Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to David Hampton. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, David thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

My parents both had a strong work ethic and demonstrated great resilience in their lives. They taught us to work hard at what we wanted and that anything worth having was worth working hard to accomplish. I learned a great deal from their approach to how they valued their reputations as committed, hardworking people in many facets of their lives. I had the opportunity to work with my dad when I was very young and I learned a great deal about fairness and taking pride in the level of excellence that went into the work we did. They were always very committed to the idea that more than anything else, being diligent and intentional about the work we do was of upmost importance. My parents demonstrated these values and didn’t simply preach them. I observed and absorbed much of the attributes I am credited with today from my parents.

David, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I received my certification in recovery care work in 2016 and began working in private practice almost immediately. I was invited to be a part of a wonderful group of practitioners in the Brentwood, TN area and it allowed me to interact with a great group of supportive people who taught me a great deal about how to set up a practice from a business standpoint as well as helping me network and share my vision for a particular type of recovery care that I believe made my work a bit more personal and tailored to each individual’s unique story and circumstances.

As the author of two books and a person who has shared my own journey into sobriety very publicly (I even cohost a podcast entitled, The Positive Sobriety Podcast with my recovering friend, Nate Larkin), I was no stranger to the fears and vulnerability that these new potential clients feel. I got into this field because I found myself spending more and more time in recovery networks helping various groups understand addiction, speaking to various communities about recovery, and working in more and more involved roles with families and those who struggle. I realized early on that some of the modalities that are commonplace in the realm of treatment are often inadequate when it comes to addressing the full needs of a person who is suffering from addiction or a compulsive, unwanted behavior.

I eventually became exposed to more training in the areas of the brain and trauma, mental health, and how cooccurring disorders work into the area of addiction recovery making it nearly impossible to get sober unless all aspects of mental health are being addressed. It has allowed me to embrace a number of other modalities such as neurofeedback and medically assisted treatment in order to offer a more “multi-pronged approach” to recovery. We have to treat the whole story being told and each client is a story to be heard and not a problem to be solved. Families are a part of the story and I also offer my time to family members, partners, spouses, etc to help them learn how to embrace the recovery plan with their loved one.

When a client comes to me they are getting a person who has been there, and a person who understands the uniqueness that those contemplating the nature of their relationship to a substance or an unwanted behavior feel. Giving up a substance or a behavior is like ending a long relationship. There is grief, pain, fear, and often a lot of going back for more until we become ultimately convinced that this entity is no longer working for us.

I am able to help individuals assess whether or not inpatient treatment might be right for them, offer them some options from a network of trusted providers as well as refer them to other mental health professionals when appropriate. Many of my clients opt for a more intensive approach that I can set up for them that may not include inpatient treatment but would offer them far more in the area of individual sessions than they would receive in most traditional treatment centers. With tools such as working with me on the cause and origins of the behavior, a treatment modality such as those offered by Tennessee NeuroFeedback, and often additional trauma work with a trauma therapist we have seen incredible results with very positive outcomes.

I was able to get sober in 2005 with the help of a support group program, an addiction counselor i saw very frequently and regularly, and a strong network of recovering friends. Beyond that, I didn’t know where to turn for specific help defining a care plan, what the better treatment options were, where the better facilities that might meet my unique needs might be, etc.. It was in my time one-on-one with my addiction therapist that I began to discover a great deal about myself that on one level seemed to have nothing to do with my relationship to alcohol and on another. seemed to explain everything about how i landed in the experience I was having with it. I was able to connect the dots and see that it was all a part of the same problem.

I am now in a small group of practitioners in Brentwood called, Journey Partners where we, still working as individual practitioners can share our specific areas of emphasis on shared cases when appropriate. We consist of a trauma and family therapist, a nurse practitioner who is also able to offer genetic testing which is very helpful in assessing potential medication outcomes, and myself and my work regarding recovery and sobriety. I’m very excited about the prospects that we could offer multiple partners to one person who might otherwise be a poor fit for one single emphasis regarding their disorder.

What I want my clients to experience is feeling seen, heard, and known and to experience their recovery process as a journey that will be a marathon and not a sprint, but definitely worth the race. They can be assured that they will have my full support every step of the way.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When i realized that I was going to be making a career change, not just a job shift, I was in my early fifties. By the time I finished my certifications I was fifty-five years old. I had lived through my own addiction recovery story, been a caregiver to a spouse who was confined to a hospital bed in our home for the last seven years of her life, all while continuing to work and raise our daughter who was in her late teens by that time. After the death of my wife and my daughter’s moving out I found myself alone and very dissatisfied. My inclination was never to go back to drinking during that time but rather to find something that rekindled a passion in me to be a part of something that brought about change to individuals who wanted to experience true healing and wholeness. I was used to taking chances in many ways since I had an earlier career in music and had enjoyed two different songwriting deals with publishers in the late eighties and early nineties. I also had pitched books to publishers as I began to write about my recovery journey. Rejection didn’t rattle me but the idea of financially crashing did. Once I was eligible to start my own practice I had a severance that would last me about a year with additional savings from my wife’s life insurance. I decided that if I believed in my message I would dive in and take the chance to see what I could do in an entirely new vocation and open the practice I had talked about doing for years. Once I made the commitment to the path I would take I utilized the same networking skills I had learned in pursuing music as a career. I didn’t doubt how hard I was willing to work in order to make my practice one that I could be proud of because I believed in my message. I had done far harder things in my life than this, quite frankly. Caregiving is probably the most lonely role a person can have at times. Being replaced in jobs after long years of dedication is never easy to navigate. After those experiences and many others I realized that with the encouragement of good friends, generous colleagues, and a community of recovering families who cheered me on I felt empowered to tackle the unique challenges of starting a practice and hanging out my shingle.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think one of the important things was that I was able to share my story through speaking and writing for quite a while before embarking on working in recovery vocationally. I think that being diligent and devoted to my clients has served me well by building trust and a lot of relational equity with them. Many of my clients have come to me as a “word-of-mouth” referal quite often. This is highly relational work and it is extremely personal. I believe people know when we genuinely care and when they are just a client in a chair. I think having had a history of investing myself in certain care communities and recovery networks offered me the opportunity to build a certain reputation of sorts before ever starting in private practice.

Contact Info:

• Website: davidhamptoncprc.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidbhampton/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/david.hampton.1840
• Linkedin: David Hampton
• Twitter: @davidbhampton

Image Credits
Scousehouse Photography/Nashville, TN