Online counseling in south carolina
Counseling for Professional Moms in charleston, south carolina
Therapy For overwhelmed working Moms
It’s a Thursday at 5:45pm and you’re sitting in the parking lot of a school event you have to walk into in fifteen minutes. Your daughter is in the back seat in the dress she didn’t want to wear, and the two of you just had the kind of conversation in the car that you wish nobody had heard. You snapped at her about the way she’s been acting. She said something that landed harder than she meant it to. The car is quiet now. You have fifteen minutes to put on the face that walks into the event and says the right things to everyone you’ll see in the next two hours. You apologize. She nods without looking at you. You take a breath, you apply lipstick in the rearview mirror, and you walk in.
You’re going to be at the hospital or the office or the base early tomorrow. The deliverable that’s due Tuesday needs more time than the week has to give. Sunday is supposed to be church and a long lunch with your in-laws and your kid’s tennis tournament. The week ahead is already on top of you, and the event you’re walking into now is one of three you’re supposed to be at this week wearing the face you just put on in the parking lot.
You did this because you wanted the career, and you still want the career. You worked your way up. The residency or the MBA or the bar. The years of long hours, the senior role you fought for, the title that took fifteen years to earn. You learned to be three steps ahead, to handle whatever showed up in the inbox before lunchtime. That was the skill, and it still is.
The same drive that’s making you good at your job is making you short with the people you love. You snap at your kid over the dress and the tone she used in the car, you answer your partner’s question about Saturday with a tone that makes him stop asking, you watch yourself be impatient with everyone, you feel terrible, and you overcorrect at bedtime by reading three books instead of one and reading them as warmly as you can manage. You wake up the next morning more wiped than if you’d just held the line at one book, and the whole thing starts again before you’ve poured coffee.
Your body’s sending signals you don’t want to read. The headaches arrive on Sunday afternoons before the week even starts. You catch yourself unclenching your jaw during a long meeting. You wake up at 3am with your chest tight enough that the first time it happened, you sat on the bathroom floor convinced you were having a heart attack. Your bloodwork came back fine. Your 3am wake-ups kept happening anyway.
The dread shows up Sunday afternoon. The week ahead is a stack of overlapping responsibilities: the deliverable due Tuesday, the case or rounds or briefing Wednesday, the conversation with your boss about whether you can keep this pace, your kid’s school project that needs poster board, the school conference Thursday afternoon you might have to do from your car, the charity gala Friday night you’re supposed to attend with the perfect face on. You’ve been keeping all of it in your head because the second you try to put it on a calendar you see there isn’t enough time for any of it. You move the pieces around until midnight, and you wake at 3am to keep moving them.
What you haven’t admitted yet, even to yourself, is how scared you are. You’re scared you’re going to burn through the career you spent fifteen years building. You’re scared your kids are going to remember the impatient version of you. You’re scared you’re going to keep doing this until your body forces you to stop.
Why the Books, the App, and your Last Therapist Didn’t stop the snapping
You’ve read Burnout and Fair Play and Drop the Ball. You’ve listened to every podcast about working motherhood on your commute. You downloaded Headspace, you bought the magnesium glycinate, you tried the weighted blanket. You did therapy a few years ago and your therapist was kind and you understood yourself better, and you’re still snapping at your kid and waking up at 3am with the work in your head.
None of it stopped the snapping because the snap happens before you’ve had a chance to think. By the time you remember the technique from the book or open the meditation app, the snap has already happened.
What Changes in Your Week After Six to Twelve Months of Therapy With Me
You sleep through more nights than not. You stop waking up at 3am to move the week around in your head. You wake up with enough patience for the morning chaos, and you still have energy left when you sit down at your desk. You open the first email of the day ready to think instead of bracing for it.
You pull into the parking lot at the school event and you sit in the car with your kid for a minute before you walk in. You hear what she said in the car instead of just reacting to the tone. You apologize and you mean it. She apologizes back. You walk into the event with her hand in yours and a face that isn’t a face you had to put on. You stay for the part you wanted to stay for.
Your teenager says something cutting later in the week, the kind that used to send you down the hallway with a lecture. You let her go to her room and you breathe, and you knock twenty minutes later to ask if she wants to talk. Sometimes she does and sometimes she doesn’t, and either way she slams her door less than she used to. There are nights when she comes downstairs at 10pm and asks if you have a minute, and you sit on the couch while she talks for twenty minutes about something a friend said.
You sit through a long meeting at work, or rounds, or a briefing, or a board meeting, and your thoughts stay in the room instead of going to your kid’s school project or the kitchen calendar. You hear what’s being said, you write the follow-up note in twenty minutes the way you used to, and you’re still thinking clearly at 5pm when you used to be staring at your screen unable to form a sentence. By Friday you can tell what you accomplished this week, and you’re proud of the answer.
