Sandra Cohen Ph.D.

Sandra Cohen Ph.D. Dr. Sandra Cohen is a certified Psychoanalyst and Trauma Informed Specialist focused on childhood trauma and its aftereffects. Speaker. Author. Educator. We see.

My name is Dr. Sandra Cohen and I am a certified psychoanalyst and licensed clinical psychologist with a practice in Beverly Hills, California. Each time I watch a film, TV show or read a book, my psychoanalyst’s mind begins to construct the same kind of understandings I might give to my patients. Pop culture often depicts real human problems with startling accuracy. Why is this so? Fictional char

acters are informed by their writer’s experiences and made more convincing by what we bring as we watch or read. Our unconscious minds unite with the writer’s. Personal experience is made public. We relate. We know. The early memories and unconscious struggles of these characters show us what we can’t so easily know about other people or ourselves. My musings at Characters on the Couch give me a chance to tell you what I see in ways similar to how I talk with my patients.

Starr has been taught, from the time she’s a child, how to survive. Keep your hands visible. Don’t argue. Don’t give any...
04/28/2026

Starr has been taught, from the time she’s a child, how to survive. Keep your hands visible. Don’t argue. Don’t give anyone a reason. When the world sees you as a threat, you learn to make yourself small. Careful. Quiet.

But that kind of survival comes at a cost.

After Khalil is killed, Starr is left with something she can’t easily carry—the truth. And the terror that comes with it. Speaking out could put her in danger. Staying quiet feels safer. But she’s been here before. And she knows what that does. “I hate myself for it.”

When you have to split yourself in two just to get through your life—one version here, another there—you start to lose track of who you are. You protect yourself. But you also disappear.

Finding your voice doesn’t make the fear go away. It means facing it. It means risking something real. But it’s also the only way Starr can begin to come back to herself.

Autumn moves through Never Rarely Sometimes Always with almost no words. Not because nothing is happening, but because t...
04/24/2026

Autumn moves through Never Rarely Sometimes Always with almost no words. Not because nothing is happening, but because there’s no place for what she feels to land. No one asking. No one really seeing.

When you grow up without someone to help you make sense of your feelings, you learn to handle things on your own. You don’t expect much. You don’t reach out. You just keep going.

What she’s facing is overwhelming. But she keeps it contained. Quiet. Controlled. Because letting it out would mean needing someone. And that can feel even more dangerous.

The moment she answers those questions—never, rarely, sometimes, always—you see what she’s kept secret. Sexual violation and r**e. But not just what happened. How alone she’s been in it.

When there’s no one there to hear you, silence can feel like the only way through.

“Leave your troubles outside… In here, life is beautiful.”It sounds like relief. An escape. But in Cabaret, it’s somethi...
04/22/2026

“Leave your troubles outside… In here, life is beautiful.”

It sounds like relief. An escape. But in Cabaret, it’s something more dangerous. The Emcee isn’t just welcoming us—he’s asking us to split ourselves in two. To keep the frightening truths of the outside world at bay. To not look too closely. To choose illusion over awareness because it feels easier.

That’s the seduction Sandra is getting at. The danger isn’t only what’s happening outside, but the part of us that wants to turn away from it. The part that hopes if we stay in the “beautiful” space, nothing can touch us.

But that’s how freedom disappears. Not all at once, and not loudly, but in the moments where we decide not to see.

When needing someone feels dangerous, you don’t just pull back. You find ways to make sure you don’t have to need them a...
04/20/2026

When needing someone feels dangerous, you don’t just pull back. You find ways to make sure you don’t have to need them at all.

That’s Ray.

Colin is the other side of the coin. When you feel like you’re not enough, you give more. You bend. You offer yourself up completely, hoping that being wanted will finally make you feel safe. That’s the pull between them.

One gives everything to be loved. The other refuses to need love at all. But both are organized around the same fear: what happens when love goes away.

Love is the point. It always is.

But when it’s tied to loss, rejection, or feeling unwanted, it stops feeling safe. And instead of letting it in, you protect yourself from it... by controlling it, avoiding it, or giving yourself away.

That’s what Pillion understands so well. Not just how people love, but how they defend against it.

04/17/2026

In The Secret Agent, a man is being hunted by an assassin. But that’s not the only thing chasing Armando (Marcel). It’s the losses he can’t bear to remember.

Armando has lost too much. His mother taken from him at birth, his wife’s death, the threat of losing his son.

When loss piles up like that, the mind finds ways to survive. Sometimes by shutting down feelings. Sometimes by forgetting.

His son Fernando grows up saying quietly: “I don’t remember.”

That’s what trauma does. To not feel the pain, it can make whole pieces of your life disappear.

But remembering matters. In The Secret Agent, recordings preserve the voices of those who were lost. Years later, Fernando holds his father’s voice in his hand. And something begins to return.

Painful as it is, remembering can start to put the pieces of you back together again.

04/14/2026

Love doesn’t always feel good. Not when it hasn’t felt safe before.

In Die My Love, Grace is living with something that started long before the baby. A voice that says: don’t need anyone. don’t get attached.

