Julia Mattis, LMSW

Julia (she/her) works with clients who have a high performing exterior and yet struggle privately. She works psychodynamically, with a particular interest in the stories one constructs about the self in connections to one’s history and relationships.

Many of Julia's clients are women who have spent years being reliable, competent, put-together, and quietly afraid of what happens if they never live up to their own potential. They are exhausted from caring so much about what other people think, questioning whether they are on the right path, or realizing that the strategies that once kept them safe now leave them feeling stagnant.

Julia specializes in eating disorders, addictions, and compulsions — the strategies people build to manage what feels unmanageable. She also works with anxiety, grief and loss, relationship difficulties, trauma, depression, work overwhelm, and the identity questions that come with major life transitions. Julia holds the perspective that symptoms have meaning, and while they are not always beneficial, symptoms serve a function and tell a story. 

Julia's background in photography and storytelling shapes how she thinks about this work: we make sense of reality by constructing narratives, and once built, we mistake them for facts.Together, she and her clients trace where those stories came from, what they're still protecting, and what they no longer need to. Awareness leads to meaningful change. 

Julia holds an MSW from New York University and is a training candidate at the William Alanson White Institute. She sees individuals and couples in person at Upper West Side and West Village offices, and remotely across New York.