Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 725: Anti-Racist Psychotherapy with David Archer

Transcript

Episode 725: Anti-Racist Psychotherapy with David Archer · The Trauma Therapist

0:10
Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
0:14
My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible cells, to be human,
0:19
to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
0:23
who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
0:27
authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
0:33
about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com.
0:37
That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started. So five four,
0:44
three, two and one, our folks, welcome back to the podcast.
0:48
Very excited to fits MICUs today. David Archer, David welcome, Thank
0:53
you, You're welcome. So David is an EMDR IA approved MDR Consultant course
1:00
provider. He maintained the full time private practice and he's often recruited to provide
1:03
consulting services to other therapists and organizations throughout North America. He is a Master
1:10
up Social Work graduate from McGill University, where he has also subsequently graduated from
1:15
the Couple and Family Therapy program. His expertise has been influenced by the principles
1:19
of mindfulness, intersectional feminism, and critical race theory. He's one of the
1:25
few mental health professionals in Canada and provide MDR brainspody, EFT and other mind
1:30
body strategies. Additional areas of clinical interests include working with individuals who've suffered from
1:37
PTSD, racial trauma, minority strash, Dixon's relational conflict, and eating distorts.
1:44
David welcome, Thank you guys. All right, so before we get
1:48
going here, share with our listeners where you're from originally and where you are
1:52
currently. Yeah. So, so I wanted to thank you again for that
1:57
introduction, knowing that those are some of the things that I do. I'm
2:02
also the developer of what's called it's an integrative clinical framework that's called Rhythm and
2:10
Processing and the intention, the motivation behind it is to eliminate the mental health
2:16
consequences of racial trauma. So how did I get there? Well, because
2:22
I was born in this area called Montreal, Canada. And although like some
2:27
people, when you say that you're from Canada, they're like, well,
2:29
you're the one who wrote anti racist psychotherapy, is like yes, Unfortunately,
2:36
the issues of oppression, the issues of racism, prejudice, these are things
2:42
that are I guess we could say that they're international exports. These are things
2:46
that are in many places around the world. And because I came from this
2:53
area and I was raised around the time when there was like Quebec has an
2:59
interesting history three the rest of the provinces, Quebec was trying to separate from
3:04
the rest of Canada. There was also the Oka Crisis where there were people
3:08
who are trying to take away land from indigenous people. So it's impossible for
3:14
me to have a neutral basis to start with. And so I had to
3:21
understand from a young age what it meant to be a black person, what
3:25
it meant to be a descendant of Jamaican's, what it meant to be located
3:29
in what we call mentreal but the real name is called which is the name
3:34
that the Huda Sony people gave up. So it's really that there was no
3:40
other choice but to create this type of approach the way. The reason why
3:46
i'm this way is because I was born into this context. At what point,
3:51
David, did you saved yourself? I want to begin to study this
4:01
well. So I used to be a software engineer, and even before that,
4:06
I was an artist, and as an artist, I've just draw by
4:12
myself, sees little comics and all these things. As a software engineer,
4:15
I was working to help some one person get rich, and I was like,
4:20
okay, well is this what my work is supposed to be? And
4:25
so I remember when I was a software engineer, there were these self help
4:32
self hypnosis audios that I was listening to, these like downloadable audiotape things to
4:39
get over my shyness. And so I remember programming and being like, wow,
4:44
this is pretty cool that someone could say words and I repeat these words
4:47
and I feel a bit better about myself. And I started to think about
4:53
it and to share it with everyone that I knew, and the idea came
4:58
up again into psychology. So I went from computer science to psychology and there
5:03
was a bit of a learning curve, but it was interesting that in psychology
5:09
we were also trying to use data in order to find ways of being able
5:14
to solve issues. So there was some I guess generalizability from the two.
