Have you ever wondered what it takes to heal from racial trauma? In this episode of Radical Remembering, I sit down with David Archer, an anti-racist psychotherapist based in Montreal, Canada. We explore his journey as a psychotherapist, his approach to healing racial trauma, and why he identifies as an anti-racist psychotherapist.
David shares insights from his book, Anti-Racist Psychotherapy: Confronting Systemic Racism and Healing Racial Trauma, and discusses how trauma processing techniques like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) can be used to heal from racialized experiences.
Throughout our conversation, David emphasizes the importance of recognizing and unlearning the negative beliefs we've internalized through media and educational experiences. Healing, he reminds us, is not a final destination but an ongoing process— a daily practice of liberation that requires constant nurturing and self-awareness.
Listen to Radical Remembering: Season 2 Episode 2 and find inspiration on your journey towards liberation!
Or watch the full episode on my YouTube channel.
Relevant Links
Radical Remembering Podcast
Website: https://radicalremembering.com/
Connect with David Archer
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archertherapy/
Website: https://archertherapy.com/
Check out David’s books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/David-Archer/author/B08WLGQS99?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
Connect with Dr. Norissa
Living Liberated app: https://livingliberated.passion.io
Radical Remembering is a podcast that covers personal growth, self-awareness and awareness of topics at the intersection of mental health, spirituality and self-help. Each episode will leave you with intimate knowledge of the liberation process, sprinkle a little healing magic, and leave you with wisdom for your journey into living out your purpose. Stay tuned for the next episode. Thank you for listening to the Radical Remembering podcast! Listen to our next podcast and tell a friend about us.
TRANSCRIPT
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Welcome to Radical Remembering with psychologist doctor Norissa Williams. This is a weekly conversation where we explore ways we've internalized oppression and consider what it really means to live liberated. Each episode would leave you with intimate knowledge of the liberation process, sprinkle a little healing magic, and leave you with wisdom for your journey. As you get settled in for today's episode, please make sure to like and subscribe. And if you've liked what you heard at the end, please share.
So welcome to Radical Remembering, another episode where we explore liberation and what it truly means to be liberated. So here today, we have with us David Archer. Welcome, David. Thank you, Nerissa. It's a blessing to be here.
Thank you. So can you tell us about you, I would not do you justice to give a bio of you. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, how you came to the So, the shortest version I can say is that I'm a person who is very interested in how we can eliminate suffering from the world and especially how we can transmute it into wisdom. And I identify as an anti racist psychotherapist. I'm the developer of an approach called rhythm and processing, which is an approach that's built for us and by us and is meant to revolutionize the way we look at therapy.
And above all else, my son's eating supper right now, so I'm also a father, and I think it's important. He's 17 months old now, so, it's going to be that, it's going to be an interesting rest of the year for me. I feel that apart from all the knowledge I gained from my clients, I feel my son is a meditation on his own. He's always teaching me something. So, yeah.
So, again, I'm a person who likes to see change happen in the world. I'm a person who's committed to improving the lives of the clients that cross in my path and also making life more awesome for the next generation. Thank you. So I'm wondering because, I mean, in my training, I graduated, like, 2003. Right?
In my training, there was not much talk about anti racism. There was not much. There was no talk whatsoever. Antiracism and cultural competence. And so I entered the profession and was in the profession for a couple years before I started to do, like, my own research.
What has that journey been like for you, meaning, like, being thrust into the profession and not looking through the lens of race and how race differentially affects us? Well, I feel that before I was a psychotherapist, I was an anti racist. And I feel that you have no choice but to be an anti racist when you're raised in a society that is going to say that there are certain people with certain skin tones that are to have certain privileges over others. And to add on to my introductory bio is that, I'm also broadcasting from Montreal, Canada, and many people might be like are there Black people up there? Are you guys in Igloos?
And it's like no, no, we're all very close to New York state. It's very close to the rest of the states. It's not that cold except, I mean, our winters are not nice, but, but we're here. And we also have winter jackets. That's how we survive.
So anyways, for me, when I was being raised in, like, the nineties, there was this situation in my province where Quebec was trying to separate from the rest of the country because there's a lot of French people here. They saw themselves as being oppressed, and they saw themselves as a nation. At the same time, there was also this experience of what is called was called Oka Crisis, where there were people who were Quebecers, who were trying to take land from indigenous people, and so I had no choice but to be aware of me being an Anglophone, me being an English speaker, versus being a French speaker, me being a black person in this country that's talking about nationalism. And also I forgot to add I'm a black Jamaican African Canadian. So me being checking all of those boxes and being in a context that says that because you're a second generation immigrant, you're not really a Canadian.
But also at the same time, if I were to go to Jamaica, they'd say you're a foreigner. You know, they'd say, yo, you can't speak our patois the same way as we do. You know? So I think that while my passport is going to say that I'm a Canadian, I feel I'm a citizen of the world. And being raised in a context where my mother, my family was able to create that pride of being a black Jamaican, of loving yourself regardless of how you look, regardless of how you speak, I think I had to see my existence as being political.
Getting like, going into school, I made decisions that were against what was expected from me. So I got into software engineering because they were like black people don't do this thing. Got into psychology because they were like well black people don't do these things. I've always been a polarity responder. I've always been like, yo, if you say north, I'm going to say south.