Sundays come back, and instead of dread building through the afternoon you take a walk after lunch and read for an hour on the porch. By the time your kids are in bed you’ve read forty pages of a book that has nothing to do with work or the next promotion. Saturday morning you make pancakes because you want to, and by Monday morning the weekend feels like a weekend instead of a 48-hour pause before the next stretch.
The late-evening email still comes in. You see it, you decide it can wait until morning, and you close the laptop. You have an evening back, and you read with your partner on the couch, or you go to bed early, or you have a conversation that lasts more than ten minutes. Your work waits because the work has always been waiting; you just used to think you had to keep up with it in real time.
How Therapy With Me Changes the Snap Itself
I work with women who’ve already figured themselves out and are still snapping at their kids, still waking up at 3am, still doing all the right things and feeling depleted. I don’t do the version of therapy where you sit on a couch and tell the story of your week.
I’m trained in evidence-based approaches that help smart, self-aware women change responses they already understand but can’t seem to stop.
I keep a small caseload, around ten clients at a time, so I know your situation between sessions. If something comes up during the week, you can reach out. I won’t tell you to hold the thought until next Tuesday.
I see clients exclusively by telehealth, with no commute and no childcare for the appointment. You log on from home, from the office, sometimes from the car between meetings.
our sessions will be
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Collaborative: We will figure this out together. It won’t be one more thing your on to-do list for you to accomplish solo.
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Encouraging: Sometimes it’s hard to see your strengths when things feel so overwhelming. I know you have them, and I will help you name them. In case you’re wondering…yes, I have had folks roll their eyes at me for this.
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Real: I'll be honest with you; don’t worry, I don’t like how therapists sound on TV either. I’m confident that, if I inadvertently stumble into therapist cliché territory, one of us will call me out.
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Fun: I can pretty much guarantee we’ll laugh together—maybe even develop some inside jokes; it’s a good brain break and just the stress reliever I know you need.
i’m Emily.
About dr. emily fornwalt
Therapist for Professional Moms
I’m a licensed therapist in multiple states and am registered with South Carolina to provide online therapy to residents. I have a PhD in counseling from UNC Charlotte. I spent years in community mental health and academic teaching before opening my private practice, and a lot of those years studying what changes people and what doesn’t. The answer, it turns out, isn’t more insight.
I’m warm, and I’m honest. You can bring me the tired version of yourself, the angry version, the version that just snapped at her kid in the parking lot before a school event and walked in with the face she had to put on. I won’t flinch, and I won’t judge you. I’ve sat with women whose lives looked exactly like yours, and not one of them was a bad mother.
Session Length, Fees, and How to Schedule
Sessions are 45 minutes, typically once per week, at $225 per session. Initial sessions are 90 minutes at $450.
Sessions are completely private pay. I don’t bill insurance, and I don’t provide the paperwork some practices give you to submit to your insurance for reimbursement.
I see clients exclusively by telehealth. You can be anywhere in Virginia with a stable internet connection.
how to start
Schedule your first session using the link below, which takes you to my private and secure calendar.
Complete intake paperwork that arrives by email.
Show up. That’s the hardest part, and you’ve done harder things this week.
Schedule Your First Session: Book your first session online here
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No. All sessions are online. Telehealth works for Charleston moms whose schedules already don’t have room for a commute on top of the workday, the kids’ activities, and the rest of what you’re holding. You log on from home with the door closed and headphones in, from the office, or from a car parked somewhere quiet.
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Most of my clients meet during the workday. We can schedule a recurring time that fits your calendar, including over lunch or between meetings. Some clients use a midday slot from a private office, a conference room, or a parked car. Most clients leave a session steadier than they walked in. We plan around the meeting you can’t move.
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Most clients notice changes in the first few sessions: a little more space between the trigger and the snap, slightly better sleep, slightly less reactive at bedtime. Bigger changes in stress, parenting, work focus, and relationships usually unfold over six to twelve months of consistent work.
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No. I’m completely private pay, and I don’t provide reimbursement paperwork.
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Yes. Many of my Charleston clients are in roles or social circles where keeping a public face is part of the job. The work we do together is about your nervous system underneath the face, so the face doesn’t have to do as much work to stay in place.
frequently asked questions about online therapy in charleston
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
areas served in charleston
Online therapy for professional moms in Mount Pleasant, Daniel Island, Sullivan’s Island, Isle of Palms, downtown Charleston, South of Broad, Wagener Terrace, West Ashley, James Island, Johns Island, North Charleston, Hanahan, Summerville, Goose Creek, Kiawah Island, and surrounding Charleston-area communities.
also serving professional moms across South Carolina
I work with professional moms across South Carolina, including Columbia, Greenville, and other communities.