About Rita
Rita Kanareff is an Ohio-based licensed professional clinical counselor (LPCC) with 21 years of experience. She focuses on helping people who are feeling overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, mood changes, or relationship strain. Her tone is warm and straightforward, aimed at someone reading on a phone and wondering where to start.
Rita makes room for difficult stories and practical change. Sessions often look like a mix of skill-building and careful listening.
Background and approach
She helps clients break big problems into manageable steps and learn tools they can use between visits. Her experience includes work with trauma and abuse, grief, ADHD, and issues that affect self-worth and intimacy. She also supports people facing career shifts, caregiver stress, chronic illness, and eating or sleep difficulties.
Rita adapts her work to each person rather than using one fixed method. Rita draws on approaches such as cognitive behavioral techniques, dialectical strategies, EMDR, mindfulness, and motivational interviewing. Those methods are used to reduce overwhelming reactions, improve daily routines, and process painful memories.
The choice of approach depends on what fits the person and the goals they bring to therapy. Practical matters are part of her work. She can guide clients through problem-solving for parenting strains, blended family concerns, or navigating commitment and control issues.
Her style blends compassionate listening with concrete steps toward change.
Therapeutic approaches you can use online
Rita uses cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help identify unhelpful thoughts and change them into more balanced behaviors. CBT is practical and often focuses on daily routines, sleep, and coping strategies that can be practiced between sessions.She also incorporates dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills for emotional regulation and distress tolerance. DBT offers clear strategies for managing intense feelings, improving boundaries, and reducing impulsive reactions.
Finding the right approach is collaborative. Rita will work with each person to choose methods that match their needs and goals. She often blends approaches and adjusts plans as progress is made so the work stays relevant and doable.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video works well for face-to-face conversation and skills practice. Phone calls can be easier when bandwidth is limited or for a focused check-in. Chat and messaging let people share brief updates, journal thoughts, or get short-term coaching between appointments. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and keep momentum between meetings.
Questions people ask
What kinds of problems does Rita address?
What is her general approach in sessions?
How much clinical experience does she have?
What are her credentials and where is she located?
Which languages are offered for sessions?
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What session formats are available online?
How does cost and getting started work?
What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Impulsivity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 21 years
- Licensed
- Ohio
- Languages
- English
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