When insight isn’t enough
Many women arrive having already done a great deal of thinking, reading, and reflecting.
They understand their story — and yet their body continues to respond as if something still needs care or attention.
This isn’t because anything is wrong.
It is the nervous system responding in the way it learned to, shaped by earlier experiences, prolonged stress, or periods where there was simply too much to carry alone.
I work with women at many different points in their lives — those living with the effects of complex trauma, those navigating acute crisis or early recovery, and those who have already done significant inner work but sense there is still something held in the body that has not yet settled or released.
The women I work with do not simply understand themselves better.
They leave with increased regulation, clarity, and capacity in their lives.
“The one-to-one work Tess did with me was like nothing I had ever experienced.”
— Mary, Ireland
Tess Hunneybell
British trauma psychotherapist working internationally
Tess is a senior trauma practitioner with more than fifteen years of clinical practice working with high-complexity cases — women navigating trauma, grief, displacement, violence, and major life transition.
Her clinical work is grounded in something most practitioners do not carry: decades of sustained involvement in environments where trauma support was genuinely required. She has built homes, organisations, and therapeutic spaces across Mexico, the Caribbean, West Africa, and Europe — not as background detail, but as the lived context from which her understanding of safety, stability, and recovery has developed.
She founded Every Kid Counts – Senegal and continues to support community projects rooted in long-term relationships. Her work has included trauma programmes for displaced populations, speaking internationally on women’s safety and recovery, and clinically funded roles in the UK.
This breadth of lived and professional experience is not incidental to her practice.
It is the foundation of it.
Psychotherapy
I work with adults carrying complex trauma, sustained stress, grief, and the effects of major life transitions. My practice includes women at the beginning of recovery and those who have already done years of therapeutic work and are ready to go further.
Rather than centring labels or diagnoses, my work meets the whole person. The focus is on creating the internal conditions for measurable change — not understanding alone, but the nervous-system shifts that make different ways of living genuinely possible.
I offer individual psychotherapy for adults who want steady, senior-level support over time: a contained, relational therapeutic space with a practitioner experienced in high-complexity work.
“Real behavioural change I never thought was possible.”
— Mireille, Switzerland
THE RETREAT
San Flaviano — Immersive Therapeutic Retreat Work in Italy
For those ready for focused, immersive therapeutic work, I offer small-group retreats at San Flaviano — the private 15th-century monastery I restored and live in, set in the quiet hills of rural Umbria.
Retreats are limited to five women. The environment is discreet, relational, and clinically contained, allowing for the kind of sustained therapeutic presence and nervous-system settling that weekly formats rarely make possible.
Days combine psychotherapy, somatic work, structured rest, and carefully paced time for integration. The setting is not a backdrop. Light, silence, and unhurried daily rhythms form part of the clinical design.
Over fifteen years, more than 1,200 women have attended this work in person.
Most guests arrive not because they are curious, but because they are ready.
Recently featured by Condé Nast Traveller:
Can immersive retreats help heal trauma?
BOOK A CALL
The first step is a conversation. I offer a complimentary 30-minute call — a space to speak openly about what you’re carrying, ask whatever you need to ask, and see whether this work feels right. Online or in person at San Flaviano.
OTHER WAYS OF WORKING
Workshops and professional work
Alongside individual psychotherapy and retreat work, I design and deliver workshops, professional teaching, and psychologically informed consultancy.
Born Free — Women’s Workshops
A trauma-informed workshop series exploring how trauma, conditioning, and inherited patterns become held in the body — and how they can begin to release without force, shame, or re-traumatisation. Educational, experiential, vibrant and carefully paced.
Authentic Success — Leadership & Professional Work
Psychologically informed support for individuals in complex professional roles or periods of transition. The work focuses on restoring internal authority, ethical decision-making, and sustainable leadership, grounded in nervous-system understanding rather than performance pressure.
“Thank you for an incredible day, Tess. The techniques you taught us are already making a real difference.”
— Virgita, Lithuania