessions are 90 minutes at $450.
Please note, sessions are completely private pay. I do not bill insurance or provide Superbills.
I see clients online in Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.
Ready to Begin?
1. Schedule your first session using the link below, which will take you to my HIPAA-compliant calendar
2. Complete intake paperwork that you will receive via email
3. Show up. That is the hardest part, and you have done harder things this week.
Schedule Your First Session: Book your first session online here
Not quite ready to book? Send me a note instead.
Call or Text
423.281.4089
emily@alignedcounseling.com
Office mailing address
404 S Roan St., Johnson City, TN, 37604