Dr Jemma Chambers, Clinical Psychologist

I have always had a fascination with people’s journeys through life, therefore, after my Psychology Degree I studied a PhD in Melbourne, Australia. Subsequently, I worked in research in the UK and then I followed my passion to work clinically by training as a Clinical Psychologist in Cardiff.

My ongoing NHS career as a Clinical Psychologist has involved working with adults in secondary mental health in both community and inpatient settings. Therefore, I have worked with people with severe and enduring mental health difficulties. This means they tend have complicated histories including many adverse childhood experiences, which are often described as complex trauma.

At my core I work in a humanistic way. I want to support you in an accepting, empathic way, hearing what you have been through, and understanding that you have been doing your best considering your difficult experiences. My Clinical Psychology training focused on competence in the core therapies of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Systemic Therapy.

My work experience has guided me towards working in a trauma-informed way. People who have experienced traumatic childhood and adulthood events, including abuse or bullying, often experience a similar pattern of difficulties. There are three phases of therapy which can be helpful alongside each other or stand-alone.

The first phase is stabilisation. Stabilisation is often a first step to manage trauma symptoms such as emotional dysregulation (where people experience sudden and intense emotions, often using risky behaviours to try and manage them) and specific trauma-related symptoms (flashbacks and nightmares, as if they were re-experiencing the traumatic event, feeling constantly on edge and avoiding reminders of the event). The psychological models I use to help with stabilisation are Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT), Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT) and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR).

Once someone is feeling more stable, the second phase of therapy consists of processing the traumatic memories. My preferred therapy for this is EMDR. Trauma memories are linked with the threat part of the brain, which does not have a concept of time, therefore the traumatic memories feel like they are happening now. Processing therapies such as EMDR essentially file the traumatic memories into the part of the brain that recognises these memories were from the past and reduces the associated distress.

The third phase of therapy is known as relational therapy, as people can often struggle in relation to others, for example, finding it difficult to trust or getting into a pattern of pleasing others while sacrificing their own needs. To help with this I use Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT), which considers how our relationship patterns have been formed with others, such as caregivers, or in other significant relationships. Difficult patterns involving experiences such as abuse or bullying then lead us to try and manage the resulting emotions through patterns that often unfortunately leave us feeling worse. CAT gives us the understanding, awareness and power to change previous reactions.