About Rita
Dr. Rita Dumas is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 15 years of clinical experience. She focuses on helping people manage stress and anxiety and supporting those facing relationship and parenting concerns.
Her approach aims to make talking about hard things feel less overwhelming and more practical. She uses Client-Centered Therapy to create a respectful, nonjudgmental space where people can speak openly. That approach helps clients clarify what matters and build on their own strengths.
Background and approach
She also draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions interact and offers concrete ways to change unhelpful patterns. Sessions are tailored to each person’s needs. Conversations lead to small, doable steps toward better coping, clearer communication, or stronger self-esteem.
Rita pays attention to issues like abandonment, communication problems, control struggles, and family of origin concerns. She also helps people facing divorce and separation, guilt and shame, and those working on forgiveness or self-love. Practical tools and simple exercises are used alongside reflective talk to reinforce progress between sessions.
Rita works with adults who want steady support while they navigate life changes. She frames therapy as a collaboration and encourages realistic, measurable goals. Her style is compassionate and straightforward, focused on helping people feel more capable in daily life.
Practical therapy approaches for online care
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening, empathy, and building trust. It gives people space to talk about what matters most and helps them identify their own next steps. This approach is useful for lowering stress, sorting through relationship worries, and strengthening self-esteem.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors connect. It involves simple exercises and short goals to change unhelpful patterns. CBT is often used for anxiety, coping with life changes, and improving daily routines.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate with each person to decide whether a listening-focused approach, skills-based CBT, or a mix of both feels most helpful. Goals, preferences, and day-to-day challenges guide that choice.
Online therapy offers flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is good for face-to-face conversation, phone works when bandwidth is low, live chat suits brief check-ins, and messaging lets people write between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and keep momentum between meetings.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Parenting issues
Also listed
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 15 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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