5:19
And eventually, after doing my bachelors in psychology, I did a master's in
5:25
social work, did a masters in marriage and family therapy, and from their
5:30
working in indigenous communities where there were substance abuse, where there was the effects
5:34
of colonization. I wanted to see if it were it would be possible to
5:41
use that artistic background, that knowledge of information systems in order to help people
5:46
to overcome their suffering. So that's what led me into EMDR therapy, which,
5:53
as I'm sure that you and some of your viewers might now, there's
5:56
a lot of a focus on adaptive and aimation processing and so yeah, all
6:02
the skills that came into one and through that creativity spawned the person that you
6:08
see in front of when you started, When you were first inspired to get
6:15
into psychology, were you driven, whether subconsciously or not, by the topic
6:23
of racial trauma? Yeah, Well, the interesting thing is that if it
6:28
were unconscious, it would be hard for me to know, and maybe on
6:30
some subconscious level it was the intention. But when I studied in psychology,
6:34
there was not a lot of talk about race. Many times the only time
6:39
in psychology that there would be a mention about race. I remember in my
6:43
perception, my sensation and perception class, we were studying about like the human
6:48
retina, and they were talking about well, normally people can see this,
6:55
but on a side note, remember that black people have worse vision than white
6:59
people. I was like, what is this, where is this coming from?
7:01
And I noticed that many times, even if it would be something like
7:04
biology, there would just be this tangent that would be taken that they're talking
7:11
about the so called hard sciences, and then they would use black people as
7:15
this reference of saying that, by the way, white people are still better
7:19
than black people. So it's really that I was again, I was just
7:26
like trying to live my life, and the idea of race and racism is
7:30
something that was projected onto me. So when I studying in psychology, I
7:35
realized there was not a lot of a focus on race. Something felt as
7:39
if it was missing. When I studied in social work, that's when they
7:43
were explicit about talking about oppression. And then when I did a marriage and
7:47
family therapy, that's when I started to think even deeper about the ideas of
7:51
systems. Because when you're a meeting with a client, it looks as if
7:56
you're meeting with an individual, but most times we are meeting with a person
8:01
that is a consequence or maybe a survivor of different experiences in different events that
8:09
have transpired, maybe due to their family history, but especially due to the
8:15
socialization of being a man, being a woman, being a person in this
8:22
specific context. So I feel that family therapy helped me to just remember that
8:28
we are never meeting a person in isolation, that everyone is always in relationship,
8:33
either to their partners, either to their employment, but especially to their
8:37
society that they find themselves. I mean, obviously this is such a huge
8:43
topic when racial trauma. I mean, where do you begin talking about that?
8:48
Yes, what is your oh and if we can get specific and just
8:54
trying to narrow this down to a certain degree, what is your whole in
9:00
the work you do? I think it's to remind people that there's no such
9:07
thing as a broken person. I think that's that's the key. There's many
9:11
times when a person will come to me and they will talk about trauma,
9:18
and in some way I feel that our society does this is it makes it
9:24
so that the person who sees themselves as traumatized is it's like they're alone to
9:31
blame for it, So they have no choice but to internalize and say I'm
9:37
broken, or I'm not deserving of love, or I'm bad because of this
9:41
characteristic of myself, etcetera, etcetera. I think that there's something about our
9:48
society that makes it so certain types of people will be will have a higher
9:52
risk of becoming traumatized, or will experience certain types of or will have certain
9:58
types of power pathogenic associations that will happen in so a lot of what my
10:05
work is is to help a person to undo the violence that has taken place
10:09
due to their family of origin and due to their interpersonal interactions, and also
10:13
due to the social construction of suffering that takes place. And when they are
10:20
able to get rid of some of those negative beliefs that they have internalized,
10:24
they can then get into a openness that they can start to internalize positive beliefs
10:31
of their own, choosing so instead of the negative belief that says I am
10:37
defective or I'm not a good person, the person that is able to discard
10:43
those beliefs recognize that they came out from outside of themselves and then start to
10:48
install a belief that says, I am worthwhile I'm deserving of love, and
10:54
I believe that when we can do this well, when we learn to work
11:00
with the spectrum of well structural dissociation and the spectrum of PTSD complex PTSD and
11:07
those who suffer from dissociative identity disorder. When we can do it well,
11:13
miracles become more commonplace than just being the exception. So being a trauma therapist
11:20
is very challenging. But depending on how we look at our work, we
11:26
can protect ourselves from vicarious trauma and we can get more in touch with experiences
11:31
of vicarious growth. So this is still to answer. One of your first
11:37
questions is how did I get here? And I really credit this to being
11:45
in a family where people cared about me, and also being able to see
11:48
clients move from being broken or move from that internalization of thinking that they were
11:54
broken to then believing that they're Worthwhile we're trying to learn how to help people,
12:01
there's nothing like because of course I worked in software engineering, so when
12:07
you try to compile a program, there would be an error and it'd be
12:11
very clear, Okay, this program's not going to order. When we are
12:13
working with clients, when we're working with the human system, it's sometimes it's
12:18
pretty clear of like, okay, that intervention is still leaving this person in
12:22
tears. I getting to think what can I do better in this situation?
