Online Counseling for Moms Throughout Virginia
Counseling for Professional Moms in Virginia
Your Body Is Sending Signals You Can’t Ignore Anymore
For a minute you weren’t sure if it was a panic attack or a heart attack. You lay there in the dark, hand on your chest, trying to slow your breathing, trying to figure out whether this was the time it was something serious. By the time you fell back asleep an hour later, you’d already made a mental note to maybe call your doctor, then talked yourself out of it, then back into it.
This has been happening for a while, not every night, but enough that you’ve started expecting it. Your jaw aches when you wake up, and you clench it all day and unclench it every time you notice, and your shoulders are somewhere up near your ears most of the time. At work in Richmond or Arlington or Virginia Beach, sometimes your chest gets tight and you wonder, for a second, if something is wrong.
Your doctor says your bloodwork is fine, your heart is fine, everything looks fine. And yet…
For years, you’ve treated your body like a machine
You’ve treated your body like a machine that’s supposed to keep running while you take care of everyone else, powering through exhaustion, working through illness, holding yourself together for the meeting even when you were falling apart. Your body cooperated, until recently. Now it’s sending signals you can’t ignore.
What the 3am waking and the jaw and the chest tightness are telling you isn’t that you need more sleep. It’s that you’ve been carrying things you haven’t had anywhere to put down: the promotion that wasn’t what you thought it would be; the conversation with your mother you’ve been rehearsing for six months and never having; the fact that you love your kids and you also don’t recognize the woman who’s raising them some days.
That stuff has to live somewhere, and right now it’s living in your body.
But nobody around you knows this. From the outside, you’re crushing it, the job, the kids, the house. Your boss relies on you and your friends think you have it together.
Your partner, if you have one, knows you’re tired but doesn’t know you’ve been lying in the dark at 3am wondering if something is seriously wrong with you.
The anxiety that made you successful is the same thing waking you up at 3am, and it’s keeping you from being in your life with the people you love.
More about my approach to working with professional moms here.
What You’ve Already Tried
You’ve gone to your doctor and had the bloodwork, and maybe you’ve tried a magnesium supplement, melatonin, ashwagandha, one of those weighted blankets.
You’ve tried the meditation app, at least for a week, and you’ve cut back on caffeine, then gone back to it, then cut back again.
Some of my clients have done real therapy that helped them understand themselves, and they come to me because they’re ready for the next layer of work. They can explain their anxiety perfectly, they’ve done the insight work, and they still wake up at 3am with their heart pounding or snap at their kids on a daily basis, and they want that to change.
Insight gets you part of the way there, and then there’s a point where understanding why stops being the thing that shifts things.
What shifts things is working with the part of you that is carrying emotion with nowhere to go, which is the thing that no magnesium supplement or meditation app can do.
My Approach to Therapy for Professional Moms in Virginia
I’m Dr. Emily Fornwalt, a licensed therapist in Virginia, and I work with high-achieving moms whose bodies have started sending them signals they can no longer ignore.
I’m trained in approaches that work with what you’ve been holding so that you don’t have to hold it alone anymore. When that happens, the sleep comes back, the jaw relaxes, and more importantly, you come back to the people you love.
I keep a small caseload, around ten clients, so I remember your situation and I’m thinking about it between sessions. When something comes up during the week, you can reach out.
I’m warm and I’m honest, and you can bring me the part of yourself that’s been scared you’re going to crack, the part that’s been wondering, quietly, if this is going to be the year something breaks. I’ve sat with dozens of women in exactly that place, and they didn’t break. They got their sleep back, and most of them got more than that.
How Therapy With Me Helps Professional Moms in Virginia
You sleep through the night. Not every night at first, and enough that you remember what it feels like to wake up rested. The 3am wake-ups get further apart, and when they do happen, your body knows how to come back down.
At dinner with your family, your jaw is loose and your shoulders are down, and you laugh at something your kid said without having to climb out of your own head to do it. You’re in the room with them. Your kid notices, even if they don’t name it.
You have a conversation with your partner, if you have one, about something genuinely hard, and you stay in it. Your chest doesn’t seize, you don’t leave your body, you don’t go cold. You stay, you listen, and you say what you mean. Forty-five minutes later, you have a plan, and nobody slept on the couch.
You notice, one Tuesday, that the low-grade dread underneath everything for years is just gone. You haven’t been bracing. You’ve just been living.
Cities I Serve in Virginia
I work with clients across Virginia via secure telehealth, which means no commute and no childcare for the drive.
My clients come to me from Richmond and Virginia Beach, as well as Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Reston, Herndon, McLean, Vienna, Falls Church, Manassas, Leesburg, Ashburn, Woodbridge, Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Newport News, Hampton, Williamsburg, Charlottesville, Roanoke, Lynchburg, Harrisonburg, Blacksburg, Fredericksburg, Stafford, Midlothian, Short Pump, Glen Allen, and surrounding areas.
If you have reliable internet anywhere in Virginia, we can work together.
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