Richard Alongi, LMFT
Clear, experienced guidance for complex relationship and addiction issues
About Richard
Richard Alongi is a licensed marriage and family therapist who brings decades of clinical experience to conversations about addiction, relationships, intimacy, and anxiety. He speaks directly and calmly, helping people take practical steps toward better coping, clearer boundaries, and improved self-esteem.
Background and approach
His style is straightforward and respectful, aimed at making next steps feel doable for worried parents and busy adults. With 36 years of practice in California, Richard focuses on concrete concerns like substance use, grief, anger, depression, and life transitions.
He also addresses more specific patterns such as abandonment, attachment issues, codependency, and avoidant personality traits. Sessions aim to identify what’s keeping someone stuck and to build small changes that matter in day-to-day life.
Richard uses tools from attachment-based work and emotionally-focused approaches to help people notice patterns in relationships. He blends those with client-centered and Jungian ideas to tailor conversations to each person’s story.
Imago-informed perspectives appear when relational patterns need clearer language and mapping. His approach is to listen first, then create a plan together that fits the client’s goals.
He emphasizes practical strategies, short-term problem solving, and deeper work when needed. The result is a mix of skills practice and thoughtful reflection.
People often come to him for coaching through career change, coping with caregiving stress, managing ADHD-related challenges, or navigating intimacy and kink-related concerns. He aims to make therapy useful and understandable from the very first sessions.
How Richard’s Approaches Translate to Online Work
Attachment-based therapy focuses on how early relationships shape current bonds and emotional reactions, helping people notice patterns that show up in close relationships and work toward safer, more dependable connections. Client-centered therapy centers the person’s own goals and pace, using empathic listening to help people find their own solutions and feel heard. Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) helps identify the emotions that drive relationship patterns and then supports new ways of responding that build closeness and trust.Finding the right approach is part of the process. He will work collaboratively to see which methods fit a person’s needs and goals. That means tuning plans to what the client prefers and adjusting as progress is made or new concerns appear.
Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy flexible. Video is useful for longer conversations and visual cues, phone calls can work when bandwidth is limited, live chat fits shorter check-ins, and messaging supports ongoing reflection between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and to keep momentum between meetings.
Frequently asked questions
What kinds of problems does he help with?
What is his general therapeutic style?
How long has he been practicing?
What are his credentials and where is he based?
Which languages are sessions offered in?
What session formats are available?
How are fees handled?
What do I do to begin therapy?
Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 36 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English