Diane Hilleary, LCSW

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United States
Atlanta, GA
Diane Hilleary, LCSW

Psychotherapist & Intuition Coach ✨
Supporting you to create a safe home inside yourself. Blending psychotherapy, spirituality, and neuroscience.

Let’s dance outside the lines! 💃🏻 With the right kind of support, meaningful change is possible. I know it takes a lot of courage to reach out for help and therefore I want to make sure you get what you need. With that in mind, I tailor my therapeutic approach to each individual and will work with you to develop goals for your therapy. My work is grounded in the belief that everyone deserves to be heard and understood and understanding is the first step to change. I believe through supportive therapy, you can live differently and experience life in a more peaceful and fulfilling way. I specialize in providing individual and family therapy for adolescents and adults with eating disorders, addiction, self harm, anxiety, and depression. I am intensively trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy and enjoy its focus on mindfulness and connecting the dots between feelings, thoughts and actions. I am passionate about helping girls and women find their inner wisdom and strength, overcome self-hatred, shame and guilt, and learn how to speak up and get what they need.

10/05/2025

Tune Into You is my twice weekly meditation and energy healing circle designed to help you begin and end your week feeling grounded, connected, and clear. This is joyful medicine for your sensitive soul—a space to soften, tune inward, and be exactly as you are.✨

A common theme members have shared is the connection and support they feel when they meditate in a group setting. Sharing after the practice is optional, but it's often a profound time of understanding, support, and healing.✨

We meet Monday and Friday mornings, and show up as we are, where we are. If you are looking for a safe space for connection and support, head to the link in the bio and join us in Tune Into You!✨

09/27/2025

👧🏻This week I took my inner child for a walk in the woods. I came upon this beautiful deer, and I paused and started singing and playfully chattering to the deer. We stood there in communion together for a long number of minutes. The deer fluttered their ears and wagged their tail and I took so much delight in the connection! My energy felt lifted, my soul was fed and from that place of delight my eyes began to see faces in the trees. I sang and chatted to them as well. What fun! 🧚‍♂️
🧠My science brain knows that joy, delight, and connection are powerful nervous system regulators and therefore critically needed for me to keep myself grounded as the world rumbles around us all. But I often struggle with actually dropping in to my body and into the present moment - and these are the only places to experience connection and delight. 🪾🦌 So I’m off to print some pics of the deer and the friendly trees and hang them on my wall in my rotating collection of photo reminders of moments like these that I want to savor, celebrate, and create more of.
😊 And if you’ve read this far I’m sending you a spark of joy and a smile as the trees smile out at you. ✨

09/25/2025

🌿 Sometimes the simplest medicine is to pause.
To notice the crunch of sand under my feet, the soft breeze on my cheeks, the warmth of the sun on my skin.

When I bring my awareness here, into my body and into the living world around me, I can place a hand on my heart and remind myself:
✨ I am safe enough to soften. ✨

Our nervous systems are wired to scan for danger. The stories in our heads can keep us braced, contracted, and far away from the present moment. But nature invites us back—to soften, to settle, to remember safety is here, right now.

💗 Try it: step outside, slow down, and let your body meet the world around you. Then see what shifts inside.

👉 What’s your favorite nature spot to practice presence?

09/18/2025

💧 Tears are not weakness—they are wisdom.

So often I hear clients apologize for crying.

But here’s the truth: crying is not a flaw to fix. It’s a function of your nervous system. Emotional tears release stress hormones, activate your body’s calming response, and help regulate your system.

When you hold back or insult yourself for crying, you’re asking your body to carry what it’s trying to let go of. When you allow tears, you’re giving yourself a reset.

✨ Tears are sacred medicine.
✨ Grief deserves space.
✨ Your body knows what it’s doing.

When we see our tears as an invitation to listen more deeply, they can offer surprising information and sacred wisdom.

👉 How do you hold space for your tears?

09/15/2025

The retreat is designed to create connection that you can carry with you even after you leave. We live in turbulent times and we all need a tool box full of resources to help ourselves access inner steadiness, comfort and co-regulating connection. That is why we include ritual, song, play, laughter, and compassionate authentic sharing in circle. When you have an experience of being held and seen, it creates a body memory you can use to support yourself in the future. Come let yourself Be Held and we'll equip you to take it with you when you leave. ✨🌿💞

Sing up before 11:59 TONIGHT (9/15) to get 10% off with code BEHELD. 🔗 in bio!

