Carolina Labanca
Counsellor
I specialise in:
About me
I am a Clinical Psychologist, graduated from Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), where I was strongly drawn to the phenomenological-existential approach. Its philosophical depth and its understanding of therapy as a space of dialogue resonated with the way I wanted to practice. During my training, I interned at the university hospital with patients in the hematology and orthopedics sectors. Working with individuals in terminal stages introduced me to palliative care, where I supported patients in giving shape to their stories, listening to themselves through words, and finding dignity at the end of life. I also interned in early childhood education settings, creating activities to help children name and move through their emotions. In parallel, I participated in a psychosomatics research group and co-authored an article published in Psicologia Ciência e Profissão.
After graduating, I completed a specialization in existential-phenomenological clinical practice at IFEN, in Rio de Janeiro, where I also began working as a psychologist. In 2019, I pursued further training in hermeneutic phenomenological psychology at the Dasein Institute, a program centered on discourse, interpretation, and the role of language in experience. In 2022, I became increasingly interested in psychoanalysis and its contributions to clinical practice, which led me to begin a postgraduate course in Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis, completed in 2023. This training deepened my understanding of dreams, the unconscious, and transference, dimensions I consider essential to the therapeutic process.
I have been working with adolescents and adults, both in person and online, since 2018, and in addition to my private practice, I started offering sessions through the Hiwell platform in 2024. My clinical work is grounded in listening, reflection, and a commitment to creating a space where experience can be symbolized, questioned, and reworked, always taking into account the authenticity and singularity of each person’s experience.
I speak:
Location:
Approach
My therapeutic style is grounded in an analytic and phenomenological-existential perspective. I work through attentive, careful listening, creating a space where your experience can unfold in its own rhythm. Rather than offering quick solutions or fixed interpretations, I invite you to explore your way of being in the world, your patterns, the meanings that guide you, and the emotions that surface in the encounter.
In our sessions, we follow what emerges: discomforts, anxieties, shames, fears, desires, contradictions, and everything that asks to be spoken or symbolized. I work with the understanding that change happens through reflection, language, and the possibility of seeing yourself from new angles. Transference, dreams, and unconscious dynamics may also appear, and I approach them with care, using them as part of the therapeutic process.
My work is relational and collaborative. We build the process together. I hold the space so that you can listen to yourself more deeply and shape your experience with greater clarity, freedom, and honesty.