So when closeness shows up - real closeness - it doesn’t feel comforting. It feels dangerous.

If you’ve ever pulled away from something you actually want… there’s a reason for that.

In Ari Aster’s MIDSOMMAR, Dani loses everything—her parents, her sister, her sense of home. When trauma is that overwhel...
04/07/2026

In Ari Aster’s MIDSOMMAR, Dani loses everything—her parents, her sister, her sense of home. When trauma is that overwhelming, you can’t always feel it. So you go numb. You tell yourself you’re “too much.” You lean on someone who can’t hold you. You start to believe your needs are the problem.

But the need doesn’t go away. It turns into hunger. Hunger for love, for family, for someone to be there. And when that hunger is strong enough, you can be pulled into places that seem to offer what you’ve lost... places that say “you’re home now,” that surround you, mirror you, make you feel held.

But not all holding is real. If no one can truly see your pain, if no one can respond to it, if your feelings are swallowed up instead of understood, that’s not healing.

You can’t replace what you lost. But you can find real empathy. You can find someone who helps you feel. That’s where healing begins.

In M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, Dissociative Identity Disorder is not the problem. It’s the solution.When you grow up in ...
03/31/2026

In M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, Dissociative Identity Disorder is not the problem. It’s the solution.

When you grow up in a terrifying world—where the people you need most are the ones who hurt you—you have to find a way to survive. You split. Parts of you carry what you cannot. The fear. The rage. The shame. The need.

You learn early that no one is safe.

So when someone asks you to trust, you can’t. Not yet. Trust has been shattered. It takes time. Real understanding. Patience. Without that, help can feel like another threat.

And when you have no power as a child, you create it wherever you can. That’s where The Beast comes in. Not madness. Protection. Strength in a world where you were helpless.

Casey knows this too. She survives by watching, by staying quiet, by not getting close. Because getting close can get you hurt.

Distrust and the need for power can’t be underestimated.
They are what kept you alive.

But they’re also what make healing so hard.

In Lynn Ramsey’s Die My Love, Grace wants love. A partner. A baby. A life.But when you’ve been traumatized early, love d...
03/27/2026

In Lynn Ramsey’s Die My Love, Grace wants love. A partner. A baby. A life.

But when you’ve been traumatized early, love doesn’t feel safe. A voice takes shape inside you: don’t love. don’t get attached.

Having a baby can stir everything that was never resolved. Your need. Your fear. The terror of being left again. And instead of feeling it, you fight it. Push people away. Try to control it. Try to shut it down. Because needing someone can feel like it will destroy you.

Help doesn’t always reach you in time. Or in the way you need. It can feel like judgment. Like something is wrong with you. So you close down even more.

But it doesn’t have to end this way. When you can feel safe enough to trust, love doesn’t have to die.

They can’t hurt you if you don’t think about them.”Owen first hears this line in a commercial for The Pink Opaque—a fict...
03/26/2026

They can’t hurt you if you don’t think about them.”

Owen first hears this line in a commercial for The Pink Opaque—a fictional TV show about two girls fighting monsters from afar. It’s meant to sound like a kind of protection. A rule for survival.

But from the start, the film tells us exactly what kind of survival this is. In I Saw the TV Glow, “not thinking about it” isn’t relief, it’s a defense against feelings that are just too much. As Jane Schoenbrun puts it, repression is a survival mechanism. And Owen learns it early.

He learns how to survive by not looking: at his sadness, at his identity, at what it might mean to really know himself. The show pulls him in, but the message underneath it pushes him back—don’t think about it. Don’t feel it. Don’t go there.

And for a while, that works. Or at least, it numbs. But numbness isn’t the same as safety. It’s Mr. Melancholy’s trick: not healing, just “going dead.”

There’s a cruel logic to it.

If you don’t think about it, you don’t have to feel it. If you don’t feel it, you don’t have to face it.

And for someone on the edge of realizing who they are—when that realization feels unbearable—that logic can feel like the only way to stay alive. But what you’re really avoiding… is yourself.

The film understands something devastating: repression can feel like comfort. Like staying is safer than becoming. Like forgetting is easier than risking the pain of knowing.

Ruben has been running for a very long time.With drugs. With music. Even with love.Because when something inside feels t...
03/23/2026

Ruben has been running for a very long time.

With drugs. With music. Even with love.

Because when something inside feels too painful to hear, you find ways not to listen.

Ruben loses his hearing. And suddenly, he can’t run the way he always has. The silence he’s avoided begins to close in.

At first, he wants to fix it. Get back to who he was. Back to Lou. Back to his life.

But what he’s really trying to escape isn’t deafness. It’s himself.

Stillness is terrifying when you’ve spent your life avoiding your feelings. Because in the quiet, they come back.

The fear of being alone. The belief that no one will be there. The pain that never had a place to go.

But something shifts when Ruben finally stops running. When he lets the silence be there. When he listens—not to the noise of the world, but to something deeper inside himself. That’s where something new begins.

Address

435 N Bedford Drive, Ste 406
Beverly Hills, CA
90210

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 8am - 5pm

Telephone

+13102734827

Website

https://linktr.ee/sandra.e.cohen.phd

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