Meet Julia.

I'm Julia Willinger, an East Los Angeles based LMFT (141685), writer, and facilitator. I specialize in relational dynamics within creative environments. I focus on what happens between people when they're making something together. I work with individuals, couples, bands, and creative collaborators, bringing both clinical training and firsthand experience inside the music industry to this work.

I trained under Dr. Ifat Peled and Dr. Bonnie Goldstein at Lifespan Psychological Center, and worked in community mental health at The Relational Center. I'm trained in IFS, Depth/Jungian Psychotherapy, EFT, Relational-Gestalt, Brainspotting, Somatic and Trauma-informed modalities, yoga, and mindfulness. My work is deeply informed by 20 years of Buddhist study and practice, and the understanding that cultivating awareness, self-compassion, and presence lies at the heart of healing.

As co-founder of Atrium Creative Retreats, I've spent over a decade designing and facilitating immersive experiences for musicians. The retreats combine mindfulness, nervous system work, and live relational support to help creative people understand what's happening between them, not just within them. I also build and lead courses and workshops on relationships, conflict, and deeper connection in creative contexts.

I'm an avid learner, endlessly curious about the mind and relationships, and a dedicated Buddhist practitioner of 20 years. I identify as existential, an HSP, and a multi-passionate person. I enjoy surfing, DJing, writing, nature, and depth.

My aim is to help creative people build a life, and a creative life, that actually feels like theirs, starting wherever they are.

Contact me: julia@juliawillinger.com // Find me on Psychology Today

My Career Story

Woman with long brown hair wearing a blue blouse with ruffles, standing in front of green foliage and white flowers.

I began my career in the music industry at eighteen, working with independent artists and labels to support their creative development. By my late twenties I had become an executive at a well-known record label, working with Grammy award-winning and internationally acclaimed bands. And yet the industry I found myself in was increasingly at odds with the person I am. The reality of 'making it' in the music business couldn't be farther away from the reason I got involved in the first place.

I found myself burned out, empty, and watching the same thing happen to the artists and collaborators around me. I saw how much damage the unseen forces were doing in the relational dynamics inside bands, between artists and labels, between creative partners, and how few resources existed to address them. Not just burnout but the ruptures, the power dynamics, and the loss of meaning and enjoying what was supposed to be fun and passion driven. I saw the creative partnerships that collapsed, not from lack of talent but from what nobody was willing to say or work through.

Becoming a therapist meant starting over professionally. But it felt like igniting a spark into my soul and spirit, and finally pointing everything I'd learned toward something that mattered.