Chapters
Welcome & Guest Introduction
Sponsor Message: ISSTD
Life Updates And Patience In Parenting
PhD Vision And Rhythm & Processing
Field Checkpoint: Where Trauma Care Stands
Beyond Talk: Body, Culture, Community
EMDR Through An Anti‑Racist Lens
Therapist Burnout And Vicarious Trauma
Healer Heal Thyself: Embodied Practice
Institutional Betrayal And Courage
Climate Anxiety, Social Stress, And Care
Discomfort As Portal To Change
Sword And Shield: Boundaries And Care
Predictive Processing 101
Memory Reconsolidation In Action
Client Agency And Joy As Surprise
Updating Psychotherapy’s Old Metaphors
Listening, Misdiagnosis, And Race
Toward A Trauma‑Informed Society
Resources, Groups, And Community Care
Rest, Gratitude, And Closing
Summary
What if therapy could feel creative, embodied, and joyful—and still deliver precise, measurable change? We sit down with David Archer—anti-racist psychotherapist, EMDRIA-approved trainer, and developer of Rhythm and Processing—to rethink how healing happens for complex PTSD, racial trauma, and dissociation. David lays out a clear, accessible path from predictive processing and memory reconsolidation to practical tools you can use right away: client-led actions, music and imagery, community rituals, and therapeutic “surprise” that helps the brain update old patterns without forcing catharsis.
Across the conversation, we explore how EMDR grows stronger through an anti-oppressive lens that welcomes culture, faith, and art into the room. David shares real-world examples of using visualization, pets, numbers, and rhythm to create disconfirming experiences that soften hypervigilance and despair. We also talk frankly about therapist burnout and vicarious trauma, and why protecting helpers is non-negotiable if we want sustainable care. The “sword and shield” metaphor—boundaries and action alongside recovery and rest—offers a simple way to organize both clinical work and daily life.
We widen the lens to institutional betrayal, misdiagnosis tied to racial bias, and the urgent need for trauma-informed systems that value courage over comfort. Instead of fitting clients into rigid methods, David urges us to let clients generate the method—an approach that supports neurodiversity, scales to groups, and keeps humanity at the center of mental health. If you’re curious about predictive processing, memory reconsolidation, EMDR, or culturally responsive care, this is a grounded, hopeful roadmap for change.
If this conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague or friend, and leave a review on your favorite app. Your words help others find the tools—and the courage—to heal.
Full Transcript
Lisa Danylchuk: 0:04
Welcome back to the How We Can Heal podcast. Today our guest is David Archer. David is an anti-racist psychotherapist, MDRIA-approved trainer and consultant, and a complex trauma specialist who focuses on racial trauma, complex PTSD, and dissociation. He's the developer of Rhythm and Processing, an integrative, culturally responsive approach to healing racial and complex trauma. He's also the author of five books, including Anti-Racist Psychotherapy, Black Meditation, Racial Trauma Recovery, Black Mountain Fight for the Future, and most recently, Transforming Complex Trauma, a synthesis of his work on revolutionary and anti-oppressive trauma healing. He trains therapists internationally through Mdria-approved programs, brings an explicit anti-oppressive and social justice lens to clinical practice, and continues to shape the future of trauma treatment through research, teaching, and community care. David first joined us in season four, and we're so lucky to have him back. Please join me in welcoming David Archer back to the show. I want to give a big shout out and extend a huge thank you to the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Association, or ISSTD, for sponsoring this episode. If you've been listening to this podcast, you've heard me talk about ISSTD and the incredible researchers, clinicians, and advocates I've met during my time as a member and a volunteer there. The ISSTD has been delving into the science and best practice of treating trauma and dissociation for over 40 years. And they have a rich catalog of educational offerings for both professionals and non-professionals on their website, cfas.isst-d.org. If you're a mental health professional, I highly recommend you consider becoming a member of ISSTD. I'd love to see you during the live educational offerings and at the annual conference coming up in Portland, Oregon in March of 2026. Visit ISST-D.org to learn more. David Archer, welcome back to the How We Can Yield Podcast. So good, so good. So what have you been up to since we last spoke in 2024?SPEAKER_02: 2:33
Okay, so yeah, so there's been quite a few developments. Like now, because before last time we spoke, I had my son and now I have a daughter. And so this means again that like I'm trying to manage how to maintain my sanity.SPEAKER_01: 2:49
Right.SPEAKER_02: 2:50
So many decibel levels. We could talk about that.Lisa Danylchuk: 2:54
I mean, I have a two and a half year old and two dogs, and I'm just I feel like I'm in a video.SPEAKER_01: 3:00
Full house, full house.Lisa Danylchuk: 3:02
So much noise, so much energy, so much vibration.SPEAKER_02: 3:05
