We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dr. Danielle Delaney a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Dr. Danielle , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

One of the defining moments that led to my creation of Plan D Wellness & Recovery was when I sent one of my staff Nurses, who is also a Wellness Concierge/Sober Companion, to stay with a longtime client in Florida. The client was experiencing so many health difficulties, and relapsing into her depression as well as her alcoholism. The stumbling blocks this client kept encountering were things that could not be dealt with during her inpatient stay at a fantastic rehab facility – her issues were problems at home, with multiple doctors that were overmedicating her and not conferring with one another about what meds the client was taking, as well as her loneliness and inability to follow through on activities, projects and hobbies that would enrich her life.

Under my supervision, the talented RN that I sent was able to attend medical appointments with the client, speak with her doctors about contraindications in her medication plan, add holistic healing activities like yoga and meditation to the client’s program, and curate a program of learning hobbies, socializing and other wellness activities for the client. Some Reiki, music therapy, art therapy, hypnotherapy, exercise, and some time spent learning new ways to entertain herself proved to be a missing piece in the client’s healing, as well as discovering that she didn’t tolerate the overprescribed benzos well and her doctors needed to titrate/taper them. They were adding to her anxiety. The client greatly improved as these changes were implemented. None of this would have been possible in any environment other than her own home – we needed to see how she lived at home in order to create a bespoke program for her. Her gratitude as her life circumstances improved was a true turning point – I recognized that while getting stabilized as an inpatient is sometimes absolutely necessary, privatized and personalized in-home care is an extension of that when all other plans have fallen short of success. In some cases, privatized care can take the place of other modalities. Thus, I created Plan D.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I wish I could say that my businesses were born from something “warm and fuzzy” but the truth is very much the opposite. I went through extreme trauma, violence, and crisis myself and survived it, and that’s really where this story begins.

Back in 2005 and 2007, I was the victim of random violent crimes. Drugged, kidnapped, raped, beaten to the point of being unrecognizable, stomped on, and thrown from a moving car – this horror is where it began. My life as I knew it was forever altered, and I wrote about what exactly occurred and recovering from it in my book that was published in 2017 “Expect Delays: How To Reclaim Your Life, Light, and Soul After Trauma”. More info can be found at ExpectDelaysBook.com. My book details how I healed. I am living proof that it can be accomplished, and I wanted to help in the healing of others.

Coming from a very comfortable upbringing, being the daughter of a beautiful talented sculptor and a celebrated doctor & musician really wasn’t going to save me now – I had wanted for nothing growing up, and had led a fairly charmed life in most ways, up until that point. Violence is the great equalizer – I had to work extremely hard to heal excessive pains both physical and emotional, and to work through diagnosed severe PTSD – and my psych undergrad from UCLA became both useful and necessary.

In the aftermath, I was exposed to just how futile the system is for victims of crime, including how hard it is to find Counseling for that particular circumstance. Imagine that you’ve just been through rape, one of the worst things imaginable, and specialized help is hard to find. I really wanted to change that, and so I have…I went back to school to learn to assist and counsel Special Victims (rape victims, adults molested as children, violent crime survivors, trafficking survivors), and came to the realization that addiction is a very close cousin of trauma – nearly everyone on the other end of the rape and suicide hotlines, which I worked at all hours, was self-medicating. When I did an internship working with forensic nurses and police, holding the hands of rape victims as we interviewed them at hospitals immediately following their trauma, it became even more evident. Survivors were using substances to cope and often could not find their way back to themselves. Believe me, I knew that territory personally, and far too well. So, I did more training to specialize in trauma and addiction recovery. This led to my private Counseling practice after working with shelters and SART (Sexual Assault Response Team with the police department) for years and seeing the very worst of it, and hearing from people that could not find support. I became more and more passionate about this work, as well as about the existential question “Why me?” – which I, along with every man and woman victimized, have asked. That led me to study and earn doctorates in both Theology and Divinity, as so many feel spiritually bankrupt as our lives have been irreversibly altered by events beyond our control. I became a Spiritual Counselor and Crisis Interventionist. This meant that I also volunteered with seminaries, clinics, and shelters, trained to perform addiction interventions as well, and have performed them for over a decade, globally. I’m the youngest person, and the ONLY Black woman or woman of color to own a Sober Companioning business in the United States of America, and I have to be proud of that fact.