And so that's why if you're going to say psychotherapy, I'm going to say anti racist psychotherapy. While I was learning about it the same as you, I noticed that the only times that they would talk about what blackness was or mention it was often in comparison to white people and especially saying that there was a deficit. So, my best example is being in the sensation and perception class. They're teaching us about the retina, and all of a sudden they want to talk about, you know, the cones and the rods, and then they're like, by the way, black people have worse vision than white people. I'm like, yo, what's up?
Why is it that I'm only showing up in this context? And I didn't ask for any, you know, any political message in my courses. But of course, we know that, there is no such thing as neutrality and even the absence of us is a statement. There's no way to not communicate, as I learned in my master's of social work and my master's of marriage and family therapy. And it was in those additional degrees that I got and the other people that I was in community with, my clients, professors, other students, that's when I learned that there could be a better way of being able to do this, that there could be a more humane way of making a psychotherapy that not only speaks to the experiences of the people who need help, but also is more, effective and efficient.
So all of that just to say that I was an anti racist before I could even spell the word because you had no choice. Being a black man, being a black professional, is a political statement in a context that says, blackness is this or being a black man is this. I just believe otherwise. Mhmm. Thank you.
So you have a few books on racial trauma and other things that are, like, race related. Can you tell us about those books and what inspired you to write them? Sure. Could I share my screen? Yes.
Can we use this technology? Let's use our technology then. So I'm going to show first my first four books. Hold on a second. Yeah.
So the first book is called Antiracist Psychotherapy Confronting Systemic Racism and Healing Racial Trauma. And I wrote that book because it's a book I always wanted to read, especially when I was studying. Antiracist psychotherapy is a trauma informed understanding for how anti black racism impacts people. And it was my attempt to unify both the activists and also the academics so that we can bring more people into the conversation and understand that the racism thing is not just in our heads. In fact, it's in our neurobiological systems.
Black meditation was designed because around the time of the BLM protests, there were a lot of people that were aware of the importance of getting mental health services. But there were a whole bunch of us too that were like, yo why am I gonna go and speak to a racist therapist? So then I was getting, because I'm one of the only black male EMDR therapists in my country, which I want to change, I was getting a lot of people coming to meet with me. And so I had to refer out. And I wasn't always sure of whether I was going to be referring to a therapist that was going to come from a place of knowing about a trauma informed approach to mental health.
So Black meditation is meant to be it could be a white therapist or any other anti racist therapist co pilot in their session because there's meditations that are in there. There's, like, knowledge that the client can benefit from. And so I've had some therapists who are consultants, who I consult with, they've been using my meditations in their sessions so that they can help their Black clients to still get a positive racial identity experience from their sessions. Racial Trauma Recovery is the book that explains the development and also how to use the rhythm and processing strategies. So the approach that I use is related specifically to the negative somatic experience that a person has because of the negative beliefs that they've internalized and being able to change that feedback loop.
For example, many of our clients, they well, okay. Let me backup. When we think about depression itself, depression is a culture bound syndrome, meaning that it doesn't look the same depending on if you go to China or if you go to Japan, Japan or Jamaica. And I realized that many of my clients who are immigrants in Montreal, the the way how they explain depression or many of their mental health stresses are based on somatic experiences, so they're feeling it in the body. So that's why rhythm and processing is meant to make it so that we feel different to change our beliefs Rather than starting with an intellectual understanding of the stress, we make it so that people see videos of baby goats, rabbits, Japanese anime, video games, things that they love so that we can challenge the way how the body is interpreting the trauma that has been stored and it changes the, the way how these memories are stored using the principles of memory reconsolidation.
And then the 4th book, Black Mountain: Fight for the Future is because I'm a big fan of Japanese anime and video games. And I was thinking, you know, my son was born, I was like, it's going to be some time before he's going to be ready for these academic literature reviews and all these things. So let me make a book that's for the youth. And so this book is about how people who go through ancestral ceremonies in their future galaxy Afrofuturistic setting that they're able to use these the powers of the elements to defend the planet that they're on because the planet is threatened by climate change, AI generative technology, just an interplanetary fascist government. And so these are all things that my clients were stressed about, not necessarily the interplanetary stuff yet, but they were concerned about the leaning to the far right that we're seeing in our political spectrum there.
And so I wanted to speak to the public in a way that's a little different from how academics typically do, and so that's why I'm trying to use every medium that I can think of. And the most recent book that I released is called Transforming Complex Trauma, and the reason why I created this book was because I needed to make a shorter version. My brother was like, I like your books, but they're too long. He's like I was like, okay, well, let me make a shorter version of these books. And so Transforming Complex Trauma is a condensed form to get all the knowledge from the previous, 4 books, in a way that helps people to know why we need to challenge the way how we are teaching psychotherapy, why we need to challenge the way how we are doing psychotherapy, and how we can more actively be about the anti racism rather than just intellectualize about it.
And, yeah, and just to be about the change rather than just talking about it. Mhmm. That's my book. Thank you so much. I have quite a few that I want to dig into.
And so one of the questions that I have I'll go in the order that they came up. Uniting the activist and the therapist, why is that important, and what does that look like? Mhmm. So I think that we need to start first with the academic part. I feel that I realized that when I was learning about how to do the therapy thing, it was usually through intellectual theories and clinical formulations, which are helpful.