Yes, but we were speaking a bit right before we started recording as you spoke about the importance of patience. And so I think that having a child, there's no other choice but to acquire your own lesson relating to patience. And you know, my son in his own way is like teaching me to be a better father, and I'm hoping that well, it's already happening. My daughter's also doing her job in in that realm as well. Oh, yeah. So I'm also in the second semester of my PhD.Lisa Danylchuk: 3:37
Oh, you do not play. You like are not messing around.SPEAKER_02: 3:42
That's what's up. That's what's up. And the reason why is because I'm hoping to share a little bit about this in our talk today. Yeah. Is that um uh the PhD, the basic idea is me being able to develop the evidence base and understanding relating to rhythm and processing strategies. Rhythm and processing, for those who don't know, is an approach that's meant to address the mental health consequences of complex trauma, dissociation, and complex racial trauma. And we are using videos, we're using images, we're using culture, we're using visualizations. We're trying to make a fully focused, client-centered approach to healing. And I'll talk a bit more about that. It's based on predictive processing as a framework and memory reconsolidation as a theory. But the basic idea for the PhD, the dissertation is going to involve me and my reflections of using this approach, writing an autoethnoethnographic analysis so that there's a way of making it that the words reach more than just other researchers and other therapists. And ultimately, there will be a hip-hop album that I'll be producing as part of the dissertation because the knowledge dissemination is key.SPEAKER_00: 4:56
Yes.SPEAKER_02: 4:56
Not enough people in the world know that they can heal. And I want to speak the language of non-clinicians so that non-clinicians can understand the mission that we have as practitioners. And I can't speak for everyone else, but as a revolutionary, intersectional, inter anti-racist psychotherapist, my goal is to make it so all people can heal from their suffering and recognize their awesomeness. So that's the PhD. That's that's what that thing is.Lisa Danylchuk: 5:22
Every time you describe one thing, and I was listening back to our last interview, which folks, if you haven't listened, it's amazing. It holds up super strong and it's a great basis for this conversation. So go back and listen. But you finish, and I'm just like, okay, that's good. That that's it. You just summarize. Wonderful. Like applause. We can all sit down now.SPEAKER_02: 5:40
Thank you. Appreciate it, appreciate it. Appreciate it. But Lisa, again, is that like I know that I'm also speaking, I gotta just big you up as well, man. The past president of ISST keynote presentation. The keynote. Okay, could you please talk a little bit about what it is that you're going to be presenting? So that because it might, I think it's gonna tie into the pre into our podcast today.Lisa Danylchuk: 6:01
It does tie in, and my dogs are very excited about it too, as you can probably hear. Yes, yes. They are me up as well. Yes, great. So we're gonna talk about where the field has been of complex trauma and dissociation, where we feel like it is now. Like I interviewed my mom on the podcast again recently, and she was like, We're in the muck of it, right? There's like a whole stage of therapy that's like, oh, we're really stirring things up. Like when you're cleaning out your closet and you have no idea what you want to keep, and when you want you want to get rid of, and you're just like, whoa. And we're also learning a lot, we're revealing a lot. There's a lot collectively that we're seeing more clearly than we've seen in the past as a group, I would say.SPEAKER_02: 6:40
Yes.Lisa Danylchuk: 6:41
And and then shout out to Jennifer Gomez. I should just do it every episode. Dreamstorming, and she's presenting with us. It's uh myself, my mom, Lynette Danilchuk, and Dr. Jennifer Gomez, Dr. Bethany Brand as well. And we're gonna talk about where we'd like to see the field go. And so it's really inspiring as a presenter because I'm shifting. It's not just like, okay, these are the slides and this is the information, it's a process-oriented presentation. And I think it is really responsive to what we're feeling that's going on in the country here in the US, that's impacting dynamics around the world. People are learning more about trauma, whether that's directly studying trauma or being exposed to it. People are learning more about dynamics that relate to violence, how human beings respond to being harmed with either care or reaction or response, and through responding in care or responding in additional harm. So we're gonna have some time to unpack some of that, hear from some really inspiring researchers and teachers, and have a collective sense and bring voice even from the audience to where do we go from here? What do we want to see? You know, here we are, this group of helpers and healers. You know, Mr. Rogers famously says, look for the helpers when something's going wrong. And they're there and we're here and we've been here, and there's so much richness within the organization and within your work. Like you just every time you drop a summary, I'm like, that's it. There's so much in there that's so beautiful. And so elevating that, uh, recognizing the power we have in that and really amplifying the vision that we have coming from each person, but also collectively. What do we want to see? What do we want to create? How do we want this information that's so rich within this field, like you were saying, to turn into a hip-hop song, to become something that people recite to themselves when they're walking to work, right? When they're right, when they're awake at night with their child, right? How we anchor ourselves in this healing. So I think your work and even just listening back to our last interview, I was like, oh, I so good at that, like bringing it to what's essential rather than getting lost in the impacts and the dynamics that can really storm up around trauma.SPEAKER_02: 9:10