12:26
The client always is giving us feedback, and so the way how I developed
12:31
this way of looking at this type of work is by seeing what didn't work,
12:37
what did work, and also what would make it so that people can
12:39
see themselves as more whole. Can you give me an example, give us
12:45
a specific example of what we're talking about rhythm and processing here? Yeah,
12:50
okay, give us an example of what that looks like. How do you
12:56
work with someone? Sure? So just to know that rhythm and processing is
13:01
an integrative clinical framework, so's it's more than just one specific technique, but
13:07
there's a set of strategies that that inform the way how we would work with
13:13
certain types of individuals. So from the get go it is recommended because we're
13:20
trauma therapist in the audience, it's recommended that we're going to do a thorough
13:24
assessment and so we want to make sure especially to screen forward association. I'm
13:30
a big fan of the m ID sixty by doctor Mary Kate. I wish
13:35
that I remembered our last name, but see you've an amazing clinician or a
13:39
researcher that's from Australia, I believe, and the MD sixty is very helpful
13:45
to help us to be able to do sixty questions that will help a client
13:50
to be able to see the type and the category of how the trauma is
13:56
affecting them. So we'll get some idea of out what persecutory intrusions are,
14:01
we will get some idea about what associative amnesia, what's going on with all
14:07
of that, and that helps me to be able to then with the client
14:11
describe to them what we are. We are scoring all of this because you're
14:16
now in the therapy that's going to help to treat these types of things.
14:20
So of course I'll do anxiety scales, depression scales, all of that.
14:24
It's a full comprehensive psychotherapy. After me, But is this specifically or racial
14:31
trauma to target racial trauma or not? Yes, yes it is. Okay,
14:37
let me back up a bit. It's important for us to understand exactly
14:41
what race is. So race is not a scientific concept. Race is really
14:46
that you see a person and then you think, but this is what they
14:48
are. Race is something that is socially constructed. This means that depending on
14:54
your skin tone, if you go to a different country, you're not black.
14:58
If you go to a different country, you're not white, or if
15:01
you're from South America, then you go to the States, they will say
15:05
that you're white, or they will say that you're Latino or Latino. So
15:09
depending on where you're at, you will see yourself as different. In the
15:13
society will see you as different. Gender is a similar thing that it is
15:18
socially constructed. So it's not one hundred percent of binary of saying that a
15:24
person is male or female, because that's not determined by the chromosomes. For
15:30
example, as a person can have x y chromosomes and they can look very
15:33
different, they can look similar to someone who has x x chromosomes. So
15:37
we know then that gender itself is something that is created. The idea of
15:43
madness, of womanness, these are things that are created. They're not one
15:48
hundred percent. It's like depending on where you go, they change. The
15:54
interesting thing about race, The reason why I focused on race is because I
16:00
feel that it's something that we see and it can have like devastating consequences even
16:04
though it's completely fake, so it's not something that's real. But when because
16:11
I focus on racial trauma, I'm also focused on the impact that the society
16:15
has on the individual because of the society's gays. So this is the reason
16:19
why since I'm in a metropolitan city. I work with people are all quote
16:25
unquote races. I work with people across the gender spectrum, so SISMAIL,
16:32
non binary, etc. LGBTQ, and we are still able to get the
16:37
same benefit for the client because race relates to how the society sees you,
16:45
how you internalize the terrible things that have happened to you because of your identity,
16:51
and that is something that happens with gendered violence for example. This is
16:56
something that happens with homophobia for example. So although the focus was initially on
17:03
race, it ended up being able to be an intervention that generalizes to other
17:07
oppressed people because the society that uses white supremacy, or the society that uses
17:15
the insecurity of whiteness, also is using hetero patriarchy as well in same in
17:22
a similar intersecting way. Zachler, make sure, yeah, I know that
17:29
this is a different perspective because a lot of times people will think of race