But I realized in practicing therapy, it was more of an art, that there was more about me in the room with my client, more about how I felt my countertransference, the client's transference, the the client's, like, projections on me because of my black maleness, my projections on them because of their Asianness, Middle Easternness, womanness, etcetera. And so we need to find ways of being able to not only just make it an intellectual discussion, but we need to get to the heart of the matter. I feel that activists don't have this problem. Actually, many of my clients are activists and they don't need an explanation about how to fight. They don't need an explanation about how to create a movement.
However, they oftentimes need not only just the sword but the shield. They need to find ways of protecting themselves from taking on too much. So not only is anti racist psychotherapy about how we can look at the treatment for post traumatic stress disorder, complex trauma, dissociative, disorders, how we can look at it differently, but also how we can make it more humane for the therapists themselves. One of the things I saw when I went into private practice, which surprised me, is that there were therapists who went into private practice after me, but they burnt out before me, and they stopped their practice. Of course, a part of that was due to COVID, and a part of that was due to a lot of uncertainty.
If you enjoy listening to Radical Remembering and would love to get the season dropped before everyone else, If you want exclusive invites to live and virtual events and could benefit from daily liberation inspiration, like affirmations, thought provoking questions, and daily guidance, then download our free app living liberated in the app store or on Google Play. You can also find the link below in the description box. If you enjoy listening to radical remembering and would love to get the season dropped before everyone else, if you want exclusive invites to live and virtual events and could benefit from daily liberation inspiration, like affirmations, thought provoking questions, and daily guidance, then download our free app, Living Liberated, in the App Store or on Google Play. You can also find the link below in the description box. That's what's always developing and if you watch the news like I do there's always something going on.
But I realized too that some people are using an approach that is a little harmful for the therapist. That the accumulation of us listening to traumatic stories day in and day out can have an effect. That's why we need to have different tools of how we can make it so that we can solve the problem without exposing ourselves to the radioactive effects of it. Or the, you know, the like it's kind of like you need to make sure that you're wearing a protective suit before you're going to touch something that's a little hazardous to your health. And it's not just for the client, but also for the therapist as well.
So that's the reason why I wanted to make it so that we're unifying the idea of thinking about trauma differently. So that the activists can know that there are neurobiological explanations or that, you know, that there is a risk of being exposed to these stresses. But also that the client, the therapist, the pro the the people who are working in the professional fields, that they also know that there's no way of being neutral in the context of meeting with a full human. Thank you. So you mentioned neurobiological before when you were talking about the books in Yes.
Well, right? So how does racism live in us neurobiologically? Yeah. So it's very interesting. There are some researchers named Comas Diaz and colleagues, and they explain what racial trauma is.
And from their perspective, they're talking about it as being either real or perceived experiences of discrimination. So the real part we all know is that when we're able to see a clear racist, you know, I could just tell you what people have their own ideas of what a clear racist means. Okay? And what clear racism is, we know what this thing is and many people will agree on it. But there's the perceived racism that actually is not always spoken about and is harder for us to grasp, especially for people that are white or people that are not experiencing racism on a chronic basis.
I think some of the worst effects of racism are the ones you don't see. The prevention of being able like you not being able to to get a loan, you not being able to, you know, hitting the glass ceiling at your workplace. My black female clients, these are professionals, very skilled, and they get these stresses that my white female clients are not getting. And when the black female client leaves the job they need to hire 2 people to replace them because they've been getting so much work. You know what I mean?
So these are some of the perceived things that are a little hard for us to experience and a little hard for us to conceptualize. But there are also 3 other things that need to be added is that there's a multi generational component. Meaning that when people are going through post traumatic stress disorder, there's a chance that if they meet the criteria, there's a chance that they're able to pass down mental health vulnerabilities down through to their children, to the grandchildren. That they can do that hypothetically, it's that the work is a little inconclusive. Not everyone's saying the same thing because it's genetics, so there still are things that are being worked out.
But they're talking about the fact that if you go through a strong enough stress, you can pass on the effects. An echo of it will still be in us. Even if it happened maybe years ago, maybe centuries ago. The second part is the fact that because we are having these chronic stresses day in and day out, this is taxing our nervous system. So because we are dealing with the uncertainty of what's going to be on my cell phone, you know, what's going to be on the news, what's going to, you know, what's going to happen when I go to the store, is someone going to be watching me, following me?
These chronic stressors also tax our nervous system. They make it so that we are constantly needing to be in either a flight, a fight or flight response. Sometimes a freeze response. So, you know, like this agitation, wanting to get out of the situation, or even just shutting down completely. And these were adaptive ways of dealing with stress in the past for our ancestors when they were being chased by Tyrannosaurus rexes and okay.
Dinosaurs weren't alive at the same time as humans, but you got Viggo. So the thing is, it was adaptive back in the day, but now because we're in fight, flight, or freeze, this is really it's maladaptive when it's chronic. And then the third part is that even though we know that this is passing down through the generations, even though we know that there's this chronic stress that's continually impacting us, there is this gaslighting by our society. There's this thing where your stress actually is not the most important thing. Most important thing is the new album that's gonna come out by name, whatever pop star or whatever.