Yes, that's amazing. And again, you listed that lineup, a legendary lineup of people that you just described. And it's really that is that I'm so interested in how we really fulfill um the promise of what our field is meant to be. And in so doing, and me trying to figure this out in Montreal, in Toronto, in the indigenous communities, that's what led me to develop rhythm and processing strategies. And what I found is that it seemed as if the, and maybe this is just me, this is just me, but me using a Western approach that was based on just words, it didn't seem to be helping the people who had no words to talk about the suffering that they've experienced. Yes. In fact, when people are traumatized, oftentimes it literally takes the breath out of them. It leaves them speechless. We have these ways of talking about it in our society to explain what all of our clients are going through. And so then I, through my own practices, my own meditations, my own learnings, attending the ISS TD conferences, the workshops, the legendary members, all of these people. It helped me to understand that there might be different ways of being able to help people. And so I start with the body. I start with the mind. I start with rejecting the decacht idea of mind and body split. We're talking about how the mind and the body actually are connected. Your nervous system is connected. Dissociation talks about that separation. We're trying to get some integration in there, but ultimately we're trying to make it so that not only are we integrating ourselves, not only are we feeling more integrated with our mental schemas, our memories, but that we can feel more integrated as a community. This is the I believe if I were part of that panel, I would say that this is kind of come on down. I would, I would, I would, but you know, baby doesn't like airplanes yet. Baby, baby doesn't like airplanes yet, but it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. We gotta collaborate for sure. Yes. Because it's just to say that with rhythm and processing strategies, it evolved from the knowledge gaps that I see with EMDR therapy. Another quick thing is that I'm now an EMDR therapy trainer. I am the first black EMDR therapy trainer in Canada, and I will by no means be the last. And my goal is to make it that we get more black people who can do EMDR therapy, more white people who can use EMDR therapy from an anti-racist lens, and people of all walks of life to know that healing is possible. This EMDR has literally changed my life and the lives of many clients that I've met and come across. But adding that axe that extra lens where you can talk about race, you can talk about gender, you can talk about sexual identity has been life-changing and life-saving for many of the people I've met in my own community here.SPEAKER_01: 12:06
Yeah.SPEAKER_02: 12:07
However, in addition to EMDR therapy, the knowledge gaps are that from what I've seen, we oftentimes need uh people who are basic trained to get a bit more of an understanding of complex trauma and dissociation. Um, some of my consultees, um, after their EMDR trained, like then they come in, they meet with me. And then after I realize that they may not always feel comfortable talking about dissociation, I remember meeting someone a few years back and they said they're using EMDR, but they they're not comfortable using with using it with anyone who has dissociation. And I told her, I've got some news for you. This thing is a is a spectrum. So even if we're because I have that structural dissociation lens, yeah, even if we're talking about PTSD, complex PTSD, DID, we just need to be comfortable with the idea that not only are people traumatized or impacted by trauma, but they might have coping responses that might be some of them adaptive, some of them maladaptive in the present. I say all of this just to say is that I think that ultimately we need to rethink what healing looks like. We need to understand that our job is to make it that our clients become the best therapist they've ever met and to make it that it's not just uh the therapist who's applying a technique, it's that the therapist is witnessing the client uh become the resource they are meant to be.SPEAKER_01: 13:30
Yeah.SPEAKER_02: 13:31
I try to help my clients to heal from their past, I try to help my clients to heal to use resources where they can heal in the future, and that they practice it in session and in between sessions, we just go over the awesome things they've been doing all week. We go over their winning streaks.SPEAKER_01: 13:47
Yes.SPEAKER_02: 13:48
And in addition, is that I do all of this to make it so that the therapist is protected. There's a lot of vicarious traumatization. I want to get to later speaking about the groups that I'm starting.SPEAKER_01: 14:01
Yeah.SPEAKER_02: 14:01
