About Rachel
Rachel Bastien-Chilson is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with eleven years in mental healthcare. She helps people facing stress, anxiety, depression, grief, low self-esteem, and big life changes. Sessions are warm, straightforward, and paced to feel manageable for each person.
Rachel focuses on understanding what keeps someone stuck and on practical ways to shift those patterns. She moves slowly when needed and pushes for growth when the person is ready.
Background and approach
Humor and plain talk are part of how she connects, along with steady attention and honesty. Her practice draws on strengths people already have. Conversations look at present thoughts, feelings, and relationships, with parts of the past brought in when useful.
Therapy blends reflection with hands-on steps that can fit into day-to-day life. Rachel has experience in crisis work and long-term care settings across eleven years. That background informs how she supports people through recurring challenges and sudden changes.
She pays attention to both symptoms and the life context around them. People in sessions can expect a collaborative stance: goals are set together and revised as progress happens. Rachel aims to create a steady, nonjudgmental space where clients can try new ways of coping and build on what already works.
The pace and focus change based on each person’s needs.
Approaches that guide online sessions
Rachel uses evidence-based therapeutic techniques focused on practical change and emotional understanding. One approach emphasizes identifying unhelpful patterns in thoughts and behavior and testing small changes to see what helps in daily life. This supports anxiety, low mood, and stress by giving clear steps to try between sessions.Another common focus is building on personal strengths and coping skills. Work in this area looks at what has helped in the past, expands useful strategies, and creates routines that reduce overwhelm. This is useful for grief, caregiver stress, chronic illness, and adjusting to big life changes.
Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with the client about goals, preferences, and what feels most helpful. Together they adjust methods as progress is made and priorities shift.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to fit different needs. Video lets people use visual cues and longer conversations, phone can be lighter and easier when bandwidth is limited, and chat or messaging works well for brief check-ins or ongoing support between longer sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and to keep momentum when schedules change.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
- Experience
- 11 years
- Licensed
- New York
- Languages
- English