ABOUT DAVE
Dave S. Wallace, MS Psy
People have always trusted me to analyze and help them solve their problems.
Raised in rural poverty by a fundamentalist culture, corporal punishment gave me a limp and separated rib by age 10. Survival required listening until I understood motives, risks, and outcomes, then strategizing action. Publically, a problem-child became a model citizen. Inwardly, rationalizing these experiences buried my soul under personal doubt, fear, and judgement.
But I was successful. I attended college on full scholarship and received ongoing leadership development training. I served as a juvenile delinquent residential treatment counselor, a sex-ed health coach, and a teacher, before a decade composing music in Hollywood. I was respected, and worked on award-winning projects.
Privately, I struggled and suffered. My adult life repeated childhood traumas. Negative beliefs created financial struggle, and poor social tact provoked aggression, or indifference. Naive altruism protected years of female-against-male intimate partner violence. Victim mentality, imposter syndrome, and internal resistance left me ineffective and helpless.
The fallout was extreme. I lost a mentor to helplessness, another to legal threats, and a third to suicide. I was diagnosed with Chronic Lyme Disease. I sacrificed my career and marriage to maintain custody, and then lost community and family to judgement, sexism, and apathy. Burned and publicly accused in every way, I was isolated, and even homeless for a time.
So many times I came close to healing, only to be flattened again, but I finally broke through, woke up, and rebuilt. A spiritual coach helped me write my own psychoanalysis. A therapist taught me courage and self-love. I trained in assertiveness and social graces, learning how to choose friends. I healed. I returned to mental health and life coaching, receiving an MS in Industrial/Organizational Psychology – leadership, research, assessment, and consulting. I started coaching, and found my experiences gave me a lot to offer – wisdom comes from great suffering.
As a coach, I offer transformative processes, deep insights, broad knowledge, powerful courage, and gracious accountability learned from first-hand experience and deep education. Much of my work now focuses on anticipating, overcoming, and growing from failure, in leadership, performance, culture, and relationships. I’m here to help.
