Therapy for academics. From undergraduates to full professors.
The impostor syndrome, the overwork, the advisor dynamic, the burnout. I understand these because I was in that world.
Academia creates a very specific kind of suffering: you can be objectively successful and still feel like you’re failing. You can be working constantly and still feel behind. You can be surrounded by smart people and still feel alone.
If you’re abroad on top of that, the pressure doubles: your professional identity is all you have left, which makes every setback feel like annihilation.
Common themes I see:
- Perfectionism that looks like “high standards” but functions like self-attack.
- Imposter syndrome that never resolves because the goalposts keep moving.
- Life in limbo: “real life starts after the next contract.”
- Isolation, shame, and a private sense of disappearance.
What therapy helps with
We work on the underlying psychology of performance: the internal critic, the hunger for external validation, the fear of being seen as ordinary, and the emotional costs of constant evaluation. The goal isn't to make you care less about your work. It's to stop sacrificing your life to prove you deserve to exist.
Who comes for this work
Postdocs and junior faculty who are objectively succeeding and privately convinced they're frauds. People in the contract limbo of academic life, who've deferred everything (relationships, money, geography, certainty) until a job that may never materialize. Researchers who moved to another country for a fellowship and found that professional isolation and personal isolation are compounding in ways they didn't expect.
Also: people who've left academia and are in the identity free-fall of figuring out who they are without the title, the affiliation, the built-in purpose. That transition is harder than most ex-academics expected and easier than most of them admit.
What the work actually looks like
We don't focus on productivity or how to manage your relationship with your supervisor. We focus on what's driving the pattern: why the goalposts keep moving, why success doesn't register, why you can see clearly what's happening and still can't stop it. That's not a problem with your habits. It's a problem with what's underneath them.
Sessions are 60 minutes, $200 / €170. Before your first session, we have a brief 15-minute call to see if this feels like the right fit for you.
What Clients Say
“I came in thinking I knew what my issues were. I’d been over them a hundred times. But those were just the things I could already see. Aaron helped me notice what I couldn’t, and that’s where everything actually started to change.”
“I didn’t think online therapy could really work. How do you feel a connection through a screen? But I’ve done in-person therapy before, and honestly, I’ve felt more understood by Aaron than by any therapist I’ve sat across from. He listens in a way that’s hard to describe until you experience it.”
“A few years ago I suddenly developed prolonged panic attacks but couldn’t begin to understand what had caused them. Having been in therapy in the past, and being a counseling intern student, I felt I had exhausted my resources trying to figure out “What is wrong with me?” I can honestly say Aaron provides a form of counseling that is difficult to find anywhere else regarding efficacy. Not only has his approach been effective, but he also has provided me a safe space to explore aspects about myself I may not otherwise have felt able to. I cannot recommend him enough as he has helped me feel more myself than ever before.”
“I’d been in and out of therapy for years. Different therapists, different approaches, none of it really stuck. Aaron helped me understand more in a few months than all of them combined. And he talked to me like a normal person, not like all this weird therapy-speak.”