The best example I can think of is the amount of indigenous, unmarked graves that were in the news in my country, but I didn't see the same coverage in your country and in the states. But there's a high chance that there are a lot of unmarked graves for people that were kind of put into these schools. Well, we call them schools, but they really were about displacing people and destroying the culture and the traditions and the language of individuals, and there's radio silence on it. So this is why my treatment for racial trauma, it also, I care about anti black racism, but I also have to have solidarity with my Middle Eastern, my Palestinian clients, my Lebanese clients, my Indigenous, my Asian clients going through Asian hate, my Jewish clients. And when we create an approach that's meant to help the people that are suffering the most by discrimination.
So when I was thinking how do I help black people, it ends up being an approach that's going to then help other people who are marginalized not only on the basis of race, but on the basis of gender, on the basis of sexual orientation, on the basis of the ablest ideas that are in our society. And this is the reason why I say that it's not just in someone's head if there's all of this research and science that explains that these are real things that are taking place. Interesting. So I wanna also hear about who comes into your office. You made mention of, you know, depression being a culture bound syndrome.
So it might look Yeah. Cultures as well as, you know, it might be experienced somatically based on the cultural norms, you know, that people have. So what have you seen in your office in terms of how, you know, how our audience can even be able to identify, like, woah. Sure. The way they talk about it in medicine and pharmaceutical commercials.
I'm Sure. What does that look like? Yes. Pharmaceutical commercials are so interesting because only the United States I don't I don't think most countries allow that, but I feel that the pharmaceutical, like, commercials in the states are off the charts of in Canada, I don't think we we have those, at least not at the same level, but still, most of my clients so even okay. Well, let me backup.
It's important to know that while I'm talking about a treatment for racial trauma, when I went to the International Society For the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, and I was a plenary speaker there in 2023, the I showed the progress that a client had going through 15 ish sessions of using rhythm and processing. And there were improvements on anxiety, depression, structural dissociation, so it's called the MID 60, and also for PTSD symptomatology. I ex and while it was impressive, I explained to them that this is a white woman. So I used an approach that's designed to help black people, and it still was able to help to address the stress of gendered violence on this individual. So I'm asking my white clients the same questions I'm asking my black clients.
Because even though a person can look white, there are many white passing individuals. Even though a person may not have the full effects of colorism because black people come in all shades, we all come in all shades, I'm still going to ask about the impact of your physical appearance or your skin tone. And for some people, it may not necessarily make a difference. It'll be like, I don't know why you're asking me this question about sexual orientation or, you know, individuation. But then for my trans clients, it makes all the difference.
So I have clients that are all throughout the spectrum because Montreal is a city. We have immigrants. We have religious minorities. We have racially diverse populations. We have Indigenous people.
I have people that are from South America. People that are from the African continent. Europeans. Yeah. The list goes on.
But again, is that it was especially relevant for me and I think for my clients who are Middle Eastern, when what was going on with Palestine, that's when they realized, oh wait, this race thing? I got to talk to somebody about this thing Because I feel that from what I've heard from my clients, the way they experience racism is because some of my clients who are Middle Eastern are also French, so they come to my province. And then the French thing helps it so that they're not impacted by racism in the same way that an English person from the West Indies is going to be impacted. But when social media was targeting them, they felt it differently. And so this is the reason why I have clients that are from, again, white, black, all all parts of the spectrum because race impacts a person whether you like it or not, whether you believe it or not.
Mhmm. Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. So are we talking about, like, headaches?
Are we talking about stomach aches? Yeah. You know? All of those ways. You've had people come to you with physical manifestations.
Yeah. The husband and wife. Yeah. It's because what is okay. This is super interesting for me.
Let me backtrack again. Let me go back in time. Before I did any rhythm and processing, I was an EMDR therapist, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, which is highly effective for treating post traumatic stress disorder as well as depression, anxiety, and there are many studies even showing that it's helpful for for a phantom limb pain. So meaning that you're able to use an intervention for a part of the body that's missing for veterans, etcetera, for amputees. Before that I was using the emotional freedom technique.
This is an acupressure based approach, that involves people self stimulating and tapping on different acupressure points and being able to feel calm. And around that time well, no. Before that, I was a mindfulness meditator. So I was always interested in how without words, I'm able to reduce my stress. And by noticing the body, I'm able to be in the present.
And before all of that, I was an artist. And before all of that, I'm a black Jamaican. So the thing is we have rhythm. So the thing is that, I was always conscious of my body and conscious of movement and conscious of how I feel. And so then I noticed that I wasn't always understanding why we were focusing so much on the story of the trauma rather than the here and the now because my training paired me.
Even before I was a therapist reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, reading all types of, yeah, I learned Reiki as well. So I do energy healing and all. So me being interested in these things, it led me to then go to the institutions to learn about therapy. And so I started off with the knowledge of the body, the knowledge of ancestors, the knowledge of distance healing and all of these things before we were doing virtual conferences, virtual calls and all these things. So I feel that this is what happens often in our society.
It's like, you'll see it with, how like yoga started. I think it got really big in the United States in, like, maybe the nineties, the 2000, and all of these things. And, like, talks about mindfulness, like, mindfulness, CBT with mindfulness. What's it called again? You mean cognitive behavioral therapy?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With but there's mindfulness aspects to it as well. So there's so it's really to say that we are relearning things and presenting them as if they are new, but these are things that have been around for 1000 of years.
