Sophie Bailowitz

Validating, Direct Care That Helps You Trust Your Own Voice

If overthinking, intrusive thoughts, or second-guessing feel like they’re running the show, Sophie offers grounded, evidence-based care that helps you build a different relationship with your thoughts—rather than fighting them head-on. Many of Sophie’s clients are self-aware, insightful people who can describe the pattern precisely yet still find themselves avoiding stressful situations, seeking reassurance, or feeling paralyzed when trying to make decisions. Sophie provides secure teletherapy for clients located in Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Clinical Focus

For clients navigating OCD and anxiety, Sophie provides evidence-based treatment using Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)—the gold-standard approach that helps you gradually face feared situations while reducing the compulsions, reassurance-seeking, and avoidance that keep the cycle going. Whether OCD shows up as relentless doubt, intrusive thoughts, contamination fears, rumination, or compulsive checking, her work focuses on building a different relationship with those thoughts and reducing the daily toll they take.

Sophie has a particular interest in working with couples who find themselves stuck in frustrating or painful patterns they don’t know how to break. Using the Gottman Method, Sophie helps partners slow these cycles down, understand what’s underneath them, and learn new ways of relating. Her couples work extends to infidelity recovery and the strain of parental burnout—holding space for hard conversations while keeping both partners engaged in the process. Sophie draws on her knowledge of the Gottman Method to help individuals facing relationship difficulties as well.

Sophie also supports clients managing depression, trauma and PTSD, and persistent low self-esteem—often in clinical pictures where these overlap with OCD or anxiety. For clients who’ve spent years prioritizing others’ expectations over their own instincts, therapy is a place to rebuild self-trust and practice trusting your own voice.

Therapeutic Approach

Sophie’s approach is collaborative and direct, grounded in a strong belief that clients are the experts on their own lives. She has specialized training in Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) for OCD and the Gottman Method for couples therapy, and draws additionally from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness- and acceptance-based practices, and emotion-focused approaches—matching the tools to what the client actually needs.

Sessions with Sophie feel steady and warm, with real room for both serious work and shared laughter. She brings empathy, thoughtful challenge, and a natural sense of humor into the room, inviting clients into a relationship that feels honest and alive.

Background, Education & Experience

Sophie earned her M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Towson University. Her clinical experience spans anxiety disorders, OCD, depression, and trauma and PTSD, along with couples navigating infidelity recovery and parental burnout.

Outside of sessions, Sophie takes her relaxation research seriously—always exploring new candles, aromatherapy, cozy blankets, crafts, and books, and treating self-care as an actual practice rather than an afterthought.