About Rita
Rita Porter is a licensed clinical professional counselor with 32 years of practice in Illinois. She draws on long experience to guide people through hard moments in life. Her style is steady and direct while remaining warm and respectful.
Rita helps with stress, anxiety, depression, and addictive behaviors. She also supports people facing grief, major life changes, and parenting challenges. Relationship and family concerns are part of her focus, along with issues like ADHD and career stress.
How Rita works
Her work emphasizes listening first. She builds a clear picture of what matters to each person. Sessions aim to identify practical steps, shift unhelpful patterns, and strengthen coping skills.
Rita blends several approaches to match the situation. She uses cognitive tools to address thoughts and behaviors, mindfulness to increase present-moment awareness, and emotion-focused methods to handle intense feelings. Acceptance principles help people make values-based choices when change feels difficult.
People seeking help can expect a collaborative process. Rita encourages steady progress rather than quick fixes. She supports people who want to sort through their history, repair strained relationships, or find more balance during transitions.
Rita lists 7 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.
Also listed
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Blended family issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Immigration issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Parenting issues
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
Training and background
| Register | LCPC |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 32 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | Illinois |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Therapeutic approaches adapted for online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people clarify what really matters to them and take small steps toward those values even when difficult thoughts or feelings appear. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, focuses on spotting unhelpful thinking and testing new ways of responding to reduce anxiety or low mood. Emotionally-Focused Therapy concentrates on identifying and processing strong emotions to improve how people relate to others and manage distress.Choosing the right approach is part of the work together. Rita will discuss goals, preferences, and practical needs and then suggest strategies that fit the person. That collaborative decision-making helps tailor sessions so techniques feel useful rather than forced.
Online therapy offers flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video works well for in-depth conversation and visual cues, phone sessions can fit a tight schedule or lower bandwidth, and live chat or text messaging can be useful for brief check-ins or when typing feels easier. These options make it simpler to keep momentum between sessions and to access support from wherever a person is based in Illinois.
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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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