And so I don't really feel that what I am proposing is a technological advancement. It's really just us getting in touch with our roots. The first pardon me? I was gonna say in many ways, it's radical remembering, isn't it? Like, we There we go.
There we go. Intuitively, ancestrally. There we go. And so that's why I feel that the body you know, it was, I think it was Descartes. He's the one who said, I think, therefore I am.
And they created this mind-body separation. And I think that was a big mistake of saying, I think, therefore I am. It's really, I be, therefore I am. Bring some Ebonics. Like, yo.
Yo. I'd be chill yo. I'd be I'd be here. So you know? Liberation is 100% about being in right relationship with our power.
It's so easy from day to day to disconnect from our source and forget who we really are. On our app, Living Liberated, we have the tools to keep you plugged in. You'll find a library of affirmations, guided meditations, guided journeys, and tapping sequences to keep you in a state of alignment with who you really are. Topics range from self love, healthy relationships, activating our DNA, to guided journeys with your ancestors. Download our free app, living liberated, and start your free 7 day trial now in the app store or Google play.
You can also find the link for plugged in in the description box below. It's that I feel, therefore, I can be free. He says the white father says, I Mhmm. Before I am, I feel, therefore, I can be. Also, bringing us back into the body and also bringing back the feminine and full, you know, consideration instead of, like, head up.
Yeah. And I think that is the the reason why yoga became something that was dominated by white women. And so now when we think of a yoga instructor, it's a white woman who eats kale. And instead of it being like even if it's going to be an Indian man, that's one thing. But we gotta go back a little bit further.
I talk about in Black Meditation, Doctor Muadda Ashby, Yasir Rahota. Okay? So these are people who explained that some of the knowledge that we know about yoga actually came from the Dravidian Indians, they came from somewhere. I mean Africa is not that far away from India. And, you know, it's really to say that we need to, as a trauma specialist, I have a responsibility of also doing as best as I can to read and study so that I also don't lose the momentum of memory that I've been cut off from, of knowing that these skills and these techniques that our ancestors had and practiced, they did it for 1000 of years.
They didn't have our fancy journals and our fancy literature reviews, but they knew that this is the way how we can heal and we cut ourselves off from that and we're starting back from scratch now. So that's why from the inspiration from my clients, from these types of conversations about being able to share, and, I think that it's a way of me being able to bring back what was lost, and it seems to be something that resonates with me and with my clients at the deepest level. Thank you. So before moving into a discussion about liberation, because I wanna ask you Yeah. What is it to you to live liberated?
I wanna remind our audience that this podcast is brought to you by Living Liberated. The app can be found in Apple Stores and on Google Play, and you get first releases of Radical Remembering and many other benefits knowing of our events, 1st come, 1st serve, all those kinds of things. So now turning back to you, David, how do you define liberation? A work in progress. That's how I define it is that so I'm an anti racist, and it means I have to consciously choose it because I socialized in this environment.
I'm many of the films that I was raised up on had messages that were in them that were not necessarily for me, and the directors that created these films were really creating and recreating culture for us to all consume, which is the explanation for why there's these internalization of anti blackness for many of my black clients even though some of them don't even come from Canada. So it means that many of us have been internalizing negative beliefs about ourselves from the media that we consume, even from our school, from our school experiences. And it means that we can't just say that healing is this destination that we get to, but it's a place that we gotta live at. We need to consciously also be in a state of I'm liberated at this moment, but when you wake up tomorrow, we also need to practice something that will help us to continue this feeling of being liberated as well. So I only look at it as a verb, as something that we are doing and something we are being.
The same with healing, the same with anti racism as well, is that I need to make a conscious decision of what I'm going to consume. Am I going to or if I consume something, I have to keep on my critical mind, my critical lens. Because the only reason why so many of my clients have, like, so many insecurities or inferiority complexes is because they're drinking from the same dirty glasses of water, and it's not them choosing it either. Quick note. When my basic structure of how I work is that my client will come in, and they'll meet with me.
We will get a list of the different traumas they've been through. These are real or perceived experiences. We call them capital letter t traumas. These are objective experiences that every culture is gonna agree are stressful, like, you know, gendered violence, war, etcetera. And then the small letter t traumas, which are very subjective and contextual.
So getting lost or getting abandoned, your mother didn't pick you up when you were 7 years old from the school and etcetera. What happens is that with each of these traumas that we've experienced, it hurts us and we feel it when we recall it to our minds, and there are usually words that are associated with it. And the words again create a feedback loop. So if I say I'm not good enough, I feel it in my heart. Or for some people, they say I'm not good enough, they feel it in their stomach.
For some people, I'm not good enough is in their head. The approach that we use is meant to make it so that the head is clear. So if the head is clear, the feedback loop stops. The heart is clear. The stomach is clear.
So now when they say at the beginning of the session, they said, I'm not good enough, then I say it back to them. What happens when you think about the memory and you say this belief? They're like, I've moved past that and it's been 30 minutes. You know so you know what I mean? So and I'll be like yo I know my writing is really bad but I'm sure this is you who said that.
