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 remains unfinished.
This is not because anything is wrong.
It is the nervous system doing what it was shaped to do under conditions of overwhelm, prolonged stress, or experiences that could not be fully processed at the time.
I work with women across a range of experiences — from complex trauma and acute crisis to those who have already done significant inner work but recognise that something is still held in the body, unresolved.
The work is not about understanding more.
It is about resolution.
The women I work with do not simply leave with insight.
They leave with increased regulation, clarity, and capacity — because the underlying signal has settled.
Relational Completion Therapy
A clinical approach to resolving trauma through the completion of interrupted survival responses.
“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 Hunneybell is a senior trauma practitioner with more than fifteen years of clinical experience 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 not optional, but required. She has built homes, organisations, and therapeutic spaces across Mexico, the Caribbean, West Africa, and Europe — not as background detail, but as the context in which her understanding of safety, stability, and recovery has been formed.
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, international speaking on women’s safety and recovery, and clinically funded roles in the UK.
Her work is grounded in Relational Completion Therapy — a clinical approach developed through years of practice, based on the understanding that trauma is not only what happened, but what could not complete at the time.
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.
How the Work Is Offered
Relational Completion Therapy is offered in two formats, depending on what is needed and what is possible.
Online Therapy
For those who want to engage in this work over time, I offer one-to-one sessions online.
This allows for steady, contained work, with space between sessions for integration.
Residential Retreats
For those who are able to step out of daily life, I offer small, clinically held retreats in Umbria.
These provide continuity, depth, and the conditions for more sustained completion work.
Both formats are grounded in the same clinical approach.
The approach is the same. The depth of work is shaped by the setting.
“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 sustained therapeutic presence and a level of nervous-system settling that weekly formats rarely make possible.
The days combine psychotherapy, somatic work, structured rest, and carefully paced time for integration. The setting is not incidental. Light, silence, and unhurried rhythms form part of the clinical design.
Over fifteen years, more than 1,200 women have attended this work in person.
Most arrive not out of curiosity, but because they are ready.
Recently featured by Condé Nast Traveller:
Can immersive retreats help heal trauma?
BOOK A CALL
You may already understand your patterns.
You may have done years of work.
But if something in you still feels active — still held — that is not something to think your way out of.
It is something the body is still trying to complete.
This is the work.
Relational Completion Therapy
A clinical approach to resolving trauma through the completion of interrupted survival responses.
If this resonates, book a short call.
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