17:33
in this one way, and then people will think, well, because I
17:38
wrote anti race sociychotherapy, so people will think, well, this is the
17:44
thing that is to help black people. Then, but we have to understand
17:48
is that the way where racism comes from of course, it is that the
17:55
victim of it might be a person who is racialized and specific way. But
18:00
white people also have a race. So that's why we can still use some
18:04
of these approaches with white people. It's just that white people most times many
18:10
of them have forgotten that they come from Africa. So there's this idea that
18:14
we are so different from each other that this therapy is only going to apply
18:18
to those who have the explicit label of being racialized. But it's important to
18:25
know that in a way, we all technically do have genders. We all
18:30
technically or at least the categorization by the society as having genders. We all
18:34
technically have the categorization categorization of race as well. So that is why we
18:41
can use an intervention that is anti racist, and we can help a black
18:45
person in the same way that we can use this intervention and help an Asian
18:48
a white person. So I've tested this, As I said, I work
18:53
with people from all over the different spectrum of race, and there's immigrants,
19:00
there's people who are not native speakers of the language in this province, and
19:04
they also experience different forms in varying forms of oppression, and it seems to
19:10
get the job done. But it's really to say that we will still use
19:17
what is recommended for trauma therapies with people who may have been impacted by racial
19:23
trauma, because a lot of people, regardless of whether it's depression, whether
19:27
it's anxiety, I think for us to be effective, we have to consider
19:34
etiology. We have to consider what is the first thing that caused this person
19:40
to believe that they were depressed, What is the first event that transpired that
19:45
led the person to have an eating disorder in the first place. And even
19:49
though the eating disorder may not necessarily be related to the color of the person's
19:53
skin, a lot of times there's a gendered element that's there, a lot
19:59
of times there's a social element that's there. And when we can target the
20:03
original anorexogenic statement or anorexogenic event that took place, when we are able to
20:11
also build in certain resources to make the person be able to deal with certain
20:15
urges, when we are able to address the traumas that have taken place that
20:21
led them to identify as being anorexic or identify as being defective or problematic,
20:26
or any of the labels, we are able to get a resolution at a
20:33
deep, deep level. So the work that I do, of course is
20:37
not just limited to rhythm and processing. You can still do this with EMD,
20:41
or you can still do this with brainspotting and all of these different approaches,
20:45
because the core of what makes the change happen is memory reconsolidation. So
20:52
memory reconsolidation is going to mean that doesn't matter where the person came from,
20:57
doesn't matter how the society looks at them. There was a natural process that
21:03
helps all people to heal and recover rapidly and efficiently and permanently as well.
21:11
When we think of how people becomes traumatized, many times it's a one pass
21:15
event like you can witness for example, in the United States, we know
21:22
that there are a lot of mass shootings that take place, or like sometimes
21:26
a person can experience that terrible event or survive that terrible event, and then
21:32
after in July there can be fireworks that are going off and they will feel
21:37
that maybe that's the sound of a shot, and they will react in a
21:40
similar type of way with a hyper vigilance, with an avoidance of loud sounds.
21:47
So from a single event, they were able to have this problem that
21:52
would persist and stay with them over time. So we are able to use
21:56
the principles of memory reconsolidation strategically and with virtual therapies so that maybe not a
22:06
single pass, but within that clinical hour, we can help to reprocess trauma
22:11
quickly, efficiently, and without the big ab reactions that often take place with
22:21
other trauma therapies. So we are able to present disconfirming knowledge and disconfirming evidence
22:30
for the client that is accessing something that took place in the past by being
22:33
able to contrast with something that makes them feel completely awesome in the present,
22:37
and the brain updates the information. It files the trauma away in the past.