And they're like no no no this is not what I believe anymore. So that is the strength and the efficiency of memory reconsolidation and this is why we need to be using it in all of our therapies. Not just mine. It's really how we improve psychotherapy in general. So all of this to say there are certain people in our society because of their blackness, because of their gender, because of the way how the society sees them, that have internalized negative beliefs about themselves without their consent.
So when we eliminate the effects of the negative beliefs so that it no longer resonates with the person, they no longer feel it in the body, it leaves space to be able to give an affirmation that comes from them. And when given the choice, all humans, all people, when we have when our brain has the choice between choosing something that's not working for us and choosing something that's gonna be good, they're more likely to choose the thing that's good for them. So when we eliminate I'm not good enough we're able to install I'm a proud black woman. I'm a proud Indian man. I'm like I love myself.
I deeply accept myself. These are things that are worth believing. And so we need to not only be, vigilant in terms of addressing these negative beliefs we've internalized, addressing these bad feelings that we are living with and that we are suppressing from our consciousness, But being able to hold up the looking glass, looking bringing the mirror to ourselves too, and being able to say what is it that serves me? What is it that doesn't serve me? And when we heal from these negative beliefs, when we heal from these traumas, it leaves space to become the person that is meant to exceed the expectations we have for ourselves.
Thank you. Can you define can you drop a little deeper into what memory consolidation is? Yeah. So let me say it in this way. Let's think about memory consolidation.
Memory consolidation is when a memory is going to be formed, okay, and an association is going to happen. The basic idea is this, is that something exceeds your threshold for what you're expecting and maybe your pain and your stress, and then your brain is gonna make this association and be like, yo, don't go near dogs. And then phobias will start to develop because a person is going to experience something enough times either, in actuality or even the imagined experience that it becomes consolidated and more ingrained. For example, not only is it the stress that happens, it gets stored in long term memory in this way that's a little dysfunctional so it's not stored like other long term memories that you might have. So when you try to access it, you're reliving it in the present.
But if I were to ask you what you ate for supper 7 months ago on a Tuesday, you're not going to remember what that is unless it was super awesome and it was like your birthday, or unless you got food poisoning. Like this is the only reason why you're going to remember these long term things. But for many of my clients who have PTSD, depression, anxiety, other diagnoses, personality issues, personality disorders, what happens is if you ask about the trauma, they're gonna tell you what shirt they were wearing, they're gonna tell you what time it was on the clock, when the guy approached, what his mustache looked like, all of that stuff because it's encoded in this way that's dysfunctional. We're not supposed to be keeping our long term stresses, in that way to the point where it prevents us from living like, from leaving the house or prevents us from being able to to interact with others. We're supposed to learn the lesson without needing to re-experience it.
So what we are trying to do is we're trying to reconsolidate the memory. We're trying to consolidate it differently this time. So when a person, let's say, for example, that there's a traumatic memory that that person has experienced, what we're going to do is we're going to recall it. We're going to force them to well, not force, but invite them. I gotta be a therapist.
I gotta be nice to people. We're gonna invite them to think about the stress. When they recall it, that's the first step. And accessing a memory, you're going to access multiple layers of it as well. So not just the visual information, but the process of how it's stored etcetera.
So you recall it and then the next step is to destabilize it. So now we're going to do something that will be a little different from how you've remembered it. So instead of you remembering it and then like, quivering in fear or, like, hiding or trying to suppress it with drugs or alcohol, instead what you're gonna do is feel completely awesome. And so now the way you're recalling this memory is different from all the other times. And then you repeat the pairing, and you do something awesome at the same time while you're recalling this.
And it doesn't take that many passes. It's also not a one time thing as well, meaning that it's not one like usually you'll have to show the same thing multiple times in the session, and then the memory becomes reconsolidated. This is different from what I believe most of us in the field know as extinction, where there's going to be 2 competing memories. This is a little different because memory reconsolidation means we're going to the address of where the memory is stored and changing it. So it's not 2 separate memories.
It's like when he was sleep training my son and he's crying because he's like, you picked me up before. Why is it that you want me to sleep in the crib and you don't wanna, you know, why are you not giving me the bottle? It's not it's not that. Because that is hard. That is super hard.
I don't think I know how to do memory reconsolidation with children yet. But he's gonna teach me one day maybe. But the thing is, for my clients then, if they have the memory of or the phobia of dogs, it's because of the way how the memory has been stored, so then we recall it in the session, and then we destabilize it. When we bring it up, something different happens. They're experiencing it differently.
And in my 3rd book, Racial Trauma Recovery, I explain it as it's overturning information, we're turning the tables on the way the memory has been stored, and on the negative belief we've internalized about ourselves. So if we're feeling awesome in the present moment, and loving ourselves in the present, when we access this memory, that no longer syncs up with the way how the memory was stored. Back then, you felt afraid, but you're feeling awesome right now. But I felt afraid, but I'm feeling awesome right now. And eventually the brain is gonna decide, wait, yo, I'm feeling good.
I'm feeling alright right now. So maybe I was able to survive that. Maybe the pain that I felt right now thinking about the memory is based on what happened rather than what I'm living right now. And then the brain is going to make the right decision. It's gonna start to say, this is to be filed away in the filing cabinet with everything else.
