Tess Hunneybell 

Trauma psychotherapist

with over 20 years of clinical experience,

working with women across the UK,

Europe, and internationally.

I came to this work the long way round.

Before I was a trauma psychotherapist, I was someone who built things — houses, programmes, communities, relationships. I have built six houses across four countries. My working life began in hospitality: managing high-end restaurants and nightclubs, where the core skill was always people — reading a room, holding an atmosphere, knowing what someone needed before they asked.

When I designed and built Manicou River Resort in Dominica — an eco resort at the mouth of a volcano, constructed without an architect or engineer — I wasn’t just building a place. I was creating an environment that people could settle into.

Manicou River Resort May 2011

Alongside that, I developed a catering training programme at a second-chance school for marginalised young people aged sixteen to twenty-two. I taught what I knew — front-of-house, service, standards — and the programme enabled students to move into upmarket hotels and international cruise liners. For many, it was a first route out of poverty. It remains one of the most joyful periods of my life.

In southern Mexico, I spent six years as a foster mother to a family of seven children, while also running a small posada with a restaurant and rooms. That relationship didn’t end when the formal role did. I am now, as I describe it, a joyful foster grandmother to fourteen.

That long experience of care — of attachment, rupture, repair, and staying in relationship over time — sits underneath everything I do as a trauma psychotherapist.

In Senegal, something shifted the direction of my life again.

 Tess Hunneybell trauma psychotherapist teaching the street children of dakar, Senegal.

I was sitting in a small beach café just before COVID closed everything down when a boy asked if he could have some of my sandwich. Then another. Then another.

They were Talibé — boys sent to Islamic boarding schools called Daras. In many cases, they are forced onto the streets for up to twelve or fourteen hours a day to beg, bringing income back to the teacher.

At the Dara, they receive no bed, no food, no water, no clothing, no medical or dental care, and little education beyond limited religious instruction. The United Nations classifies forced begging as a form of modern slavery. There are estimated to be around 200,000 of these children in Senegal.

Since that afternoon, I have worked directly with these boys across the country — providing my skills as a trauma psychotherapist, food, medical and dental care, clothing, and ongoing relational support. During COVID, when tourism collapsed and informal income disappeared, I ran a small free food café on the street.

I founded Every Kid Counts – Senegal to sustain this work. It is not a large organisation. It is a long-term commitment.

Alongside this, I led a UK-based project funded by the Rothschild Foundation, working with newly arrived Ukrainian women and children, and the British families hosting them.

The work addressed both sides of the relationship: helping refugees stabilise and orient within a new country, while supporting host families to understand trauma, boundaries, and the realities of integration.

It culminated in the creation of a grief garden — a physical space where loss could be acknowledged without pressure to resolve it. A place to sit with what had been lost — home, language, family, identity — without being asked to move on too quickly.

That project sits at the heart of what I understand about grief:

It is not linear.
It is not something to be healed away.
It requires the right conditions to be held.

Tess Hunneybell  Trauma Psychotherapist

I have worked as a trauma psychotherapist for over twenty years, specialising in complex trauma, grief, and the long-term impact of overwhelming experience on the body.

My clinical approach is Relational Completion Therapy — grounded in the understanding that trauma is not only what happened, but what could not complete at the time.

The work is not about insight alone.
It is about resolution.

Allowing interrupted processes to move, safely, toward completion.

I work with women carrying the effects of complex trauma, prolonged stress, displacement, violence, and major life transitions — including those who have already done years of therapy and recognise that something remains held in the body.

Alongside my private practice, I work voluntarily as a trauma psychotherapist with the children and women of Senegal — an extension of the same commitment that led me to found Every Kid Counts.

Somatic trauma therapy workshop given by Tess during women’s trauma retreat at San Flaviano Umbria Italy 2026

7-Day Trauma Healing Retreats, Italy

I offer one-to-one psychotherapy online, and small Healing Trauma Residential Retreats at San Flaviano in Umbria — a restored 15th-century monastery that I own and live in.

The retreats are structured, but not rigid. Each day is carefully held to support therapeutic work without overwhelm — individual sessions, gentle movement, rest, and time outdoors woven together in a way that allows the nervous system to settle and the work to integrate.

You are met individually. There is no expectation to share your story in a group. This is not group therapy, and it is not a wellness retreat under a different name. The work is quiet, contained, and clinically grounded.

I cook and host personally. The environment is not a hired venue — it is my home. That matters. It allows for a different kind of settling, without performance.

Retreats are limited to five women. This ensures depth, privacy, and the ability to work at a pace that is both effective and safe.

Over twenty years, more than 1,200 women have attended.

The work has been recognised by Condé Nast Traveller, among others. That recognition matters less to me than the work itself.

At the core of everything I do is a consistent position:

Healing is not something that can be imposed, accelerated, or performed.

It requires the right conditions — safety, time, and careful attention.

And when those conditions are present, change happens.

Additional professional training is available on request.

Trauma psychotherapist Tess Hunneybell at San Flaviano, her private retreat house in Umbria, Italy