There was uh a guy that I knew, he was one of my colleagues. He started his private practice before I started it, but he burnt out before me and is now closing his private practice. Oh this means then that there might, and he's he's one of the best therapists that I that I know. But what happened though is that his approach might have given him overexposure to vicarious trauma. And when we are hearing these these stories of trauma, when we're when you're looking at your social media and you're seeing these images of trauma, there's a cost to that. This is why the way how we do therapy needs we need to change the way how healing happens or change the way how we're thinking about healing, to change the way how people are able to think about healing as well. We must protect our therapists, strengthen our clients, and help people to know that actually healing might be a little easier if we understand the principles behind it.Lisa Danylchuk: 15:00
Yeah, and if we can bring the principles of something like EMDR, congratulations on your accomplishments there. And I'm so glad you're leading trainings. That's amazing. More of that, please, yes. And when we can bring our whole selves to an environment like that, to offering a training, and and people can be encouraged to bring their awesomeness, to bring their whole selves to their therapy sessions, there's less effort in a way, because we don't have to continue to you know hold a frame that's not serving. You mentioned before someone singing gospel in a session, right? Or having someone bring in the thing. I've talked to people who were doing yoga for their own trauma recovery, and their therapist just said, Well, I'm not a yoga teacher, but if you want to bring your yoga mat in, okay. If you want to move and breathe in a way that feels comfortable for you while we're talking, okay. And there's so much we can go, so many places we can go from there, but what a beautiful foundation to invite it in, to invite it in and to honor the fullness and the access to healing, the intergenerational resilience that we have in ourselves, and to bring that in. And when that becomes more foundational, I do think it really helps with burnout. I think it, and I also think when we are able to engage in a way that feels somehow at least supportive with national and international news, that can also help. Because when you have the load, like you said, oh, I'm going into so many sessions in a row, and then I take a break and look at my phone and see an image of someone harmed. Like it does the allostatic load of that, it just grows. And if if we're not aware, it creeps in, or if we think it's not impacting us, it really is. Right. All of that can lead to someone closing their practice and a loss of an opportunity for healing.SPEAKER_02: 17:02
Yes. So that's why, in addition to our method, we also need to make sure those who are helping others are also being helped.SPEAKER_01: 17:10
Yes.SPEAKER_02: 17:10
We need to make it that part of our uh approaches towards healing, also thinking, think about the idea of healer, that heal thyself. Like that's the first step. The first step of doing these types of transformational trauma therapies is you being able to be on the receiving end of knowing, okay, this is what healing feels like, and this is what is expected when my clients are able to do it. But it's not only just a single uh event of having that healing, it's you practicing what healing feels like, you walking through the world, knowing what healing feels like in the body. Um, that's why we're looking at this less from the lens of what's in your head, but what's in your heart, what's in your body, what's in the way how you move, what's in yeah. So uh, and this is this is what it's all about. So I will say that there have been some adaptations and some adjustments. I think it would be great to have Thomas Zimmerman on your like as a guest. Yes. Because he can speak about it from his perspective, but he's been doing some adjustments. He's also, I think, meeting the needs of what he's he's a role model for many other therapists right now. Yeah, he's been helping a lot of therapists in Minneapolis. Uh, I think 1,400 uh people signed up for his training. And this this was to be able to help those who are needing to help, especially in the case where you spoke about Dr. Jennifer Gomez, yes, for cultural betrayal trauma. But Dr. Jennifer Freud for institutional betrayal.SPEAKER_01: 18:37
Yes.SPEAKER_02: 18:38
There's there is likely a lot of people feeling as if the institution has attacked them. And by institution, we mean the state, by institution we mean the countries, and a betrayal in terms of even the way how we're looking at those in power who have led us to believe that many of us are the problem when there's just this extraction of wealth for the majority of individuals.Lisa Danylchuk: 19:00
And by definition, it is. I mean, I don't know how you could say it's not institutional trauma if someone has literally been killed by someone who is working for the government. Like that no, no, line in the sand. Yeah.SPEAKER_02: 19:17
And yeah, and the thing is that I think there are about like 13 Americans who were killed by uh by the federal government in the past bit of I think it's that number.SPEAKER_01: 19:28
Yeah.SPEAKER_02: 19:28
And again, some of the people are going to be more uh you're gonna see some of the victims that you'll know their faces and you'll know their names.SPEAKER_00: 19:36
Yeah.SPEAKER_02: 19:37
