Psychotherapy with Tess Hunneybell
I work with adults at many different points in their lives — those carrying the effects of trauma, those living with sustained stress or emotional overload, and those who sense that something within them needs care, space, or steadier attention.
Rather than centring labels or diagnoses, my work meets the whole person. Together we create conditions where the nervous system can settle, soften, and gradually find its way back toward a felt sense of safety, choice, and balance.
When insight isn’t enough
Many people 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 can show up as tension, emotional reactivity, exhaustion, or a sense of being unable to fully settle, even when life appears stable on the surface.
This isn’t because anything is wrong. It’s the nervous system responding in the way it learned to — shaped by earlier experiences, prolonged stress, or periods where there was too much to carry alone.
My work focuses on creating the conditions for the body to settle, integrate, and regain a sense of choice — gently, and at a pace the nervous system can tolerate, without force or overwhelm.
Ways of working
I offer individual psychotherapy for adults who want steady, attentive support over time — a place to explore, regulate, and make sense of their experience within a safe therapeutic relationship.
For some women, this work is especially well supported within a longer, immersive setting. My retreats offer a carefully held therapeutic environment where there is space to slow down, step out of daily demands, and allow deeper integration to take place with continuity and care.
You’re welcome to explore whichever path feels right — or to begin with a conversation and see what unfolds.
If you’d like, you’re welcome to arrange a quiet, no-obligation conversation.
Work featured in international publications
Experience this work in person
For those ready for focused, professionally-held work, my small-group immersive retreats take place at San Flaviano — my privately owned monastery in Italy.
I host each retreat there personally. Groups are limited to five women so the environment remains discreet, relational, and clinically contained. The setting allows for sustained therapeutic presence and the kind of nervous-system settling that is rarely possible within ordinary life.
These retreats combine psychotherapy, somatic work, structured rest, and carefully paced days designed for integration rather than intensity. Over the past 15 years, more than 1,200 women have attended this work in person.
The retreats were recently featured by Condé Nast Traveller in
Can immersive retreats help heal trauma?, reflecting growing recognition that properly held retreat environments can support trauma recovery in ways weekly formats often cannot.
Most guests arrive not because they are curious, but because they are ready.
Who This Retreat Is For
This retreat is for women who are ready for focused time away from daily life to engage in meaningful therapeutic work within a small, professionally held group.
Guests come from many countries and stages of life. What connects them is not background or age, but a readiness to step into a structured retreat environment and participate in a shared, respectful setting.
The group is limited to five women and takes place at San Flaviano, the private monastery I own in Italy. The setting is quiet, contained, and communal. Participants need to be able to live alongside others, take responsibility for themselves, and respect personal and shared boundaries.
Within this framework, the work is held with discretion, clinical care, and a pace that allows each woman to engage in her own way.
Ways I work
Alongside individual trauma therapy and immersive retreat work, I design and deliver workshops, professional teaching, and business-focused coaching across a range of organisational and educational contexts. This work brings trauma-informed practice, nervous system understanding, and psychological depth into settings where clarity, leadership, and ethical decision-making matter.
Discuss additional services
Group Sessions and Workshops
Women’s Workshops — Born Free
Reclaiming the Body. Rewriting the Mind.
Born Free is a trauma-informed women’s workshop series exploring how trauma, conditioning, and inherited patterns become held in the body and nervous system — and how they can begin to be released without force, shame, or re-traumatisation.
The work introduces participants to the principles of breaking generational and relational trauma patterns, understanding the body’s survival responses, and beginning the process of re-orienting the nervous system toward safety, agency, and choice. Rather than focusing on catharsis or narrative retelling, the emphasis is on embodied awareness, regulation, and the restoration of personal sovereignty.
These workshops are educational, experiential, and carefully paced, offering a clear entry point into body-based trauma understanding and the foundations of shame-free, self-directed living.
Business & Leadership Coaching — Authentic Success
My business coaching is grounded in an Authentic Success approach, supporting individuals to lead and make decisions from alignment rather than pressure or performance-driven identity. This work recognises how early responsibility, chronic stress, or survival patterns can shape success in ways that undermine clarity, boundaries, and wellbeing.
The focus is on restoring internal authority, ethical decision-making, and sustainable leadership — success that is coherent, grounded, and self-directed, rather than driven by survival or expectation.
This is psychologically informed coaching for people navigating complex roles or transitions, distinct from therapy and from performance coaching.