And then when they try to recall the memory, it's blurry. It's harder for them to access it. They're not gonna see the clock on the wall. They're not gonna see the color of the shirt and all these things. It gets stored like every other long term memory.
So I love that. It makes a lot of sense. Right? And I'm with you, and I fully trust what you're saying, and you've seen the work with other people. I'm thinking, though, like, that there is an adaptive component to why we have those memories.
Right? So our master, like, okay. Well, when you see that, it's dangerous, so stay away because we don't want Sure. To happen again. Now when we think about it within the context of race, let's say some racist peer or supervisor at some point did something.
This is the memory that we're working on. Let's say what you're doing is successful. Right? If I know my gun is successful, have I now am I now, It's a good question. I think I know what you're gonna say, but please Yeah.
Have I lost my guard? It was protecting me. It served as a protective feature at one point to be able to be on guard against anyone that looked like him or might say anything like that, peer or supervisor. And now I don't have that. Am I now more defenseless, leaving myself more susceptible to racial harm or racial trauma?
Yeah. That's the belief. That is the belief, and that belief is there for a good reason. We have to know that if we eat old food, we're going to get sick. We need to know that old food is going to get us sick.
You know, it's Christmas. I was eating Christmas leftovers. I didn't get sick though, because I froze the rest of it. But it's really to say that there are things that we learn because it's adaptive. There are things that even rats, mice, in laboratories, they learn.
If they get sick from one thing, they're not gonna touch it, and that's definitely adaptive. However, is it adaptive if we have the experience of when I met my supervisor and said this to me and I'm not good enough? That negative belief, what does that serve? So when we are able to process that type of target, we eliminate that belief because that belief did not come from us, and also it only benefits the oppressor. If you continue to believe you're not good enough, you won't stand up to the supervisor.
So you eliminate the negative belief and then you install a positive belief that says I am somebody, you know, I'm I'm worth it. I love myself. And then it's easier to set the boundary. But you're going to be going uphill. It's an uphill battle if this negative belief is pushing down on you.
And just to know that for memory reconsolidation, the installation of the positive belief is really because I was an EMDR therapist first. It's not necessary for memory reconsolidation, all these extra things. I just think it's awesome to have a person say words and think of ideas and see ancestors so that I'm addressing the types of clients that come to meet with me. Some of them need visual information, auditory information, sensory information. But the natural process of memory reconsolidation, it makes it so that the negative belief is not gonna we're not gonna own that negative belief because it was never ours to begin with.
Yeah. So what I'm hearing is that it really deals with the ways in which we've internalized That part, whereas it doesn't we're still left with our safeguards and being able to identify an oppressive statement if it happens, an oppressive action if it happens. So we're still, you know, well positioned with our defenses, but we are no longer internalizing it in a way that's harmful. You know? So And in and in a way, we do it more effectively when we heal.
If we are relying on the alarm system of trauma to protect us, there's going to be a lot of, like, false positives, false negatives, like, like, there's gonna like, there's gonna be all of these all of this noise that's there. Why not come from a place of mindfulness that says I feel good right now. Oh, yo, you're talking about this? I recognize this feeling in my gut as danger. Therefore, this person is not someone that I need to associate with.
But when a person is operating from their trauma history, it's different from operating from a place of integrity. Yeah. You're not able to be present. You're not able to be spontaneous. And it's your past acting for you rather than you being, like you're saying, in this state of mindfulness and able to engage with the now side of it.
You got it. You got it. Earlier in our conversation, you didn't explicitly say it, but one of my questions is, like, how do you see the relationship that you see between racial trauma and liberation? You said this well, one meaningful thing that you said, and I always say and agree with too, that liberation is a process. I also say that it's Yeah.
It isn't an outcome that we are moving towards, but it's also a process, and it's a day by day choice. And you alluded to, like, some unlearning, and and your modality is a modality that helps with the unlearning. And building on that, what other, if any other, relationship do you see between racial trauma recovery and liberation? The last word, racial trauma recovery and liberation, Yousan? Yes.
It's that compassion is the gift that keeps on giving. When a person heals from their suffering, there's no such thing as a person who exists in isolation. So if you heal from your racial trauma, the racial trauma was installed interpersonally to make it so that you would see yourself as different from other people. When you heal from that, your relationship is now improved. Because again, those negative beliefs that say I'm not good enough because of racial trauma, they infect the relationship.
So then the person who's not who has enough of these traumas, they have difficulty sustaining relationships. They have difficulty keeping jobs. Because, again, their alarm system's always going off, and it's not always putting them in the direction of something that's going to help them. If a person heals from their racial trauma, it improves their relationship. It improves their sense of purpose of why they're here.
Because now instead of fulfilling these false myths that have been internalized because of, you know, watching, like, terrible television, or, like, watching horrible movies or any anything else that's, like, poisoned for the person's mind, then they're able to have the antidote and realize the antidote was them all along. But let's go a step further. While I am a big fan of antiracist psychotherapy because I can't stop writing about it, I also believe that psychotherapy itself is not going to be the only form of liberation. Most of the stresses are perceived by the individual outside of the session. And if we are to engage with true mental health, we have to look at a different economic system as well because many of my clients are stressed out because of poverty.