But again, when we're talking coming from a trauma-focused perspective, even surviving some of these things, we still need to know how many people actually have been harmed severely or traumatized severely, because that also should count in terms of like if we look at this in terms of the number of casualties of this uh uh of white supremacy and security. Because that's what all of this is. Yeah. Is that there were a lot of people who voted um for uh racism and sexism and oppression. But I think there's a lot of people probably rejecting or regretting that right now. But and so that's why I don't try to shame anybody. People make their decisions based on their context and all that, but we need to welcome in the people who are actually going to choose now to be on the side of humanity. Our world literally depends on it. Because every every time we drill for fossil fuels, we're damaging, we're we are borrowing years from the future. Yeah, as us as parents, we know the importance. I'd like to make sure that my children are able to actually breathe clean air.SPEAKER_01: 20:40
Yes.SPEAKER_02: 20:40
A few years ago, the skies were orange in New York City. Like, you know what I mean? It's like the skies are orange. I've never seen that when I was a kid.Lisa Danylchuk: 20:48
And I mean, I'll remember that for my entire life, that orange day in San Francisco. Never seen anything like it. Grew up. Oh, it happened in year two year two. I mean, the entire that year, it I I drove cross country in 2020. There were fires happening on the West Coast. And yes, yes, yes. We drove, I mean, there have been multiple years with multiple fires, but we didn't get out of the fog until halfway through Kansas. And same thing coming back. I mean, and and I was gone a few weeks. This was after my grandma passed. We went to go, you know, manage her house and her things and all this stuff. And so that was the the vacation of 2020, right? You know, like the whole theme of 2020 was so much chaos and loss. And it was like, oh, of course, my vacation is uh when I have to like drive with a mask on and sanitize my hands and be in smoke and then break down my lovely grandma's home. And like, of course, that's my vacation time in 2020. But that that day, the orange day I was here, and then there it actually shifted where there were fires on the East Coast too. And then there's been tons in Australia. So yeah, we need to listen. We need to listen to the The planet and not do these things that are extractive of humans, not do the things that are extractive of any resource that I hope we value. I mean, I think we depend on bottom line, and we depend on it. And it would be nice if we could be in a positive reciprocal relationship.SPEAKER_02: 22:19
Yeah. And it's uh when you said the East Coast, the fires, a lot of them were happening in Quebec as well. And so this is why, like, even with this Zoom call, it's like we're all closer than we think to these types of things. It's uh, I think maybe some people who voted for massive immigration and all of that stuff, they thought that it'd probably be out of sight. But I've spoken to a lot of Americans in different states, and they've told me the fear that their children have, even if they're not immigrants, even if they don't come from a different country or their immigration history is actually much further.Lisa Danylchuk: 22:54
I was gonna say, I was like, Are they native people you're talking about? Yeah, exactly. Exactly.SPEAKER_02: 22:58
No, no, no, I got I got you. I got you.Lisa Danylchuk: 22:59
You know, we're on the same page. There's so many immigrants in the US Canada.SPEAKER_02: 23:03
Yes, yes, yes. And but it's because we also in Canada, we also have some of this anti-immigrant rhetoric. It's a little weird here, though, is that like here in Quebec, um, there's more of like the importance of speaking French. Okay. But the way how they speak French is different from the way how people in France speak French. But they're trying to really make sure that you speak French in this specific province, even though some of their interventions I don't think are evidence-based, a lot of it may be based on unresolved trauma histories. I say this because it's just the other day I was driving through, and I know that in the United States, sometimes you'll see that people will have flags of the United States to remind you you're in this country. Like I don't fully understand. It's like, no, I know, I know that I'm here, I get that. Okay. But over here, the other day I was driving, and it was really strange, is that yes, there's gonna be a Quebec flag to remind you that you're here, and yes, we get it, we we understand that. But there was also a Confederate flag, and then there was also a Blue Lives Matter flag. And what the interesting thing is that wait a second, none of you guys would be eligible voters. Yeah, ICE would be picking you guys up because you're not speaking English. Like, like that's the thing is that white supremacy insecurity has never been about logic. Yes, its origins are pseudoscientific, and a lot of it is just to alleviate white discomfort. This is the reason why we know to some degree white discomfort might be the solution. It's that white people need to get up and say, I'm going to make it that uh that I have a better um interaction with my neighbors than what my ancestors, my recent ancestors did. We need a little bit of white discomfort. But when you see that they're trying to remove CRT and all of these things, can't talk about racism. We're gonna remove, you're not gonna get time off for Juneteenth. When they're trying to do this, it's to alleviate white discomfort. So you so then that discomfort, I believe, as you're an yoga instructor, um, and also like I like we know about the importance of body and all this. Sometimes when you're able to sit with the discomfort, something different happens.Lisa Danylchuk: 25:13
