About

Sue Mandel, Ph.D., LMFT, Certified Professional Life Coach, EMDR practitioner for trauma processing and healing

For over 30 years Dr. Mandel has enjoyed a diverse private practice in Los Angeles seeing individuals, couples, parents, and children. She helps people just like you develop healthier communication, resolve conflicts, improve relationships, and work through issues that have kept them stuck in their lives. 

She also specializes in working with individuals who have a hard time dating: those who repeatedly pick the wrong partner; don’t recognize red flags and scammers; overestimate their skills in online dating; “can’t” flirt and play (yes, it can be taught!); end things too quickly, or stay too long; have poor boundaries; and, of course, confuse mature love with the disappointing familiarity of what we think is love.

Her early professional background includes supervising interns at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's Preschool and Infant Parenting Service, consulting with schools for over a decade, and developing First Attachments Infant, Child, & Parenting Center for families with children birth through 5 years. She completed training in both Divorce and Civil Conflict Resolution through Dispute Resolution Services and completed a two-year Certificate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute (currently New Center for Psychoanalysis). More recently, she became a Certified Profession Life and Dating Coach and became trained in EMDR for trauma processing and healing.

She believes that the most important part of therapy is the relationship, and her style is warm and interactional. Her professional orientation is relational, focused on developing a trustworthy, safe, and reliable intimate relationship; processing and regulating painful emotions; understanding and reformulating strategies developed early on to both prevent and alleviate personal pain; and "rewiring" the brain to live an intentional, self-aware, and compassionate life. She incorporates psychodynamic insight; trauma recovery/somatic awareness; mindfulness skills; and cognitive-behavioral strategies. Moreover, she brings a lifetime of personal experiences—from the traumatic to the triumphant—and her own therapeutic journey—into her work with you.

From Dr. Sue:

"As your psychotherapist, I am aware of your vulnerability and how hard it is to take the first step and make that call. But when you do, you'll find a warm, compassionate person on the other end who listens and strives to hear what you need. My goal is for us to identify and understand the problems you're struggling with, then work collaboratively to resolve them. We usually don't know what drives us to think, feel, or act in particular ways. But all too frequently, we wind up in great emotional and physical pain, making poor choices that leave us miserable.

I am dedicated to helping you feel more secure, confident, and satisfied in the important areas of your life. We'll pull together to loosen the grip of your confusion, frustration, and feeling stuck with behaviors and choices that contribute to---and help maintain---chronic self-defeat, lackluster relationships, and overall disappointment with life. A better understanding of early experiences and their powerful influence - discovered in the context of a trustworthy relationship - leads to a better understanding of your current difficulties. This enables you to develop more satisfying relationships, more effective interpersonal skills, and greater flexibility to approach life's challenges.

Right now, you may believe that this is "just the way you are", or that your situation is too complicated to even untangle. While this is understandably how you feel, it is not the way it has to be."

Connect with me anytime at 818.813.3786 or email me at smandelphd@gmail.com.