About Rita
Rita Downs is a licensed professional counselor with 25 years of experience in clinical care and behavioral health administration. She works from Oregon and supports people facing stress, anxiety, depression, addictions, ADHD, and difficult life transitions. Rita emphasizes practical, doable steps and respectful listening in every session.
Her style is down-to-earth and straightforward. She treats each person as the expert on their own life and looks for strengths to build on.
Background and approach
Sessions focus on concrete strategies you can try between meetings and on making small changes that add up. Rita uses several approaches to match what a person needs. She often draws on cognitive behavioral techniques to help change unhelpful thinking and behavior.
Motivational interviewing helps when someone feels stuck or unsure about change. She also uses client-centered methods to keep the conversation focused on your goals, and solution-focused strategies to map short-term steps. Trauma-focused work is used when past events continue to cause distress.
The mix depends on what a person brings to the room. Rita has worked across settings for many years, so she understands both clinical and practical sides of care. She aims to make therapy useful and time-efficient.
If you want straightforward support for daily struggles, she helps you find realistic ways to cope and move forward.
Approaches that guide online sessions
Rita commonly uses cognitive behavioral therapy and client-centered therapy in online work. Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing new behaviors to reduce anxiety, manage mood, or address impulsivity. Client-centered therapy centers the conversation on the person's goals and values, with the therapist offering reflective listening and support to help clarify next steps.She also draws on motivational interviewing when someone feels unsure about change. That approach uses open questions and collaborative conversation to help a person discover their own reasons for trying something different. Rita treats finding the right mix of methods as a joint process and will work with each person to choose what fits their needs, goals, and preferences.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is good for longer sessions and visual connection. Phone sessions can be a simpler option when bandwidth is limited. Live chat and messaging make it easier to check in between meetings or fit brief sessions into a busy day. These options offer flexibility so therapy can match a person's schedule and daily demands.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Parenting issues
Also listed
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Grief
- Impulsivity
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- Oregon
- Languages
- English
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