Yeah, it transforms.SPEAKER_02: 25:15
Yes, and this is the fear is that we the only reason why they're pushing this hard is because we are so close. So this is not the time to let up. This is the time to to double down on the importance of anti-racism, on the importance of cultural responsiveness, and on the importance of seeing our fellow people as family.Lisa Danylchuk: 25:35
100%.SPEAKER_02: 25:36
Yes, and to do that, I think we need revolutionary healing methods. Yes. And I'd like to speak a little bit about what underlies this stuff, unless you had another question.Lisa Danylchuk: 25:46
I want to add to what you're saying, and then yes, yeah, let's go. Let's go. I my brain goes immediately to family systems of care, like what you're doing to raise your children and how the devaluation of care, like that being a side thing. Oh, well, parents just raise your kids and manage it, but show up for your nine to five and act like you're children, and the devaluing of education or of funding for arts for children, all these things that are more exploitively productivity focused and are not um human-centric, are not child or care centric. And also as you talk about people who are pushing so hard against that discomfort. I think about this in a micro way in therapy too, where sometimes we're pushing so hard against the discomfort that it's more uncomfortable than actually feeling the discomfort. And also because exactly what you highlighted, you feel that discomfort that maybe seems like it's gonna be I'm gonna start crying and I'm gonna cry for years, and you cry for three minutes.SPEAKER_01: 26:49
Yes.Lisa Danylchuk: 26:49
And it subsides. And you're like, oh, yeah, I wish we could collectively anyone who's feeling that tension and that bracing and that resistance of some discomfort around racism, around something else, like, can we take a breath around it? Can we be with our bodies? Can we just trust that if we can breathe with it? It will transform if we can be open to continuing to connect. Yes, sometimes we need boundaries. Yes, sometimes someone's reacting in a way that's increasingly harmful and we we don't want to go down that path. And can we just stay open to the humanity of it all? Can we stay open to progress? Because that bracing, I think it just creates more pain across the board and it makes the healing process longer, more arduous, more difficult, more energy, all of that. And sometimes we do that and we got to kind of go the hard way. We don't we don't realize until we find, oh, there was a there was a nice smooth path up the mountain, but I was like hanging upside down on rocks. Some people like hanging upside down on rocks. Okay. But I do think collectively there's something to learn here in what you're highlighting of just like, can we tolerate some of this discomfort and metabolize it? Because it's actually possible.SPEAKER_02: 28:00
Yes. And in the same way where we're talking about some of the suffering and some of the difficulty and the vicarious trauma, in the same way where Dr. Jennifer Fried speaks about the institutional betrayals, there's also institutional courage. You don't always see these instances so often on our television because they gotta get the clickbait. They gotta get you to click, you gotta be outraged so you can keep the billionaires with the billions, right? But um, I think what you're talking about, Lisa, is the one thing that we can do as therapists is I feel that like in the past uh three weeks, actually, or the past two weeks, three people have asked me this question about well, what are we supposed to do in our sessions if everything's looking terrible and like you know, like no one, like, you know, it looks like it's the end of the world and all of these things.SPEAKER_01: 28:50
Yeah.SPEAKER_02: 28:50
And so it's just um I spoke, I might have spoken, told you the story, but it's from one of my books because someone just asked me this even today. It's like they're like, okay, but like if the world's bad, what are we even gonna do? And then it led me into talking about rhythm and processing. This is what I would do in this specific situation. I had a client of mine during the time of COVID. This was a client that had a disability. They also had a fear of the end of the world. So at that time, it was looking as bad, if not worse, for that time for that client. If you remember, we didn't know if it was March, we didn't know if it was December. Okay, like the months were starting to bleed in and all of that stuff, right? And so the thing is the client was saying, like, what's the purpose of continuing? Why should I keep living if it's this bad? And for me, I didn't have the specific words to be able to say, like, you know, I'm not gonna argue with the client. For me, I'm meeting them where they're at. And the response that I had instead was to use an approach called resource integration. It's a derivative of resource development installation by Corinne and Leeds, but it's a little different. So, what we were trying to do using an EMDR-based framework, but also rhythm and processing, because it's an adjunct to it, is that we were able to get the client