About Therapist William Hemphill

Owner & Licensed Professional Counselor

Some people come to therapy because they’re struggling. Others come because they’re stuck, caught between the faith that shaped them and the pain that followed. If you’ve ever felt too wounded for church but too faithful for a purely secular therapist, you’ve found the right place.

I know that space. I’ve lived in it. I’ve sat in church leadership while carrying wounds the institution didn’t have language for. I’ve done my own hard work in the years since, and that journey is a significant part of what I bring into the room with you.

My Background

I didn’t take a straight road to the therapist’s chair. I spent over a decade as an electrical engineer before answering a call to ministry, and another decade in pastoral leadership and board-certified chaplaincy before earning my Master of Divinity from Candler School of Theology at Emory University, then adding a Master’s in Counseling to bridge the pastoral and clinical worlds.

Today I work primarily with adults, couples, and men navigating the intersection of faith, family, and personal healing, in person at my Decatur, GA office, virtually, or through concentrated multi-day marriage intensives.

What that path means for you is this: when you sit across from me, you’re not talking to someone who only knows your struggle from a textbook. You’re talking to someone who has preached and been wounded by the same institution. Who has walked hospital halls at 3am with families facing impossible decisions. Who understands what it costs to hold faith and doubt in the same hand.

I’ve completed 50+ marriage intensives and trained in EMDR, Gottman Level 1, and Emotionally Focused Therapy. I’ve also developed the Dignity Model, a framework built around a simple but often buried conviction: that beneath every destructive cycle, every wound, every pattern you can’t seem to break, there is a dignity in you that hasn’t been destroyed. The work is finding your way back to it.

What I Specialize In

Spiritual Trauma & Church Hurt— This is some of the most important work I do. When religious communities wound people, the damage cuts deep  into identity, into faith, into how people read their own story. That wound is just as real whether you’re navigating it alone or inside a relationship. Having spent 14 years inside institutional church, I understand how the place that was supposed to heal you can sometimes be the source of the wound. I specialize in helping people recover their faith without having to pretend the hurt didn’t happen  and without having to abandon the parts of their spiritual life that still feel true.

Couples & Marriage Therapy— Most couples who come to me aren’t just dealing with each other. They’re dealing with patterns that were running long before the two of them ever met, patterns that don’t yield to communication tips or date nights alone. I’ve been married for over 30 years, and I know what it looks like when two people who genuinely love each other still can’t stop wounding each other. My work goes underneath the conflict to what’s actually driving it.

Marriage Intensives — For couples who need more than an hour a week, I offer concentrated multi-day intensives designed to do in days what traditional therapy can take months to accomplish. This is my highest-impact work, and it’s built for couples who are serious about change and ready to do it now.

Men’s Counseling — A lot of men who find their way to my office aren’t sure therapy is for them. What they know is that something isn’t working in their marriage, their faith, their sense of purpose  and they’ve run out of ways to push through it alone. As a Black man who has navigated engineering, ministry, and mental health work, I understand that resistance. I also know what’s waiting on the other side of it, and I’m not interested in a therapy room where you have to shrink yourself to fit.