Carly Smith

Carly (she/her) is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist who has worked in academic medicine, community mental health, and university settings. She enjoys bringing her researcher side into her clinical work and looks for ways to get evidence-based medicine to those it has typically neglected, particularly sexual and gender minorities clients. In her previous work as a medical school professor, she taught courses on LGBTQ+ healthcare and trauma-informed care. Carly’s experiences up until this point studying and teaching about harm and healing in different types of institutions have led her to private practice where she can be a part of the healing more often.

In her therapy practice, Carly specializes in treating complex traumatic stress and dissociative disorders and in working with individuals who have experienced interpersonal or institutional betrayal. She is deeply trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Prolonged Exposure Therapy for PTSD and generally has a (warm, creative, and irreverent) behaviorist approach to most things. As a queer woman, it is particularly meaningful work to Carly when she can help fellow sexual and gender minority folks heal from chronic invalidation and other traumas. In learning Radically Open DBT, Carly has found that long-lost piece of the Over-Controlled puzzle and (mostly) delights in connecting to her own OC experiences as a means to help others more genuinely.

Carly is a Chicagoland native but has lived and learned all over the United States (and ever-so-briefly, the south of France), earning degrees in various sorts of psychology at the University of Illinois, Wake Forest University, the University of Oregon, and Yale School of Medicine. Of all of those, she has only ever returned to one – Oregon. She is equally excited to introduce her "dogter" June to Portland and all of nature as she is to join the Abri team.

To contact Carly directly, email [email protected].