Carly Poloskey

I am a licensed mental health counselor (FL), board-certified music therapist, mental health advocate, and all-around creative soul who has been serving in healthcare and mental health settings for over ten years. I believe that healing happens not only through insight and understanding, but also through creativity, connection, and the courage to fully experience our emotional lives.

My clinical experience spans a continuum of care, including inpatient, residential, partial hospitalization (PHP), intensive outpatient (IOP), and outpatient settings. Over the course of my career, I have worked with neurodivergent youth, individuals experiencing acute psychiatric concerns, families navigating medical crises, and adults facing complex mental health challenges. I previously worked in psycho-oncology at Cleveland Clinic Florida, supporting patients and families impacted by cancer and serious illness. Most recently, I served as a Primary Therapist at Galen Hope, providing treatment for individuals with complex eating disorders and co-occurring mental health concerns.

My therapeutic approach is integrative, grounded in humanistic-existential and feminist frameworks, and I strive to embody my core values of justice, curiosity, and openness in every aspect of my work. I view therapy as a collaborative process that honors both personal experience and the broader cultural, relational, and systemic contexts that shape our lives.

I am especially passionate about working with intellectualizers—people who are highly insightful, analytical, and self-aware, yet often find themselves disconnected from their emotions or bodies. While understanding ourselves is important, meaningful growth often requires moving beyond cognitive insight and into felt experience. Through creative, experiential, and embodied approaches, I help clients cultivate a deeper connection to their emotions, inner wisdom, and authentic selves.

Your first session is really about getting to know each other — no pressure to have everything figured out or "presented" perfectly. We'll talk through what's bringing you to therapy right now, what you've already tried, and what you're hoping feels different. I'll ask about your history, but just as much I want to understand how you experience your day-to-day life: where the perfectionism, people-pleasing, or overthinking shows up, and what it's costing you.

I also like to give you a sense of how I actually work — that this isn't just going to be talk therapy in the traditional sense. If it feels relevant, I might introduce how creative or music-based tools could fit into our work together, but there's zero obligation to jump into that right away. Some clients want to ease in slowly, and that's completely fine.

By the end of the session, my goal is for you to leave with a clearer sense of whether I'm the right fit for you, and for us to have a loose plan for what we'll focus on early on. You're always in the driver's seat — I'll follow your pace, not the other way around.