About Camila
Camila De Oliveira Mendes Leal is an ACA counsellor who helps people facing stress, anxiety, trauma and self-esteem issues. She aims to create a calm, non-judgemental space where clients can talk about what feels hard. Her background spans ten years of practice and work in Australia and Brazil.
Camila draws on psychoanalytic ideas to look at long-standing patterns that affect feelings and relationships. She also uses mind-body breathing tools to help with anxiety and stress.
Background and approach
These techniques are offered alongside conversational therapy to build emotional awareness and practical coping skills. Her approach mixes deeper reflection with simple, hands-on strategies. Breathwork can be used in a session to reduce immediate tension.
Other techniques aim to reframe unhelpful thoughts and strengthen self-regulation between appointments. Camila has particular experience supporting people through trauma, perinatal mental health concerns, and ongoing anxiety or chronic stress. She also works with issues such as attachment concerns, body image, adoption and foster care matters, and coping with major life changes.
Sessions are available in English and Portuguese. Camila’s ten years of experience and ACA credential (Australian Counselling Association) guide a respectful, culturally aware practice. She encourages people to take small steps and find strategies that fit their daily life.
How therapeutic methods transfer to online care
Camila uses psychoanalytic-informed conversation to uncover recurring patterns and emotional triggers. In online sessions this looks like careful, paced discussion about relationships and history to increase insight and change reactions. Breathwork and heart-focused breathing exercises are taught and practised during video or phone sessions to reduce anxiety in the moment and teach self-regulation skills.She also incorporates short, practical techniques derived from approaches such as hypnotherapy and neuro-linguistic methods to reframe unhelpful thoughts. These are simple exercises a person can repeat between sessions to support mood and behaviour change. Together, these methods aim to combine deeper understanding with tools people can use day to day.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will discuss goals and preferences in early sessions and adapt methods as needed. Clients and Camila work together to decide which techniques suit the issue and the person’s comfort with online formats.
Online therapy options include video calls, phone sessions, live chat and text-based messaging. Video is useful for longer, reflective work and breath exercises, while phone sessions need less bandwidth and can fit a short break at work. Live chat or messaging can be helpful for quick check-ins, mood tracking and ongoing support between sessions, offering flexibility to match different schedules and needs.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Parenting issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Body image
- Cancer
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Traumatic brain injury
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- Languages
- English, Portuguese
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