Barbara Castro, LCSW

Barbara Castro is an LCSW practicing in New York with 26 years of clinical experience. She helps people manage stress, anxiety, depression, relationship problems, grief, parenting challenges, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and self-esteem concerns. Her background includes work related to fertility and perinatal mood issues, and she brings personal insight to those topics.

Barbara keeps sessions straightforward and practical. She listens carefully and shapes therapy around each person's situation and goals. Sessions focus on improving coping skills, clarifying priorities, and developing tools that can be used between meetings.

Her approach blends Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), client-centered methods, and elements of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). That mix helps people change unhelpful thoughts, build emotional regulation skills, and feel understood. She aims to make strategies usable in daily life.

Over 26 years she has helped people facing a wide range of concerns beyond mood and anxiety, including caregiver stress, chronic illness, codependency, communication and control issues, divorce, infertility, and the effects of abandonment or shame. She draws on experience rather than strict recipes when planning work together.

Sessions are tailored to individual needs and may include skills practice, problem-focused planning, and paced discussions of difficult feelings. Barbara emphasizes respect, sensitivity, and steady support while helping clients move toward more manageable day-to-day living.

How CBT, Client-Centered Work, and DBT Help Online

Barbara uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice and change unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors. CBT is often used for anxiety, depression, and stress because it focuses on practical strategies and step-by-step change.

She also uses client-centered techniques that prioritize hearing each person's experience and shaping sessions around their needs. That approach helps people feel understood and guides what skills or topics to focus on next.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy elements offer concrete tools for emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and improving communication. Those skills can be helpful for intense mood swings, relationship conflict, or when emotions feel overwhelming.

Finding the right mix of approaches is part of the work. The therapist will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and what has or hasn’t helped in the past. Together they’ll try methods that fit and adjust them as progress is made.

Online therapy formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video lets people use visual cues for deeper conversation, phone can be easier when bandwidth is limited, live chat allows brief check-ins, and messaging supports ongoing reflection between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and varied lifestyles.