A couples therapist next door to Eagle Rock
Eagle Rock and Highland Park sit side by side in Northeast Los Angeles, and my office is just over the line, on North Figueroa Street in Highland Park. If you live in Eagle Rock, seeing a couples therapist in person doesn’t mean crossing the city. It means coming into the neighborhood next door.
A quick introduction: I’m Tina Marie Del Rosario, LCSW. For more than 13 years I’ve worked with couples and individuals, and I’m also a college instructor and clinical supervisor, so part of my week goes to training other therapists. I work on my own. There’s no intake coordinator and no handoff to an associate.
The short distance helps with logistics. The work itself is about what keeps happening between the two of you, and that’s the same on either side of the neighborhood line.
Who I work with
My practice is built around couples. That includes couples who have been together for decades and couples a year or two in, married partners and people who have never wanted to marry, same-sex and queer couples, and people in open or polyamorous relationships. I’m LGBTQIA+ affirming, sex-positive and anti-racist. I’m also a biracial therapist, which matters to some of the couples who find me. You can read more about my couples therapy work.
After couples, a large part of my work is with other close relationships that have hit a wall. Adult siblings who stopped speaking after a parent got sick. A parent and a grown child who love each other and can’t get through a holiday. Two people who built a business or a band together and now dread every meeting. These sessions can include two people or more, always adults. See sibling therapy and parent and adult child therapy.
I also see individuals, often people who notice they keep ending up in the same kind of relationship, or the same role in every relationship, and want to know why.
Life in Eagle Rock, and what it does to a relationship
Eagle Rock is a residential neighborhood of hillside streets and older Craftsman and mid-century houses, with plenty of households where both adults work and the calendar is full. A common pattern in homes like that is a relationship that runs well as a household and poorly as a partnership. The logistics get handled. The two of you rarely get time together that isn’t about logistics.
A lot of people in Northeast LA work in film, TV, music, design or other creative fields, or freelance in some form. That work tends to be irregular. A partner on a long production comes home depleted, the other has been holding everything up alone, and the reunion you were both looking forward to turns into a fight about who did more. Neither of you is wrong. You’re both exhausted, and you’re both waiting to be noticed first.
Other pressures come with midlife in Los Angeles generally: young kids, aging parents, the cost of staying in the city, and the slow drift that happens when years go by without a real conversation about how you’re doing as a couple.
What we actually work on
Most couples can recite their argument by heart. They know how it starts, what each person will say, and how it ends. Knowing doesn’t stop it, because the cycle runs on reflex. Under stress, each of your nervous systems shifts into protection, and you start reacting to a threat rather than to the person in front of you.
In session, I help you notice that shift as it happens, name it without blame, and practice responding differently while I’m there to slow things down. I draw on PACT, Imago, attachment-based work, interpersonal neurobiology, the Gottman Method and EFT. Attachment, in plain terms, is the set of expectations you learned early about whether people will be there when you reach for them. Those expectations show up in every couple’s fight.
I don’t pick a side. If I meet with each of you individually at the start, it’s to understand you better, not to hold anything back from the joint work. I don’t keep secrets between partners.
If one of you is unsure about staying, discernment counseling may be a better first step than regular couples therapy.
Coming in from Eagle Rock
The office address is 5317 North Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90042. North Figueroa Street runs between Eagle Rock and Highland Park, and so does York Boulevard, so most people coming from Eagle Rock use one or the other. Parking is on the street, so it’s worth leaving a little margin.
If coming in doesn’t fit your week, I see couples, families and individuals online anywhere in California. Some couples choose online because it means no sitter and no commute. Others like the office as neutral ground, away from the house where the arguments usually happen. Either works. Read more about online therapy.
Fees
A 60-minute session is $250 and a 90-minute session is $325. Individual sessions are $175 for 50 minutes and $225 for 80 minutes. Couples Intensives run $600 for 3 hours or $1,100 for 6 hours. Discernment counseling starts with a 2-hour session at $450, with 90-minute follow-ups at $325. I’m out of network with all insurance. For regular sessions, I provide a superbill you can submit for possible reimbursement. Intensives and retreats aren’t eligible.
Book a consultation or call
We start with a free 20-minute video call, so you can get a sense of how I work before committing to anything. Book a time online, or call (323) 607-7329 if you’d rather talk first.