22:48
Yeah, it files it away in the past so that it's no longer
22:51
present, and it does this in a way that makes a person smile instead
22:56
of being fearful of the previous stimulus. In your explanation of the work you
23:03
do, I think I got a little confused. I mean, it almost
23:07
sounded like you were saying, and I don't think you're saying this, but
23:11
almost like you were saying that all trauma is racial trauma. No, it's
23:19
that it's that all trauma I believe actually comes from the society and the people
23:26
and the interpersonal. It's like it's what's around the individual. It's just that
23:32
racial trauma is going to be directed towards a specific categorization of people. It's
23:38
like gender trauma. It's like gender trauma has like falls under that umbrella of
23:44
saying socially constructed forms of distress, and then after there's categories that are below
23:49
that. So racial trauma is one of those. Racial trauma. Just isn't
23:57
white people oppressing black people? No, because white people have racial trauma,
24:06
right, because most if you've read a resumementicum, you'll know that many white
24:12
people that came to this country, to our countries, they didn't come by
24:18
choice. Some of them didn't really want to. If we go back far
24:22
enough, is that the conditions that were in Europe at the time, Like
24:26
if I speak from my Irish brothers and sisters that are out there, it
24:30
wasn't always that comfortable in that continent. We know that there was also in
24:34
Europe there was a lot of it wasn't that nice all the time. So
24:41
it's really to say that there's white people that have had to flee. So
24:45
it's almost like a survival reaction that either intentionally they wanted to come to North
24:51
America purposefully or they had no choice. When we think about some of the
24:56
women who came to Quebec, that they were just there to kind of increase
25:02
the population of the settlers that we're there. So there's a fight flight dynamic
25:08
that existed within white people from the beginning. There's a survival, a fear
25:12
of survived, a fear of being oppressed or this violence that took place towards
25:18
them, that is within the white body that then gets projected outwards. When
25:25
we think about race and we think about the stereotypes that are thrown onto black
25:29
people, then I have to refer to the binary complex trauma cycle, which
25:33
I explain an anti racist psychotherapy. On one end, you will get white
25:38
supremacy slash white insecurity. What it means is that everything that we think of
25:45
in terms of being white is oftentimes the best thing. So if you are
25:51
a therapist, the best therapist is most likely a white person. If you
25:56
are like an intellectual, you're probably going to be seen as a privileged individual.
26:03
Etside. On the other end of the spectrum is black suffering. And
26:08
so what happens with blackness is that we receive the traits and the characteristics that
26:15
are rejected from the white body. In order for white supremacy to exist,
26:22
it needs to discard all of the trauma and all of the negative aspects of
26:26
itself. So the person who is not intelligent is a black person or at
26:30
least a dark skinned individual. The person who is lazy or who is hyper
26:34
sexualized is oftentimes going to be a person who is othered in the society.
26:41
And in a way, it's that white supremacy and whiteness dissociates from its own
26:48
trauma, projects it into blackness. When black people through the society internalize it,
26:56
or when the society itself validates it, then that leads to validating the
27:02
cycle of saying then that white people are good. So on one end you
27:07
will find that white insecurity projects its undesired traits into blackness. Blackness internalizes it,
27:14
and it validates the cycle. So in this case, the racist,
27:18
the person who hates other people, does not need to feel better about himself.
27:22
What he can do is just harm the other person, so the other
27:26
person believes that they are lesser than and it is this cycle that allows the
27:32
bullies to continue to do the things that they do and the culture supports that
27:36
too, right, Yes, that's a major driving factor. It's not,
27:41
it's it's I mean when as you're explaining the white person or people discard their
27:48
trauma and project that onto the other, there's a full force of cultural support
27:59
that, right. I mean, that's where almost like the oppression is coming
28:02
from or it needs Yeah, yes, it needs to. And remember also
28:07
that because race itself is a construct, we can replace the binary complex trauma
28:12
cycle titles with male dominance versus female submission. So it's a similar thing is
28:21
that we will say that women are too emotional, and then we will have
28:25
certain people who were presidents of a country who will not be named, who
28:30
have very little. They get really upset and really triggered if you say things
28:36
about them. So it's it's just interesting how the traits that people don't like
28:41
they project onto other individuals without needing to work on themselves. And when the
28:45
society permits us without giving certain without giving like a harsh consequence, it then
28:52
validates the process. So what we are trying to do is it doesn't matter
28:57
if it doesn't Although race again is important, I just want to say that
29:03
it's not the only thing that is going to impact whether a person can heal
29:10
from trauma. I just want to make sure that that's that's clear, because
29:12
it's not that it's not that all the trauma comes from the way how the
29:17
person how the society sees them, but the way how the society sees them
29:22
does does have consequences, whether it's whether it looks as if it's real or
29:27
not, like whether it looks like it's real from the outside it seems to
29:33
be real. I'm going to be talking about this actually at the ISSSTD.
29:37
I'm going to be doing a plenary talk on using racial rhythm and Processing.
