Joonas Vehvilainen, BACP

Joonas Vehvilainen is a BACP counsellor working in the United Kingdom with four years of professional counselling experience. He helps people facing stress, anxiety, addiction, eating concerns, low self-esteem, ADHD, trauma, grief, intimacy issues, anger and depression. Sessions are offered in English and Finnish, and he accepts international clients.

Joonas trained in psychology and neuroscience before moving into counselling. He studied psychology at the University of York and completed a master's in neuroscience at King’s College London. He later took a master’s in addiction psychology and counselling at London South Bank University while working part time as a counsellor for the NHS and other services.

Early roles included work as a healthcare assistant in a mental health unit and as a recovery worker in supported accommodation. Those roles exposed him to the practical day-to-day challenges people face with mental health and addiction. He has over 1,000 hours of counselling practice and became a BACP member in 2021.

In sessions he focuses on teaching coping skills, offering psychoeducation, talking through patterns of behaviour, and supporting people to make changes they want. He draws on several approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Attachment-based work to address relational patterns and emotion regulation.

His style is practical and straightforward. He aims to help clients notice what gets in the way, learn skills for handling strong feelings, and practise small changes between sessions. The emphasis is on clear tools, discussion, and gradual habit shifts rather than quick fixes.

Therapeutic approaches and online working