About Kevin
Kevin McGahey, LMFT, LAADC
Kevin McGahey is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Licensed Advanced Alcohol & Drug Counselor whose work integrates trauma-informed psychotherapy with advanced addiction treatment. He is widely recognized for a thoughtful, grounded clinical style that helps individuals and couples move beyond entrenched emotional patterns and toward meaningful, lasting change.
Kevin approaches therapy with both compassion and clinical precision. His work centers on helping people understand the deeper emotional structures that shape their behavior, relationships, and internal experience.
A Trauma-Informed Approach to Therapy
At the core of Kevin’s work is a simple but powerful belief: symptoms are not character flaws. They are adaptive responses to earlier experiences.
Conflict in relationships, anxiety, compulsive behaviors, and addiction often reflect strategies that once helped a person cope with overwhelming emotional circumstances. Over time, however, those strategies can become limiting.
In therapy, Kevin helps clients explore:
- Core beliefs that influence identity and behavior
- Emotional experiences that shaped those beliefs
- The ways past experiences continue to affect present relationships
- Practical tools that support sustainable change
By illuminating the connection between past and present, clients gain the clarity needed to interrupt cycles that no longer serve them.
Couples and Family Therapy
While Kevin’s expertise in addiction treatment is extensive, his work extends far beyond substance use disorders. He works closely with couples, families, and adolescents facing a wide range of emotional and relational challenges. Some clients seek help to improve communication and strengthen connection. Others arrive carrying deeper wounds within the family system that require careful and compassionate repair.
Kevin approaches each situation with the same trauma-informed lens that guides his clinical work. He helps families and partners understand the patterns shaping their relationships while creating space for accountability, empathy, and healing. Over the course of his career, Kevin has supported individuals and families through an expansive range of challenges, helping them rebuild trust, restore communication, and move toward healthier ways of relating to one another.
Expertise in Addiction Treatment
Kevin brings extensive experience in addiction counseling and recovery treatment. As a Licensed Advanced Alcohol & Drug Counselor, he has worked across nearly every level of addiction care.
His clinical background includes work in:
- Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOP)
- Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) programs
- Community-based recovery settings
- Long-term individual psychotherapy
Kevin understands addiction not simply as a behavioral problem, but as a complex interaction between trauma, attachment injury, neurobiology, and emotional pain. His integrated training allows him to assess risk carefully, coordinate higher levels of care when necessary, and guide clients toward recovery with both accountability and compassion.
Training in Compassionate Inquiry
Kevin practices through a trauma-informed lens that recognizes the profound relationship between mind and body. His clinical approach draws strongly from the Compassionate Inquiry model developed by internationally recognized trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté.
Kevin completed a year-long clinical training under Dr. Maté in this therapeutic method. Compassionate Inquiry focuses on gently uncovering the unconscious beliefs, emotional imprints, and attachment wounds that shape present-day suffering.
Rather than focusing only on symptoms, the model encourages curiosity about what lies beneath them. This approach informs Kevin’s work with both individuals and couples, allowing therapy to address the root causes of emotional distress rather than its surface expressions.
Educator and Professional Leader
In addition to his clinical practice, Kevin serves as an instructor in the Addiction Studies Program at Los Angeles Pierce College. This program is one of California’s earliest and most respected training programs for pre-licensed addiction counselors.
At Pierce College, Kevin teaches courses in clinical practice, Law & Ethics, and psychology. Through this work, he helps prepare the next generation of behavioral health professionals for ethical and effective clinical practice.
Kevin also serves on the board of the California Association of Alcohol/Drug Educators (CAADE). The organization is one of California’s primary certifying bodies for addiction counselors. In this leadership role, he contributes to statewide standards in education, ethics, and professional development within the addiction counseling field.
Recognition for Public Service
During the global pandemic, Kevin received a formal commendation from the County of Los Angeles for his addiction counseling services. The recognition honored his work supporting individuals struggling with substance use while helping them safely access higher levels of care during a period of unprecedented strain on the behavioral health system.
A Commitment to Meaningful Change
Across clinical practice, education, and leadership, Kevin McGahey’s work reflects a clear commitment to thoughtful, compassionate care.
Whether supporting couples seeking deeper emotional connection or individuals navigating addiction, trauma, or anxiety, his approach remains consistent. Therapy begins with understanding. From that understanding, meaningful and lasting transformation becomes possible.