29:42
So I'll be explaining it if anyone is listening, and it's going to be
29:48
I think the third week of April, and the talk is going to be
29:52
about rhythm and processing. The study that I'm going to be talking about,
29:56
the case study, relates to some some measures. The measures that I used
30:02
were the mid sixty cesd G eighty seven and the PCL five, And I
30:08
wanted to demonstrate that we are able to use this type of approach even with
30:12
a white woman, and we are still able to get some dramatic changes in
30:21
the person's expression of their trauma. So this was a client who was referred
30:26
to me by a therapist. The therapist saw that after about fifteen sessions that
30:32
there were so much of a change that they were impressed. They called me
30:36
up and they asked if they could be client. So that's why I kind
30:38
of feel like I got to share this with people. I need. Not
30:42
only is it that clients need to know that they can recover, but therapists
30:47
need to know that there's a way that we can do this that doesn't need
30:51
to be so toxic to our own system. I've seen it since I started.
30:56
I've seen people who have burned out and no longer are therapist or needed
31:00
to change careers. I've seen some approaches to therapy that look is if it
31:08
is a little toxic not only to the therapist but also to the client.
31:11
So I wanted to try to develop something that was actually client centered and a
31:18
bit more humane. And I think that I think we deserve us. I
31:22
think that I think we need to find ways that we can help people and
31:29
also that the therapist as well can continue to do the work and that clients
31:34
can feel a bit more awesome for no reason. That's pretty much just remind
31:37
everyone that I'm speaking with David Archer. He is a therapist consultant. He
31:44
has a private practice and author of several books and racist psychotherapy, Black Meditation,
31:52
and racial Trauma Recovery. And is there another one coming out? Yeah,
31:55
so there's another book that I'm writing because the thing is, I'm I'm
32:00
a father of a newborn and I realize that, thank you, it'll be
32:04
some time before my son can read anti racist psychotherapy, as this book is
32:07
taught in some universities that are using So I was like, wait, he
32:13
can't count yard either. I don't even think he knows his name yet,
32:17
and he's still approaching that level of ego development. So I was thinking,
32:22
I want to make it so that more people can come into this field.
32:27
I want to make it also that because I'm the only black Mail EMDR approved
32:30
consultant that I know in my country, I want to make it so that
32:36
more people can be interested in the concepts of trauma reprocessing. So my next
32:42
book is called Black Mountain Fight for the Future, and it's a mix between
32:45
a Japanese anime fighting, a comic book and also anti racist psychotherapy principles in
32:53
the future and in a different galaxy. And the general concept is that by
33:00
being able to practice meditation, by being able to practice certain rituals that are
33:05
indigenous to their planet, they're able to fight off this interplanetary corporation that practices
33:14
what is called light supremacy. And yeah, it's a lot of fun.
33:17
I think that is therapist. We need to tap into that creativity that comes
33:22
with our work. I think that many of us, regardless of our approach,
33:27
we see transformative things. We see things that well, in some cases,
33:31
in some context, we can see some things that challenge our ideas of
33:37
reality. And so I just want to keep writing to inspire that type of
33:42
change. And so some of my books will be highly academic and nonfiction,
33:46
and some of them will talk about people shooting lasers out of their hands,
33:50
because I think, why not, why not make it so that that not
33:54
so that our idea of a therapist changes, so that our coaches to therapy
34:00
can change as well. Let me ask you, we were kind of skipped
34:05
over this, what is anti racist psychotherapy? So I like to answer this
34:12
by saying, let me start first with what a racist psychotherapy is. I
34:15
think it's super important for us to know this. A racist psychotherapy is one
34:22
that is going to victim blame. Effectively, A racist psychotherapy is one that
34:28
maintains that there is this hierarchy between the therapist and the client, of saying
34:32
that the client is coming to see the therapist because the client themselves is helpless
34:37
and they need to they need a savior of some kind. So this is
34:43
something that I believe that I don't think it's helpful. I also think that
34:49
it's something that makes it so that there is a taboo about going to therapy
34:53
in my community and in many other communities as well. Is when we think
34:59
about psychotherapy itself, I just don't know many other black psychotherapists. I just