09/12/2025

Come Be Held in community on retreat this November. Join us for inner child healing, joy as medicine, and rest as resistance.
• Come solo or with a friend—either way, you’ll be welcomed.
• Authenticity, play, and belonging are vulnerable and we circle with that in mind.
• Sensitivity is honored here! We move slowly, with consent and rest.
Leave a comment, or send a message, with any other questions you have.✨
Early Bird discount ends Sept 15 at 11:59pm ET. Use code BEHELD for 10% off!
👉 Claim your spot: 🔗 in bio

09/08/2025

This is me practicing self-compassion in real time. Over the past year I have been paying close attention to the different parts of me that have big feelings and trying to offer them the love and support I would want my friends to feel when they are hurting. I was on a beautiful hike with a beautiful person and I had a moment of feeling hurt and angry. The feelings were a bit stuck and I couldn’t shake them even after the conflict repair. Then I noticed a part that was getting mad at me for “ruining a fun adventure”. That part was was an old story telling me that I “always” ruin the fun with my big feelings. So I said I needed a moment to pause alone and I tapped into the support of nature around me and the love I’ve been cultivating within my own Self. I sat with my feelings with love and they appreciated it. My hurt and angry parts often feel like children having a tantrum - in need of a lot of tenderness and attention - and I’m trying to learn how to give it to them. ❤️Sending love from my big feelings to yours.

09/07/2025

Healing can be tender and playful! That’s the magic of circling with like-hearted women: depth without the heaviness, softness with real momentum. ✨
Be Held includes 3 nights lodging, nourishing meals (including GF/veg/DF options!), sharing circles, movement, song, and nature rituals.
Early Bird ends Sept 15. Use code BEHELD for 10% off!
Leave any questions you have below or message me!
👉 Save your spot: 🔗 in bio!

09/04/2025

Hi all, here is another mini practice for you! It involves imagining sunlight streaming into the crown of your head to soften and soothe you and clear your energy. This practice can be used to help you relax before bed or shift your energy during a stressful moment in the day. You can set an intention before starting the practice to clear away any energy that doesn’t align with you. Clearing our energy or “energy hygiene” is needed daily just like brushing our teeth. You can do it in 2.5 mins with this simple practice. Once you’ve tried it a few times and made it your own, you can do it internally anywhere anytime. Clearing the energy from the day before bed is a great habit to experiment with and see how it feels to you. As you do the practice, some people will feel sensations as the light moves through; others might see the light visually flowing inside them. Initially when I first started learning about energy I couldn’t sense it or see it but with practice overtime I became able to do both. I’d love to hear what you notice when you try it!

Address

Atlanta, GA

Telephone

+16787017246

Website

http://www.dianehilleary.com/

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Our Story

Welcome and thanks for visiting our page! Atlanta Center for Self-Compassion (ACSC) provides individual and group therapy, workshops and courses. ACSC founder, Diane Hilleary, LCSW, CEDS-S, has been teaching mindfulness and emotion regulation skills for over 10 years. She is passionate about teaching these skills and believes in their potential for healing and change.

In private practice, Diane provides psychotherapy for individuals, families and groups with a specialization in women's issues, eating disorders, anxiety, and depression. She is trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC). She has been involved in the Atlanta chapter of the International Association of Eating Disorders (iaedp) since its formation in 2014 and is currently the President.

Diane says, “In 2016 I read the book Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff and was excited by her research on the benefits of self-compassion. The skills and practices in her book are very similar to the skills I was teaching in my DBT groups. I knew right away that I wanted to learn as much as I could about self-compassion so I could share these skills with my clients and larger groups. In 2017 I completed the Mindful Self-Compassion course and teacher training. I have taught several rounds of MSC and am on the road to becoming a certified teacher.

I founded the Atlanta Center for Self-Compassion because I believe so strongly in the profound transformative power of the MSC program. All of us struggle with an inner critic that nags us about all the ways we are falling short. Our brain is even evolutionarily designed to pay close attention to these negative thoughts. Mindful self-compassion can be a critical step in emotional healing—being able to befriend oneself, turn inwardly and acknowledge our difficult thoughts and feelings with a spirit of openness, curiosity and love, rather than self-judgment, or self-criticism.”