to say, what are the self-critical thoughts that are causing this type of stress in this moment? The client repeated the self-critical thoughts. They felt a somatic discomfort. Instead of us trying to address the content of what was said, we address the process of how they get to saying those words. And it's the bad feeling in the stomach that says, it is hopeless. It's the bad feeling in the stomach that says, we're never gonna get out of this. We don't need to argue with the content. We need, and you're an MFT too, so LMFT, so you know what's up. We need to focus on the process of this thing. So we then were able to develop a resource that was able to address the dysfunction or the disc the discord that was in the person's stomach where they were feeling. And I asked them, if this is the feeling of suffering, then what's the what's the resource that represents uh the way of coping with this discomfort? And I said, We got characteristics of the self, we got ancestors, we have forces of nature, concepts. In this case, the client said, We're gonna use ancestors, but not mine. We're gonna use an ancestor, we're gonna use the ancestral knowledge and healing that relates to the Ganyan Gahga people. This is the Mohawk community that's nearby in Montreal. So this client was then like, you know, there's this 19-year-old elder, a 90, 90-year-old elder. She's survived the federal government trying to destroy her. She's survived, continuing to try to destroy them. She survived Oka crisis, she survived the Indian uh industrial schools, I think they're called in the US, but they're called residential schools in Canada. These were attempts of trying to eliminate indigenous people from our lands, uh, from their lands, really. And so what happened is we used that woman and what that what that elder represented. And I was like, okay, well, why is this important? Let's talk a little bit. What is the elder doing? And in the image, in the client's imagination, the elder is at 90 years old on the weekend inventing new words in her language with the other elders that are there. You know, they might be like, Okay, how do you call a Zoom call? How do you call like a video conference? Like, we didn't have those words when we were growing up, and this making that, and that's what they do just hanging out, playing cards, making new words. And for the client, that represented that even if it is that things are looking as if it's against you, you still have to practice revolutionary joy. There still must be ways of being able to resist through still loving yourself. Even though they tried to eliminate your language, you still are going to create new words. Create a word present call. Yeah, yeah. So the key thing is the importance of what this elder represented, the somatic disconfirmation, because that feeling is inconsistent with the feeling of fear that the capitalists are gonna win, that the billionaires are gonna crush us all. That, like, you know, and so it's not to say that we are minimizing the importance of our current stresses, but we're making it so that we are part of a history of resistance that has been around and will outlive the current stresses that we're going through. When a person is able to then step into their power of what it means to, you know, to resonate with the story of this indigenous elder in her 90s, still resisting in this way, it made it so that this client is still alive to share the story today. So there are ways that we can heal. It may not be the fancy theories that Freud was thinking about, okay? We're gonna get to Freud. Yeah, we're gonna get to you. We're gonna get to you, okay? It may not be those things, it may be that there is an that there is uh an awesomeness and an infinite creativity in every person that we come across, and that is the thing that isn't fully cultivated, which oftentimes prevents adaptive information from uh latching on and disconfirm disconfirming it on its own. But that is the goal, I believe, that is one of the goals that I have when I'm meeting with someone in the context of end times capitalism at the end of its rope. United States no longer is an empire and all of these things. Things look as if they're fallen, but just remember the indigenous people have been here from time immemorial. Yeah, we've always been here. Our ancestors have always been here. It's just that we're currently meeting an interruption in what we previously took for granted.Lisa Danylchuk: 34:38
And there's opportunity for change and transformation in that, right? It when something's rigid, it's harder to change. When it's breaking down, you can get in there. You know, you can plant some seeds in that soil and and watch them grow, right? And and patience back to that, right? It's yeah, when we are coming up, I think collectively, uh, with that feeling of oh, but everything. And you know, I always remind myself and I make effort to follow positive news, not just cute cats and caby baras. I do follow caby baras and cute cats and dogs, but oh, and I know there's a direct relationship with my nervous system with how I respond to that, but also progress. Like it's just not as um, you know, like you said, flashy. It's not a clickbait headline. It's yes, I want to be aware of and respond to the harms and horrific things that are happening. I'm not gonna avoid or dissociate from them, but I'm also not gonna get usurped by them and remember that okay, there we are, I think there are so many people who