35:06
I haven't studied, Like in when I'm learning about this, I never saw
35:09
anyone who looked like they didn't really show them for people. But we just
35:13
assume that everyone is an old white man that looked like Freud's assumed that they
35:16
all have this big burden, maybe a pipe or something. So anti racist
35:22
psychotherapy is about recognizing that not only is it that we are resolving the issue
35:30
that exists in the person's trauma history, but that the therapists themselves also needs
35:35
to heal. As the therapist is able to heal from their own internalized oppression,
35:42
as the therapist is able to understand where they themselves are located in terms
35:47
of their social location, in their own strength, their own weaknesses. As
35:53
the therapist is able to understand that the healing does not need to come from
35:59
just the therapist. It doesn't need to come from just what's in our head,
36:02
but it needs to come from in our heart. Then we were able
36:06
to use approaches that are informed by memory reconsolidation to create change that puts the
36:13
client at the forefront rather than the therapist. So even though I am using
36:19
EMDR therapy, my EMDR therapy looks different because it's informed by principles that are
36:23
just different. So you don't need to only use EMDR in order to to
36:30
say that you're an anti racist cycle therapy. I didn't trademarket. Anyone could
36:32
call themselves that, But it's just to know that there's a different way of
36:38
being able to do our work that empowers the client. There's a way that
36:45
this work that allows for the client to talk about race in the client in
36:50
the therapy session. I've had a lot of clients that would come and speak
36:52
to me. They met other therapists and they came to speak to me because
36:59
they said that their therapy was racist towards them. So how often does that
37:04
happen? And who is documenting this? Because the client cannot admit that type
37:10
of thing to like, like, who are they gonna They can't like admit
37:14
it to the media or something. Who are they They're going to call the
37:15
police? They can't do this. But I've had enough clients come to me
37:20
and say that these types of things happened to me in their therapy that I
37:24
decided I needed to make um Not only did I need to make it so
37:30
that I myself was not going to retraumatize my client, but I needed to
37:35
make it so that there was a philosophy that other people could learn, so
37:37
that regardless of the race of the therapist, that they could do more effective
37:40
work and help our clients to just to fully recover and be their full selves
37:46
out in the world. So in your description of racist therapy, there was
37:55
no mention of skin tone, right, I mean the qualities of the elements
38:00
that you used to describe it were regardless of skin tone. I mean someone
38:07
kind of feeling like, you know, they were better than or knew more
38:10
more than or that the client is coming to the therapist and the therapist is
38:15
going to help and fix. Right. That has nothing to do with with
38:19
skin tone, right, Because race is just about categorization, Okay. Race
38:27
is about saying that there is a person who is privileged because their nose is
38:31
straight or because their hair is not curling. Like race is just it's arbitrary.
38:38
So when we are saying something is racist, it's usually that there's a
38:42
system that encourages this arbitrary way of categorizing people and gives people harsh consequences because
38:47
of this non scientific categorization that we've established. So it's power is inherent within
38:57
that. Yeah, Yeah, definitely, Guy, I'd recommend that you read
39:01
the book. I think you're going to find you're going to find that when
39:05
you read it, it's it's a little different than what people think that it
39:08
is because your questions, the reason why you're asking them, I think makes
39:14
a lot of sense. And I think we need to change the way how
39:16
we look at what race and racism is because there's a lot of white people
39:22
that feel as if they're It's like, there's white people that feel as if
39:28
they're blamed for something that they shouldn't have blamed for. And so then there's
39:31
a defensiveness that comes up when we say anti racist, why are you talking
39:37
about race? But it's in part because it's like, we shouldn't talk about
39:43
race, because if we talk about the fact that there are these hierarchies and
39:45
we might want to change them. So that's why I think that for many
39:50
white people there's a hesitancy of talking about race or racism because they feel that
39:54
they will be blamed. And also the society benefits from us talking about race,
40:00
otherwise we will realize weight this thing does not benefit the majority of individuals.
