Sandy Hillhouse
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (#48818)
Sandy received her Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California. Sandy has been counseling children, adolescents, and adults for nearly 13 years in a variety of settings including agencies, schools, and private practice. Sandy's passion and specialty is DBT for adults, adolescents, young adults and their families. In addition to DBT, Sandy offers Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness-based Therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Trauma-focused CBT, EMDR, and Prolonged Exposure Therapy.
Sandy is intensively-training in DBT, completing her DBT Intensive Training with Marsha Linehan, Ph.D., ABPP developer of DBT, and Shari Manning, PhD. Sandy has over ten years experience delivering adherent, evidenced-based DBT to adults, adolescents, young adults and their families Sandy attends weekly DBT consultation team meetings with other DBT trained trained therapists and conduits with National DBT Experts. Sandy is committed to ongoing training in DBT and has completed multiple additional DBT training courses through leading DBT training organizations. Courses include DBT Advanced Training for working with Complex Clients, DBT with Multi-Problem Adolescents, Individual Psychotherapy in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Treating Anxiety Disorders in Multi-Problem Clients with BPD: How, When, & Why to Use Exposure Procedures in DBT.
In addition to her DBT work, Sandy has completed advanced training in Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) and is pleased to offer this modality to select non-DBT clients who are working with Treatment Resistant Depression and Anxiety.
Sandy's work is informed by her experience at EMQ, the largest social service agency in Santa Clara, California where she worked as a therapist with adolescents and their families in a residential treatment facility as well as in a highly therapeutic school based program. Prior to that, sandy worked for five years at The Bill Wilson Center in Santa Clara, Ca counseling counseling adults, couples and adolescents with a wide variety of psychological issues .
Sandy has consulted with Bay Area mental health agencies on DBT, high tech companies, and she is a member of California Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT) and Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT).
Sandy lives in the Bay Area with her partner, and they are fortunate to have been adopted by several adorable rescue terriers. Sandy enjoys traveling, reading, learning, cooking, spending time in nature, and all things animals.