Many of my clients are stressed out because their work is not, they're not being paid what they are worth. Many of my clients are stressed out because the system of capitalism creates is always racial and it always creates who is worth more, who is to be preserved, who is not to be preserved, etcetera etcetera. So if there is a technology and I understand that for some of your listeners there might be a skepticism about what I'm saying, but that's cool. Check the research. I got the receipts.
Check all the books because I have a whole lot of references because I know that there's gonna be scrutiny for someone saying anti racist. Of course. But if it is that memory reconsolidation is something that happens and we do it all the time without us consciously knowing, but we're able to actively do it in our sessions and get better results, then that technology also exists in our society as well. It's just we haven't practiced that. I'm not going to say that I know the exact way to do it, but I'm gonna tell you that as we are practitioners in this field, we can recognize a sick individual when we see 1, but we can recognize a sick society when we see it as well.
And we know that there is a sickness that is telling people they are worth less because of their lack of money. They're prevented from accessing resources, and the people who need mental health the most are the people who can't afford it. So that's why in my 5th book, Transforming Complex Trauma, I end it by talking about how we need to think about that therapy shouldn't you shouldn't have to pay for therapy. The society that created the trauma should also foot the bill for it. Amen.
Right? So my one last question for you, but well, 2, because I'm gonna ask you how we can keep in touch with you. But until we can get what if we don't find an anti racist? I mean, things have with telehealth, things have changed in that in a whole state, you can find somebody that you can speak to virtually even if it's not in your local area, somebody that's anti racist. But until someone can find an anti racist racist therapist, what are some everyday practices that people can do to heal, racial trauma?
I won't put you too much on the spot. So 1 or 2 is good. No. It's not on the spot. It's just this is a fun question for me, is that we have to change this.
It was Thomas Zimmerman. He's the person who I shout him out because he helped to inspire me to use the wrap technique in sessions because he has the 4 blinks approach to flash, which again, we've been using memory reconsolidation, but only the people that know about it. So he found a more efficient way of being able to do what other people were doing. And then I found ways of making it so that I would respond more with the clients that I come across. So he was the one who told me that one of our problems started with the treatment of mental health when we started to outsource therapists, when we started to say that healing doesn't happen in our community, we need to go outside of our community to meet someone who is more trained, more professional, more has more letters after their names.
So, of course, I love the work that I do, but I also am sad to know that there are many people who don't have access to places where they can heal and recover. That's why we need to change the model. We need to find out how do we make it so that communities can heal themselves. How do we make it so that the individual is able to access something that is worthwhile, that is that is effective for them even if they're not close to Montreal, even if they're not close to the state that you're in the city that you're living in as well? And so the same way how I'm talking about transforming the treatment of complex trauma, I'm talking about transforming the way how our society is organized as well.
We need to start to ask these questions. So while I can, of course, read my second book, Black Meditation, has all these self care tools and techniques and all that, but I realize that even in a workplace, when we put the responsibility of self care on the employee, on the employee, instead of making it that the employer starts to think about community care, then we can perpetuate the problem and and victim blame and say you guys aren't meditating enough. That'll solve the whole thing. What we need to do is we need to start to think big and think differently about what mental health looks like, looking at it in terms of it, as you said, as it being a process, that liberation is a process, and that we're not free unless we're all free at the same time. So changing systems.
Right Right? Because of that example, I worked at 2 universities that had meditation rooms. Yay. Meditation room. Right?
Mhmm. We're, like, over the river and through the woods. Right? So when you had your whole day's work, there was no way that you could get over to wherever I've never seen the meditation rooms. Right?
And so thinking about the systems that were embedded in and how we can reform the systems that improve outcomes for people in addition to to even thinking, because you said some you said many things about mindfulness earlier, but also practicing presence and being in the now gives you this greater ability to discern between what is happening now and what effect a past event might be having on you. And I would even add that you can also use a past event, like, in your life, but when you also practice stillness like that, you can also discern some of the things that may have happened ancestrally that may be alive and awaken you in this moment. So how can we you showed us your 4 books. We're also gonna put them in the description box below. So if you want to read up more on David Archer's Ken.
But is there any other way that we can keep in touch with you and follow you? Sure. And also there are 5 books. The 5 books will be in the description. I can't stop writing.
There's probably gonna be a 6th by the time people hear this, but, so, archertherapy.com is where you can find, like, that's the headquarters if you want information about me, the work that I do, the people I collaborate with. I'm doing some edits on the website right now, but it also has a list of the black bookstores you can buy these books from. If there's a bookstore near you, just request the book. They're going to also be able to get it as well because we but if you don't have access to a bookstore and Amazon is the only option you have, and if you want to support billionaires who fly rocket ships, then you can check on Amazon you're going to find my books as well. The names again of the books, Anti Racist Psychotherapy, Confronting Systemic Racism Healing Racial Trauma, Black Meditation, Racial Trauma Recovery, Black Mountain, Fight for the Future, and then my latest baby right here is Transforming Complex Trauma Reflections on Antiracist Psychotherapy.
You can find these on Amazon and I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok. I'm on all of the social medias. Archer Therapy is the handle. Okay. So thank you so much for this enlightening conversation.
It's delightful. I like that. Right. Thank you. Many blessings to you, and peace to everyone listening.
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