40:08
Also, sorry, one other thing I just want to add is that
40:13
race is inextricably linked with capitalism as well. So we have to understand that
40:19
when I'm going to use Andrew Smith's definition of what white supremacy is, is
40:23
that she's going to speak about anti blackness that's linked up with capitalism. So
40:30
the idea of saying that a person is worth this amount or this amount because
40:35
of their appearance of their body, then there is also a genocide which relates
40:40
to the idea of indigenousity and or how the indigenous people must be removed from
40:47
these countries so that the rightful people who call themselves Americans or Canadians can take
40:53
all of the land. And then after there's orientalism that's also linked with it
40:58
as well. An orientalism is the idea that your country and my country is
41:02
almost always at war all the time because there's always a foreign aggressor. So
41:08
when I'm talking about race in this way, I'm talking about it beyond the
41:14
physical appearance of the individual. It's important for us to zoom out a little
41:20
and see what is the function of race, And many times the function is
41:23
not only just to put down other people, but it's often to get a
41:30
material benefit. And material benefit could be money, but it could also be
41:35
a steam, it could be imaginary things as well. But it's to zoom
41:39
out and think about race on a global scale. And that's yeah, there's
41:45
so much, there's so much I can add to it, but I just
41:47
generally want to say that because our societies and our countries themselves are traumatized.
41:53
Just like if you look at a family system, if the parents themselves are
41:58
traumatized, they can push they can put this onto the identified patient, they
42:02
can put it onto the child themselves. So the child believes that they're acting
42:07
of their own volition, but they have inherited a story that's not even theirs.
42:12
So we help the client to get better ultimately because that improves their relationships.
42:19
As we improve those relationships, we improve our communities. And it's it's
42:23
a hypothesize that if we can make it that we're not traumatizing ourselves and our
42:28
interactions with one another, then we can maybe even change the world. Well,
42:34
I'm glad you agreed to come on here. I mean I wanted to
42:37
bring you on here because obviously this is eye opening. I think definitely thank
42:45
yourself and for a lot of people too. And I think the more people
42:52
are able to become aware of what you're talking about, I think it can
42:58
only be beneficial for everybody. I appreciate it. It took me a long
43:00
time to write all these books, so I'm glad that that it has this
43:05
positive effect. But also is that a key thing I want to say as
43:08
well is that it's not enough to just write or to even read the books.
43:14
Is that there needs to be action as well. Is that I'm an
43:16
experiential therapist. It means that in my session, I want things to happen
43:22
so that the client is going to take that experience and go out into the
43:27
world and do things. So I think that it's not only that we need
43:30
to read these types this type of literature to go outside of our zone of
43:34
comfort and learn about these things, but we need to just make it so
43:37
that we can be more compassionate to the next person as well. We need
43:40
to pay it forward by helping other people to also have an easier time than
43:45
we did. I agree, I mean, and I think you know,
43:51
especially with regards to the world of psychology, this is a great first step,
43:59
or even the second step. I'm going to have linked up obviously your
44:04
website. What's the best way for people to get in contact with you?
44:06
David Yea so Archertherapy dot com is my website. If you want the books
44:13
and if you don't mind supporting billionaires who fly rocketships to the moon, then
44:17
you can go on Amazon Amazon dot com and search anti racist psychotherapy Black meditation.
44:25
If I can just quickly say, anti racist psychotherapy is just a general
44:30
introductions for people to understand what this always the philosophy. Black meditation is a
44:35
list of different resources for your black clients that may need something to help to
44:39
supplement their therapy. And then racial Trauma Recovery is an explanation of what I
44:45
do in my sessions so that you can replicate those changes in yours. Awesome.
44:51
Awesome. I'll have those linked up at the show notes page at the
44:53
Trauma Typist podcast dot com. David, Obviously, I mean it felt to
44:59
me and I'm sure to you even more so that we just scratched the service
45:02
here. But I'd love to have you back, Thank you, and I'd
45:07
love to link up your talk at that was is STD Yes, that's yeah,
45:13
that's going to be and uh it's called Uh we're going to be shifting
45:17
the societal denial of dissociation. And so Jennifer Fried is also going to be
45:22
there, Who's someone I really respect. There's also another planary speaker. I
45:25
wish that I had the advertisement in front of me so I could say their
45:29
name, But I'm going to be there on the third day just to give
45:31
a planary talk about rhythm and processing and being able to just shift this denial
45:38
of the association and shift this denial of of of racial trauma as it exists
45:44
in our society and it'll be fun, you'll learn a lot, and I'll
45:49
probably show one or two of my techniques because we got to be experiential,
45:52
we got to feel it. I appreciate it all right, sir. Awesome
45:57
meeting you, and we'll see you again. Thank you so much for many
46:00
blessings to you and to everyone else.