I now own my counseling practice as well as my Sober Companioning business and have a large staff of incredible companions, nurses, therapists, counselors, and coaches that I have sent to my clientele worldwide since 2012. My company collaborates with over 60 rehabs in Malibu as well as around the globe. I also own Plan D®️ Wellness and Recovery, which provides care and support using various modalities for those who, for a variety of reasons, need to do their recovery and healing privately. More information about these services can be found at DanielleDelaneyCounseling.com. Lastly, I also work in film and television on set, providing performers with the skill set to portray trauma on various series or shows (such as Dexter) and I’m training in the field of Intimacy Coordinator which became very important in light of the #MeToo movement to which I am connected. I also work in the area of teaching DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) on set, and also in the workplace for corporations, and I do public speaking and appearances for organizations. These organizations are as varied as the Beverly Hills West Chapter of The Links Inc., who recently gave me the loveliest award for speaking, The American Heart Association, Immaculate Heart High School (Meghan Markle’s alma matter, where I spoke to the graduating class of young women about defining your own identity), The Minority Health Institute of which I am also a Board member, and the L.A. LGBTQ Center where I had a speaking engagement for trans youth recently. I host an international podcast called “The Real Deal with Dr. Danielle Delaney” and have interviewed everyone from movie stars, influencers, and doctors about trauma, life stages, and healing. I do this work under my other company, Delangerous Productions (DelangerousProductions.com). I still enjoy commercial work or print work/appearing in ads (I recently appeared as a National Spokesperson in a Soberlink commercial, alongside the famed superstar divorce attorney Laura Wasser) and enjoy doing voiceover work, too. I worked in entertainment for 20 years before my life was so rudely and brutally interrupted by violent crime. I’m currently represented by Sumer Park of The Park Agency.

I do a lot of things with my work, and never, ever feel bored with any of it, as it’s a constant influx of new people and new situations. I’m truly engaged in and in love with my work! It may sound like depressing fields of work to some, but consider this…it’s either teaching inclusion, or teaching coping skills and healing suffering and making a forever impact that actually matters for someone at the worst time in their lives.

What could possibly be more rewarding than that?

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

My advice for managing a team and maintaining high morale is to be very careful and mindful of whom you hire in the first place, and then, treat them extremely well and with respect. I am reachable for my staff, and I find that when I take excellent care of them, they will take excellent care of my clients without question! I train them well and thoroughly so they know what to do in all situations, and they can also reach me when necessary. I also like to pay them in an expedient manner, as I know that I always liked to be paid promptly and treated with respect when I worked hard for others a decade and a half ago. Treat your staff as you would like to be treated, and their efforts to succeed multiply in a way that is good for the client’s well-being as well as good for my company. I like to keep things simple and streamlined, and let my team know that I trust them or I would never have hired them. I don’t helicopter over them and micromanage; nobody appreciates that. Vetting exceptional lawyers, accountants and business managers and assistants has been extremely helpful to my success, it takes a village. Ask for help and support when needed, and never make the mistake of thinking that you know everything! There’s a learning curve in owning businesses, just like anything else. Managing a team is seamless if you treat them well and are honest with them. I feel that all people want to feel understood and supported and respected, so its my goal to have my staff feel that coming from me.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Building a reputation in the addiction and recovery healthcare space truly boils down to just a few things: honesty, stability, discretion, responsibility, reciprocity, and respect. There are thousands of facilities and practitioners to choose from in this space – reputation is everything. Anytime I hear of careless or reckless clinicians in an organization, I step away from any collaboration. Those of us who are stable, supportive of the industry as a whole, and thoughtful of others in the field are going to fare better than those not possessing those traits. Mental and physical health go hand in hand – the facilities that I collaborate with are the ones with stellar reputations and where I know that the clinical team is excellent. In turn, those facilities send clients in my direction, and I send clients to them when they need to detox and stabilize before ever attempting any in-home or privatized care. I believe that establishing a mutual respect with the teams at hundreds of facilities has led to a spotless reputation for my business, and its been hard-earned and very deserved. My staff and I make a concerted effort to do the right thing in all circumstances when it comes to client care. That should take importance above anything else.

Contact Info:

• Website: DanielleDelaneyCounseling.com
• Instagram: @DaniDelaney
• Facebook: Facebook.com/DanielleDelaneyCounselingInc
• Linkedin: Linkedin/DanielleWilliamsDelaney
• Twitter: itsdanidelaney
• Other: ExpectDelaysBook.com DelangerousProductions.com

Image Credits
Photo Credit: Jon Abeyta Photography