Heal the Past & Build the Future

Our work together will focus on reconciling and integrating the past, building insight, confidence, and purpose. We will then work towards finding the strength to be present, manage challenges, and create lasting change in ourselves and our lives. The world is better when we have someone next to us.

Services

Individual Psychotherapy

  • Support for the challenges of anxiety and depression, including future concerns, past traumas, sadness, and difficult circumstances. Family and relationship support. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Psychodynamic work, with elements of Solutions-Focused and Narrative Therapies.

  • Support for understanding, processing, and healing of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder related to violence, intimate partner violence, combat, crime, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and death.

  • Support building goals and addressing the difficult present and past circumstances or patterns which cause addiction. Involves interpersonal psychotherapy, psychodynamic exploration, and cognitive behavioral interventions. Especially useful for men and women with military, armed forces, security, legal, or police officer backgrounds. Appropriate for alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine, videogame, or excess marijuana use.

  • Support for individuals struggling with codependent behaviors and toxic family systems. Support for love addiction, changing behavioral patterns, self-acceptance, regret, self-hatred, internal criticism, and mood disorders.

Family Psychotherapy

  • Use of Gottman techniques for improving connection, understanding, goalsetting, sexual reconnecting, or separating amicably.

  • Support for the struggles and challenges of adolescent boys, including anxiety, depression, failure to launch, attention deficit, hyperactivity, scholastic achievement, and performance. Appropriate for middle school and high school, and college; may or may not include family therapy.

  • Focus on conscious and unconscious behaviors affecting your children and the fears and concerns disrupting effective parenting.

  • Support for individuals experiencing divorce, custody challenges, and legal conflicts. Includes coming to terms with past experiences, failures, and traumas as well as building a better, brighter future.

Professional Support

  • Support and training for leadership development and management best practices. Includes help with understanding and improving transformational leadership and team management, whether for personal development, productivity, or overall success.

  • Support for entrepreneurial leadership, start-ups stressors, and cultural leadership. Support for individual and organizational psychological development, as well as best practice consultation.

  • Support for individuals seeking to become successful in entertainment and creative endeavors, including actors, musicians, composers, producers, and writers. Special focus on personality development and creative workflow.

  • Support for career transitions and long-term job improvement, including understanding workplace culture, personal presentation, external behaviors, and career pathways.

Action-Focused Growth

We are intentional beasts of action, in a society of roadblocks and closed doors. Internal voices from past failure, defeat, or sabotage undercut our performance. External forces like markets, culture, or competitors hold us back. We come to believe that we are small, inconsequential, and unwanted – a mental death sentence. We’ve always needed someone to have our back, but this is when we need someone in our corner most. Together, we can reclaim your strength. Let me be the catalyst that moves you towards a more relaxed, more powerful, and more grounded way to reclaim the best person you can be.

Relationship Improvement

We are hierarchical creatures. We want a team to compete with, someone to compete against, and others to support. We want connections who see our value. We even want leaders to follow – actively or in spirit – and we often find ourselves leading others even when we did not intend to lead. Let me be your trusted sounding board so you can clearly see the forces connecting you to others. Let’s strategize strong, lasting bonds to become a better leader, a better lover, a better friend, and a better parent.

What People Are Saying

“I see people on autopilot, but after my time working with Dave, I’m awake.”

— Steve

“He was right about everything – the path I was on, where it would lead, how it would end.”

— Emily

“He has an incredible mix of insight, empathy, and an ability to inspire action. He helped me face new challenges with greater confidence and calm.”

– Juan

Working with Dave allowed me to organize myself. He created a space to distill the greatest essence of everything I desire to be. I feel immense gratitude. He sees me. He’s led me to breakthrough after breakthrough.”

— Spencer

About Dave S. Wallace, MS, MA, AMFT

People have always trusted me to analyze problems and advise solutions. I had a difficult childhood, with food instability and religious punishments which gave me a limp and separated rib by age 10. I couldn’t rely on anyone, so I had to strategize ways to stay safe. Other people came to rely on my insight too. I graduated with honors and attended college on scholarship. I served as a juvenile treatment counselor, a health coach, and a sex-ed teacher. Then I changed careers to compose music in Hollywood and worked on award-winning projects. Yet privately, I suffered. I chose relationships poorly and felt like an imposter with too few resources to meet the demands of others. So I started over.

I now have an MS in Organizational Psychology (with honors) and an MA in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine (also with honors). I have extensive experience with men, boys, and professional women. I’ve worked with entrepreneurs, producers, artists, doctors, lawyers, principals, and veterans. I understand career transition, business challenges, leadership, performance, stress, relationship conflict, legal problems, spiritual confusion, crises, trauma, depression, and anxiety. Much of my work focuses on overcoming obstacles in daily relational interactions, our internal beliefs, and problems with those we love.

Whatever you’re facing, we can face it together.

Qualifications

  • Registered Associate Marriage & Family Therapist #139757 

  • MS Industrial/Organizational Psychology (MSIO), Psi Chi Honors

  • MA in Clinical Psychology (MACP), Psi Chi/Summa Cum Laude

  • 17 years of individual/group counseling/coaching experience.

  • Trained in Leadership Development, Trauma-Focused CBT, Addiction Treatment, Crisis Intervention, Gottman Couples Therapy Level 1, Transformational Coaching, and Breathwork.

  • Experienced with Ages 14-65, All Races, 1st & 2nd Generation Immigrants, Veterans, Professional Women, & Men/Boys Significantly.

  • Tech, Entertainment, Business, Legal, and Startup Experience.

  • Creatively Competent: 10 years as a composer in Hollywood

FAQ

What's Your "Secret Sauce?"

I have a Master of Science in Organizational Psychology and a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology. This means professional psychological insights in the areas of business, social networks, behavior, development, personality, relationships, and disorders. I work in effective areas of validated research – beware of "secret sauce" promises.

Therapy or Coaching?

What’s the difference between therapy and coaching? Therapy heals past trauma that is causing life-threatening or constraining behavioral problems. Coaching uses positive psychology to focus on present behavior and future outcomes. It offers the insight, energy, process, and space to set goals and solve everyday and future life challenges. They are powerful together.

What Makes a Great Therapist?

Fully developed and experienced individuals make great coaches. Intelligence (IQ) solves complex problems. Education gives access to knowledge, while on-the-ground experience tests action and understanding. Personal culture conveys the emotional quotient (EQ) we feel when being coached. This combination compels life changes. 

Executive Counseling or Coaching?

Executive counseling is concerned with the individual leader’s psyche, including confidence, stress, personal development, and relationship issues, because our business is a reflection of our mental state. Executive coaching focuses on goal execution, cultural improvement, and change management. It is best handled by an Organizational Psychologist.

What Makes a Mediocre Coach or Therapist?

Therapists often lack relevant experience, while coaches often lack education and oversight. Each compensates for their deficits by tapping into the client's emotions. Coaches will leverage enthusiasm and confidence to create faith and action, while therapists leverage emotional support and reflection to motivate change and insight. Emotional work has its limits.

When, Where, How Much?

Cash rates are $200/hr. Meetings are available in West LA subject to limited availability or by telehealth conferencing. Standard 24-hour cancellation policies apply. Appointments are one-hour weekly (insurance-hour model, 50 minutes) or more frequently if requested by the client and the therapist is available and covered by insurance.

More Questions?