Layla Teixeira, BSW, MSW, RSW
When anxiety, ADHD, or body-image concerns make you feel trapped in a constant fight with yourself, Layla helps you find a more compassionate way forward
When your mind is always on alert, ordinary tasks feel harder than they “should,” or thoughts about food and your body take up more space than you want them to, it can be difficult to imagine feeling at ease again. Layla Teixeira, BSW, MSW, RSW, understands that meaningful change rarely comes from fighting yourself harder. It begins when you feel safe enough to understand what is happening, recognize patterns without shame, and practise new ways of responding.As a registered social worker and psychotherapist at CARESPACE Deer Ridge, Layla combines genuine warmth with practical, evidence-based support. If you are looking for counselling in Kitchener, you will find someone who takes time to understand the whole picture: what you are feeling, what daily life demands of you, what has helped before, and what has left you feeling misunderstood. Her distinctive experience in eating disorder support, ADHD resource navigation, anxiety, emotional regulation, and crisis care allows her to meet complexity with calm rather than reducing you to a diagnosis or a checklist.
Layla Teixeira, BSW, MSW, RSW, brings broad psychotherapy care together with uncommon depth in eating disorders, anxiety, and ADHD
Layla provides comprehensive mental health support for a wide range of concerns, including stress, low mood, trauma, emotional dysregulation, self-esteem, life transitions, crisis recovery, and the feeling that you are simply stuck. On top of this broad foundation, she brings particular depth to eating disorders and body-image concerns, anxiety, ADHD, and other neurodivergent experiences.What makes Layla especially effective is her ability to connect emotional insight with tools you can actually use. She does not ask you to fit a rigid model or become a different version of yourself. Instead, she helps you understand why certain thoughts, emotions, and behaviours have become so powerful, then works with you to build self-compassion, flexibility, and practical skills. This approach can be especially valuable when concerns overlap—for example, when ADHD affects consistency, anxiety fuels perfectionism, or food and body-image struggles become a way of coping with emotions that feel difficult to manage.
Your sessions are built around understanding you—not forcing your experience into a one-size-fits-all explanation
Layla begins by listening carefully to how your concerns show up in your thoughts, emotions, routines, relationships, work or school, and sense of self. Together, you clarify what matters most, identify patterns that keep you feeling stuck, and create realistic goals that feel achievable rather than overwhelming. Her work may draw from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, mindfulness-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy-informed emotional regulation and distress-tolerance skills, psychoeducation, and strengths-based support.This collaborative style makes counselling feel active and purposeful without becoming pressured or impersonal. You can expect space to talk honestly, along with strategies to practise between appointments so that therapy extends into everyday life. At CARESPACE Deer Ridge Kitchener, Layla also works within a coordinated multidisciplinary model. When helpful and with your consent, she can collaborate with physicians, dietitians, psychiatrists, occupational therapists, educators, and other members of your healthcare team so that your support feels connected rather than fragmented.
Her work across schools, residential treatment, community care, and national ADHD support gives you warmth backed by real-world experience
Layla completed both her Bachelor of Social Work and Master of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University, with a minor in Indigenous Studies, and is a Registered Social Worker. Her education is reinforced by experience in school, healthcare, residential, community, and nonprofit settings, where she has supported children, teens, and adults through emotional distress, learning differences, eating disorder recovery, addictions, crisis situations, and complex mental health concerns.As a Resource Navigator with the Centre for ADHD Awareness, Canada, Layla provides ADHD education, short-term goal-oriented support, emotional regulation strategies, resource navigation, and guidance related to school accommodations and Individual Education Plans. She has also developed evidence-based programming, facilitated groups and workshops, and represented the organization at a national conference. Her eating disorder experience includes co-facilitating specialized programming and providing mealtime support at Bellwood Health Services, as well as serving as an Eating Disorder Mentor with the National Eating Disorder Foundation. Her additional training includes Mental Health First Aid and Standard First Aid and CPR. This breadth allows her to translate theory into clear, realistic steps for daily life.
When food, body image, anxiety, or ADHD begin shaping your days, Layla helps you build skills that work in real life
Food and body-image concerns often involve far more than eating habits. You may be coping with guilt after meals, rigid rules, fear around certain foods, body checking, avoidance, comparison, or the sense that your worth depends on how you look. Layla’s direct experience in eating disorder programming, mealtime support, recovery-focused mentoring, and interdisciplinary care gives her a grounded understanding of how consuming these struggles can become. She helps you explore what a behaviour is doing for you, identify triggers without judgment, create realistic goals, and build coping strategies that support a more flexible relationship with food and your body. When medical or nutritional support would strengthen your care, collaboration can help ensure that emotional, physical, and practical needs are addressed together.Anxiety may show up as racing thoughts, perfectionism, avoidance, physical tension, panic, constant preparation for the worst, or difficulty trusting your own decisions. Layla uses acceptance-based, cognitive, and mindfulness-informed approaches to help you step back from unhelpful thought patterns, make room for difficult emotions without being controlled by them, and take small actions that align with the life you want. The goal is not to promise that anxiety will disappear; it is to help you regain choice, confidence, and room to breathe.
With ADHD, you may have spent years hearing that you are disorganized, unmotivated, too sensitive, or not trying hard enough. Layla’s work with a national ADHD organization means she understands the everyday impact of executive-function demands, emotional dysregulation, inconsistent routines, school or workplace expectations, and the exhaustion of repeatedly trying systems that were not designed for you. She can help you break goals into manageable steps, build external supports, strengthen emotional regulation, explore accommodations, and replace shame with a clearer understanding of how your brain works. When ADHD overlaps with anxiety or food and body-image concerns, Layla helps you untangle the interaction rather than treating each struggle as though it exists on its own.
