About Rita
Rita Kanareff is an Ohio licensed professional clinical counselor (LPCC) with 21 years of experience. She focuses on helping people who are stressed, anxious, grieving, or struggling with mood and trauma-related concerns. Her style is warm and direct, aimed at practical change rather than jargon-filled sessions.
Rita offers clear, step-by-step work for anxiety, depression, and trauma recovery. She often helps people who are dealing with relationship strain, body-image concerns, parenting stress, or career pressures.
How Rita works
Sessions emphasize small, manageable goals and skills clients can use between meetings. Her background includes long-term clinical practice in Ohio and a mix of evidence-based methods. Rita blends cognitive behavioral tools to change unhelpful thinking with mindfulness to increase moment-to-moment awareness.
She also uses EMDR for processing traumatic memories when that fits a persons needs. Therapy with Rita typically focuses on building coping skills, improving sleep and eating patterns, and addressing issues like anger, self-esteem, and ADHD-related challenges. She also supports people coping with chronic illness, caregiver stress, grief, and identity-related concerns such as LGBT issues.
People who prefer practical strategies and compassionate support tend to do well with her approach. New clients start by describing their main concern, then work together to set realistic steps forward. Rita aims to help people feel steadier and more able to manage lifes changes.
Rita lists 8 ways of working on the entry:
What Rita works with
The areas below are the ones Rita selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- 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
Training and background
| Register | LPCC |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 21 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | Ohio |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Approaches you can use in online sessions
Rita commonly uses cognitive behavioral therapy, which focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and changing behaviors to reduce symptoms like anxiety and depression. That work often includes practical exercises and homework to try between sessions.She also draws on dialectical behavior therapy skills to teach emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and improved interpersonal effectiveness. These tools help people manage intense feelings and respond differently in stressful moments.
When trauma is a main concern, EMDR can be used to process distressing memories and reduce their emotional impact. EMDR sessions are paced to match the person's readiness and are integrated with other coping strategies.
Choosing an approach is a shared process. The therapist will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and what feels most helpful, then adjust methods as progress unfolds.
Online formats make it easier to fit therapy into busy lives. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and visual cues. Phone sessions can be a good option when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat and text messaging support ongoing reflection and quick check-ins between sessions. These options increase flexibility so people can keep momentum while balancing work, caregiving, or health concerns.
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Common questions
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A practical next step
Write down two things you would want to be different in six months. That is the most useful thing to bring to a first session, whoever it is with. If you would rather start now than keep reading, online sessions are the quickest route.
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