L. Kathryn (Katie) Smith, MSW, LCSW, RPT

Background

Katie's approach to therapy is grounded in the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) theory underlying EMDR therapy and is also informed by interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB), attachment theory, and cognitive-behavioral theories. Above all, therapy with Katie is relational, individualized, strengths-based, and collaborative.

She began her career of now over 25 years with child survivors of sexual abuse - providing individual and group therapy and accompanying children and families to court. From there, she began working with the adoption and fostering communities in clinical, case management, supervision, and program development roles. Over the years, people shared profound stories of the impact of loss and trauma on their relational and mental health and on their ability to form cohesive and complete individual and family identities. Katie founded Arbor Cove Therapy, LLC, out of a deep desire to help these individuals and families navigate the unique aspects of their lives fully welcomed, validated, joined, and equipped in their journey.

What began as a specialization in mental health needs related to adoption, disenfranchised grief, and ambiguous loss expanded through additional experience and training to include working with other kinds of trauma in addition to complex developmental trauma (shock or single-incident trauma, traumatic grief, religious trauma, and vicarious trauma / secondary traumatic stress), anxiety, depression, prolonged grief, chronic stress, life transitions, and attachment injuries.

In addition to her work with children and families, Katie loves spending time with:

• Adult women of all ages feeling anxiety, depression, and/or accumulated losses and life transitions catch up with them in their personal or professional lives and wanting freedom from their past and a renewed life story and purpose; and

• Parents recognizing relational wounds in their own history and wanting to experience healing and recovery in order to work a new story for themselves and their families.

Training & Associations

Katie earned a Master of Social Work from The University of Georgia in 2001 and was licensed by the state of Georgia as a clinical social worker in 2005 (#CSW003510). In addition to in-person counseling with Georgia residents, she provides online therapy to people in Georgia and Florida (provider registration #179). She is a fully certified EMDR therapist and a registered play therapist (RPT).

The therapy models Katie has been trained in and uses include:

• Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR);

• Eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR);

• Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and trauma-focused CBT (TF-CBT);

• Several frameworks of play therapy (Theraplay (R), child-centered play therapy, filial play therapy, Adlerian play therapy);

• Frameworks of parent coaching & support (Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) (R), Circle of Security Parenting, and Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions - SPACE);

• Exposure and response prevention (ERP);

• Internal family systems (IFS);

• Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT);

• Sandtray and other expressive arts therapies; and

• ARC (Attachment, Regulation, and Competency).

She is a Circle of Security Parenting (TM) facilitator and has completed both the practitioner and camp trainings in Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) (R), and the 18 month-long Training for Adoption Competency (TAC) initiative of the Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.).

Active memberships in professional associations:

EMDR International Association (EMDRIA)

Association for Play Therapy (APT)

Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) Practitioners Community Membership