Hidden Gems: Meet David Hall of David Hall Counseling, PLLC

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Hall.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Counseling is my second career. My first career was in structural engineering, which I practiced for 15 years. People often ask what led to my career change and I always start out by saying that I enjoyed structural engineering. I didn’t leave engineering because I was burnt out or stopped liking it. I worked for two great firms in Denver and Sacramento and spent about half of my career designing new buildings and the other half in the forensics arena repairing existing buildings. The work was interesting, the people were fantastic, but near the end it felt like something was off. At some point in 2018, after I reached senior management, I started to get an itch for something new. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but there became a growing sense that engineering was something that I was looking forward to retiring from, and I didn’t like the arbitrary nature of that milestone. What would I retire to?

About a year before I recognized this itch, my wife and I sought parenting counseling after our four-year-old threw an intense tantrum that we weren’t sure how to handle. With a little help from our counselor, we got our parenting back on track the way we envisioned, and for the first time, I understood the impact of counseling. I had honestly never considered counseling before. Isn’t that something for people who need help? And in typical male fashion, I didn’t see myself as needing help. My wife and I continued to see our counselor for the next few years because we wanted to be the best parents and spouses we could be, and to do that, we needed to learn some new skills and deal with some old baggage. Every week we’d come with a list of questions about parenting, kids, family, finances, dreams, goals, friends, and yes, even sex. Nearly every session left me with something to think about, something I could do to better myself, and something to strive for. My meaning and purpose in life was increasing.

One day, in one of our sessions, I had the thought: “I think I could do that. I think I’d be good at that. Should I become a counselor? Could I become a counselor?” Immediately my brain shifted into defense mode: “You’re too old to change careers!” I was 35. ” You already have a master’s degree in civil engineering! How can you go back to school with four small children? Do you know how little money you’d make? You’d be the old guy in school!” The thought of becoming a counselor was easily dismissed, but I did say it out load, and thus, a seed was planted.

Over the next two years, the seed germinated and grew. I was no longer doing “engineering,” but instead doing project management and handling more of the business side of engineering. Increasingly, I realized I didn’t want to do that until retirement. Ironically, this all came to fruition just before I was about to be promoted. I had a decision to make: Switch careers, go back to school, make a lot less money, and MAYBE be happier, or stay with what I know and mostly enjoy, continue to move up in the company, and provide for my family in the way that was working? My wife, Monica, was the one who pushed me to the former.

I didn’t recognize it initially, but Monica sensed an increasing dissatisfaction, tension, and uneasiness that she attributed to my work. With her unwavering support, and some good advice from our counselor, I decided to reduce my hours at work and simultaneously start a counseling master’s program beginning as a non-degree seeking student. If I hated my classes, I could always stop and I wouldn’t throw away my engineering career. This decision did keep me from getting promoted though. While this was difficult, I was consoled by fact that I loved my classes. I found psychology fascinating in a way I had never experienced learning before. After a year of riding the fence, I decided to retire from engineering in 2021, 27 years earlier than expected, and enroll as a full time graduate student at age 38. Here I was, a middle aged nonworking student with four children, a wife, and a mortgage. Thankfully, my wife never wavered in her support and we were lucky enough that her job and our savings were able to support us through this transition. She often says, “At least your midlife crisis wasn’t a car or another woman.”

Fast forward to 2024, I was simultaneously graduating from Denver Seminary with a Master of Arts in Counseling and starting my own private practice counseling business out of our home. We turned our front office into a therapy room. As if learning a new profession wasn’t enough, learning how to start a business at the same time was challenging! I am so thankful to all my professors, colleagues, and family (my sister designed the therapy room and my sister-in-law designed my website) who supported me though this. I could not have done it without them. Most importantly, I am thankful for my wife who recognized my new meaning and purpose and pushed our family in this new direction.

Looking back, I am very grateful for the decisions we made, but don’t get me wrong, the decision was scary. Terrifying actually. Relearning to read text books, writing papers, and taking exams while juggling kids’ school schedules, sports schedules, laundry, and grocery store wasn’t easy. Watching our savings account dwindle wasn’t easy. And starting a counseling business with only one client and having only two sessions in the first month wasn’t easy. Thankfully, the business gained some traction and has grown to about half the clientele that I envision for now. New opportunities are presenting themselves and I am hopeful that the business will continue to grow.

People often ask, why’d you do it? What made you change careers? The real answer feels like this was something I was always supposed to do. God gave me a burning desire to better the world, to help improve the lives of those who I come in to contact with. I am so thankful he called me into the counseling profession. I feel meaning, I feel purpose, and I feel like I’m making a difference in people’s lives. This is a profession that I do not see myself retiring from. And as it turns out, I am 42 now, and 38 doesn’t feel that old after all.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about David Hall Counseling, PLLC?
I am the owner of David Hall Counseling, PLLC which provides mental health counseling services for adults at any stage of life. I specialize in men’s issues, couples counseling (including premarital counseling), and parenting counseling. I primarily see adults because my working hours are school hours as I drop off and pick up my kids from school. While it might be easy to see these as three separate specialties, they are closely related. Many of the men I see are struggling with relationship issues of some sort, which ties closely with couples counseling. Some of the couples I see already have children or are considering having children, which ties closely with parenting counseling. Many parents that come see me also have relationship concerns. All of these specialties are ultimately concerned with social and family connections, speciffically emotional connections. Cultivating strong, healthy emotional connections is what makes us human and what gives life its meaning and purpose.

The thing that I am most passionate about is teaching about emotions. Why do we have emotions? How do they work? Can I get them to go away? Are they different for men and women? I love explaining why our emotions exist, what they mean, why they are important in our lives, and how we can learn to interpret them in a way that helps us to live more meaningful lives. Ultimately, emotions give us information that we can use to make choices that can help better our lives and I love teaching how to do this.

Alongside my wife, our longer term plan, call it a 5 years plan, is to create or present at parenting workshops. Our motto is, “Bad parenting is easy; Good parenting is hard; Great parenting is exhausting.” One of the motivations for me embarking on this second career was so that we could give something meaningful back to the world. If we can help parents to become better parents, then they will raise their kids in a more healthy environments. That in turn will give their children a leg up when they start their own families. Our hope is that by helping parents now, they can pass that along to their children and will positively affect our community for generations to come.

Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
If you find this relevant:

We threw ourselves into the fire of parenting. Our oldest son is 13, we have identical twin daughters who are 12, and our youngest son is 10. This means we had three under 2 and four under 4. All four of our children will be in high school and college at the same time for one year. I joking tell my daughters that they are not allowed to get married in the same year unless they want to have a joint wedding.

My wife is currently in graduate school, too. In my last year of my counseling program, my wife started an online MBA program with the hope that her degree could open some doors for her to move up in her profession (pharmacy).

I would not allow our family to have pets because our lives were busy enough already. However, my wife was able to talk me into getting a dog this year. I agreed to it with the stipulation that he would become a therapy dog. As such, we purchased a full breed Havanese and have been training him diligently so he can pass his Canine Good Citizen (CGC) exam in February to become a certified therapy dog. Our daughter named him “Mogul” after a snow skiing mogul because his fur is white and he bounces around the grass like a mogul skier.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.DavidHallCounseling.com