Allie Appenzeller, PsyD

For more than a decade, I have specialized in the assessment and treatment of OCD and anxiety disorders in children, adolescents, and adults, and in perinatal and women's mental health across the reproductive continuum. These are not separate interests: OCD frequently emerges or intensifies during pregnancy and postpartum, anxiety is among the most common complications of the perinatal period, and the women navigating these experiences deserve a clinician who understands the full landscape.

I work collaboratively with each client to understand exactly how OCD and anxiety are impacting their life, and then build a treatment plan around their individual needs. I adherently provide evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy, with a particular emphasis on exposure and response prevention (ERP). I strictly use interventions that research has shown to be effective, while maintaining a warm and compassionate approach to treatment.

I trained in the treatment of OCD and anxiety under some of the foremost experts in the field: through doctoral externships at the Capital Institute for Cognitive Therapy, Children's National Hospital, and MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, and then a predoctoral internship and NIH-funded postdoctoral fellowship in the OCD and Related Disorders Program at Baylor College of Medicine. I joined the Baylor faculty as an Assistant Professor, where I founded and directed the ARPA School Anxiety and School Refusal Program and supervised master's- and doctoral-level trainees in the OCD Program. Today I continue to serve as a Clinical Assistant Professor in that same program.

Two areas of this work are especially close to me. School refusal is one of the most misunderstood presentations in child and adolescent mental health: almost always anxiety rather than defiance, and almost always made worse by the pressure and punishment that conventional responses reach for. That is why I built a program designed specifically around what the evidence shows works. And perinatal mental health is where I see the widest gap between what women experience and what the system offers them: from prenatal OCD through postpartum depression, postpartum OCD, birth trauma, and pregnancy loss, my aim is to close that gap one patient at a time.

What It's Like to Work With Me

People who have worked with me often say they felt understood before they understood how: that the thing they had been trying to explain to a partner, a previous therapist, or a pediatrician landed clearly and completely the first time they said it to me. I am genuinely, unreservedly interested in the specific person in front of me, not their diagnosis or their symptom checklist.

I am also direct. Caring and direct are not in tension: the clearest thing I can offer someone who is suffering is an honest understanding of what is maintaining it and what needs to change, said warmly, and with complete confidence that change is possible. If you are seeking specialized, evidence-based care for yourself or a loved one, I welcome the opportunity to explore whether working together would be a good fit.