Clare Sarsony

Warm, Experiential Care for the Small Steps That Build Change

If you’re navigating anxiety, OCD, executive functioning challenges, or a life transition that’s leaving you uncertain about what comes next, Clare offers a collaborative space to explore what “better” looks like on your terms. Her work is grounded in a simple belief: you are the expert on your own life, and therapy moves forward through partnership rather than prescription. Clare provides therapy for clients located in Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Clinical Focus

Clare works with clients managing anxiety and OCD, offering psychoeducation, practical tools, and evidence-based strategies for reducing the compulsive and anxious patterns that narrow daily life. Her training in I-CBT (Inference-Based Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy) gives her a specialized approach to OCD that helps clients understand and challenge the reasoning patterns that fuel obsessive doubts—reducing symptoms while building a more flexible, self-trusting relationship with your own mind.

Many of Clare’s clients come to therapy during pivotal life transitions—starting college, shifting careers, navigating a breakup, stepping into new roles, or figuring out who they are outside of old expectations. She also supports clients with executive functioning challenges, helping people build structure, manage overwhelm, and develop strategies that align with how their brain actually works. Clare’s approach is neurodiversity-affirming, honoring different ways of processing and moving through the world.

Clare helps clients build healthier boundaries and communication strategies for stronger relationships—with partners, family members, friends, and themselves. For parents, she offers parent coaching grounded in her child-therapy experience and Theraplay training: practical, relationship-focused support for parents navigating the emotional complexity of raising children with mental health or developmental needs. She also provides family counseling for families working through communication breakdowns and the strain that accumulates across generations.

Clare’s work extends to clients navigating depression, trauma and PTSD, grief and loss, and other significant emotional challenges. Her practice is LGBTQ+ affirming and welcoming to clients whose identities—cultural, relational, or otherwise—are central to how they show up in the world, with attention to incorporating the things that matter most to you into the fabric of what we work on together.

Therapeutic Approach

Clare’s therapeutic approach is person-centered and trauma-informed, built around the belief that clients are the experts on their own lives. She integrates cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, motivational interviewing, solution-focused brief therapy, and attachment-based framing—drawing on what each client actually needs rather than fitting everyone to a single approach. Her specialized trainings in I-CBT for OCD and Theraplay for parent-child work give her additional tools for the distinct challenges those areas bring.

Clare brings warm energy, humor, and directness into the room—what she thinks of as bringing real realness into therapy. She uses creative and experiential techniques when clients need more than talk therapy to move through something, and she collaborates with you to identify small, concrete steps that can create real change in daily life. Change looks different for everyone, and Clare’s job is to walk that path alongside you.

Background, Education & Experience

Clare earned her M.A. in Counseling Psychology from Towson University and holds specialized training in I-CBT for OCD and in Theraplay for attachment-focused parent-child work. Her clinical experience spans individual work with teens and adults, family counseling, parent coaching, and the integration of creative and experiential techniques that help clients process what words alone can’t always reach.

Clare’s extensive experience with child therapy informs how she supports parents—giving her a practitioner’s view of what children actually experience in treatment and what families need to sustain growth between sessions. Across all of her work, Clare emphasizes meeting clients where they are, incorporating what matters most to each person—culture, family, values, life stage—into the fabric of what therapy becomes.