[Update Jan 16 2026: Currently not taking new clients]
Sometimes you want one thing, while also wanting an incompatible thing, and these feel impossible to reconcile.
Or you might have a conflicting ball of emotions around some topic that just feels like a complete mess to try to untangle.
Or some situations might make you feel vaguely bad and you don't quite understand why.
I may be able to help you with this.
Kaj's help has been instrumental in helping me sort out my priorities and find ways to live a more balanced, less stressful life. Now I understand much better how parts of my mind often have conflicting desires and needs. Thanks to Kaj, I feel I am now able to live much more harmoniously, enjoying life and performing well in my work at the same time.
-- Juha, startup entrepreneur, D.Sc. (Tech)
I found working with Kaj extremely helpful. I've been suffering from, at times severe, depression for quite a long time (on and off). Kaj was more helpful than any therapist I saw (and I saw five, none of them EA-related though).
-- Anonymous
My approach is based on the assumption that the mind is divided into different parts - for the programmers out there, you can think of these as something like subroutines in a computer program. Each of the parts holds different ways of acting, believing and feeling. They're all trying to make the person better off, but sometimes they don't properly communicate with each other, leading to internal conflict. Facilitating better communication between them creates well-being and an ability to better act in the world.
I have outlined my theoretical outlook in more detail in a series of articles.
The practical background for my work is largely based on Internal Family Systems therapy, which I have training in. I also have varying amounts of experience with techniques such as Motivational Interviewing, Gendlin’s Focusing, Coherence Therapy, Internal Double Crux, Core Transformation, Ideal Parent Figure protocol, Metaphors of Movement, and various forms of meditation.
Results vary. For some clients, my tools don’t seem to do anything, for some clients they’re life-changing, and most are somewhere in between. Occasionally I manage to just fix a client's biggest problems in a session or a few, though this is not the median case. A more typical case is that people keep coming back for sessions for a while and get benefits of varying magnitude, as shown by some of the testimonials on this page.
In my experience, clients are the most likely to find me useful if they've tried something like Focusing or Internal Family Systems a little bit before and found it promising, or at least feel like they have some kind of intuitive access to their emotions. I'm least likely to be useful for the kinds of people who struggle with feeling emotions in their body, are generally very low on feeling emotion, or don't get what my felt sense article is trying to point at.
I’m not taking on anything that would be considered a serious mental health issue, nor clients whose external circumstances are very challenging. That said, things like mild to moderate depression, motivational problems, or social anxieties do fall into the umbrella of things I may be able to help with.
For individual clients, I offer a sliding scale of 100-200 EUR/hour. I am also available for corporate training and executive coaching. My timezone is UTC+2/3 (Europe-Helsinki), and I’m generally available in the day/afternoon. You can contact me by e-mail; say a bit about what you'd like to work on and whether you have any previous history of severe mental health issues or trauma. (The information you share is confidential; see here for my full privacy policy.) [Update Jan 16 2026: Currently not taking new clients]
Kaj's style fit my personality well and kept me talking and thinking, nudging me forward when I needed it. I learned and grew a lot working with Kaj. Next time I'm again in a difficult spot or in a place where I want to devote some time for serious personal growth, I'll be sure to contact Kaj again.
– Anonymous 2
I attended a few IFS sessions with Kaj towards the end of 2022.
I don't say this lightly, but the sessions with Kaj had a transformative impact on my life. Before these sessions, I was grappling with significant work and personal-related challenges. Despite trying various methods, and seeing various professionals, I hadn't seen much improvement in this time.
However, after just a few sessions (<5) with Kaj, I overcame substantial internal barriers. This not only enabled me to be more productive again on the work I cared about but also to be kinder to myself. My subjective experience was not one of constant cycling in mental pain. I could finally apply many of the lessons I had previously learned from therapists but had been unable to implement.
I remember being surprised at how real the transformation felt. I can say now, almost a year later, that it was also not transient, but has lasted this whole time.
As a result, I successfully completed some major professional milestones. On the personal front, my life has also seen positive changes that bring me immense joy.
I owe this success to the support from Kaj and IFS. I had been sceptical of 'discrete step' changes after so many years of pain with little progress, but I can now say I am convinced it is possible to have significant and enduring large shifts in how you approach yourself, your life and your pursuits.
– Anonymous 3
Kaj's help was a critical factor for me to recover from burnout related physical symptoms which made me unable to work or study at all. This was possible because Kaj helped me to uncover psychological origins, or as Internal Family Systems calls them "parts", related to many of my issues (despite my initial scepticism/uncertainty around their existence and unsuccessful experimentation on my own).
-- Touko
Kaj managed to pick a tool out of his belt to help me make significant progress on a long-stuck hangup regarding what I want out of life and how I might go about getting it. Some people you can't tell whether you'll like after a bit of conversation; I'm pretty sure Kaj isn't one of them. This is especially helpful for an emotional coach, where fit is paramount and being able to test for it helps a lot. In other therapy-tinged relationships I've felt some shade of potential for condemnation and judgement which was completely absent here.
-- Stag