are working towards healing relationship with the planet. There are so many people who like yourself invested life's work in spreading healing in in approachable ways. And so this is happening amidst something that is really serious and concerning. Uh, and I hope that we can all, I'm saying this to myself and maybe to you and to anyone listening, I hope we can remember the power of what we know in our bones and the intergenerational resilience that we carry and that exactly what you were speaking of native people have been here, right? Our ancestors have been here uh in some capacity, in in some way, have have survived. And so, how do we how do we survive and thrive and stay connected to this miracle of life? Like, there's so many moments where I'm just like, I can't even believe like all the vitamins that we know. Like, if I go and have a blood test and they're like, oh, positive range, sure, I want to like hone that and be optimally healthy, but that's pretty incredible. Like, I didn't do anything, my body's just figuring out zinc and vitamin D and putting it in the right place and go down the street and like most people stopped at the stoplight, and I can listen to music and I can tune in all the there is a lot of organization there, and there's so much that's growing, so it's challenging, but tapping into the miracle of it, like here we are talking, and you're in Montreal, I think, today, right? And yes, yeah, I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area, and here we are, like just having a little bit of that amazement that can stay and that awe that can stay, even as we're aware of okay, everything's not okay.SPEAKER_02: 37:30
Yeah, I think when we talk about healing and we talk about this current context, I often use the metaphor of the sword and the shield, is that it's our responsibility to have the shield to protect ourselves and also to heal from the accumulation of damage that we've had from the social structure, from the social media. But there needs to be points in our day where we can use rap technique, resource integration, any of these things to get back to our grounding, get back to our power. So to protect ourselves. The sword is also important. We also have to draw lines in the sand, draw lines in the concrete to prevent bad things from happening to ourselves and to others as well. So that we're not just healed. Like I kind of have the perspective that if I would have just become a meditator in some cave, it would have been good for me personally. I mean, it would reduce my stress and all of these things, and I wouldn't have to deal with so many types of things. But I feel that I have a responsibility that if there is healing that has happened through me and with me, that other people have to know that healing is possible in the same way with them or in different unexpected ways as well. So we have a responsibility to care for ourselves, but also to care for others and to set boundaries. It's both of these things that I think are especially important. And so um I wanted to talk quickly about because it kind of is related. Andrew Clark came out with a book called The Experience Machine, where he's talking about predictive processing. Uh, there's also another one. Oof. I don't have the name of the book. Anil, I forget what the guy's name is, but he also had another book about like consciousness and how uh neuroscience is evolving in terms of their understanding of how the brain works, how we make sense of information. We as therapists need to upgrade our knowledge of the brain as well. Tom Zimmerman will speak about how we've been using triune brain theory, like we've been using these ideas, and these are some ideas that might have outlived their usefulness. We're using old metaphors to address the 2026 brain, the 2027 brain, whenever it is you're gonna hear this thing. And so we need to upgrade ourselves as well as therapists. And so the basic idea is that when we are trying to create change, there's only two ways to do it. One of them is to update your model of reality, the other way is to take action in the present. These are the two things that we can do. I've been speaking to my clients about predictive processing as a theory, because I feel that it's one of the more interesting ways of helping people to know uh how healing goes and why it is that we're gonna be using visualization and beaches, and this morning someone used a force to help to heal from workplace stress. The basic idea is that uh memory reconsolidation, the process involves recalling a stressor, creating a prediction error, and then you end up re-encoding the memory by pairing one with the other. What we are doing with predictive processing is because that's the framework, and then memory reconsolidation is the theory, is that we are trying to make it so that because the brain wants to predict and is constantly predicting and guessing what's going to take place. When we see that stress is uh or a person has depression or a person has anxiety, and again, I'm working on the model, I'm doing the research on it, right? But the basic idea is that the person with depression may no longer want to be as surprised. The person with anxiety has been surprised too much, and now they're going to compensate by taking some measures to reduce the amount of surprise that's in their life because they're too overwhelmed by surprise. So, what we are going to do in our sessions then is we're going to need to update the reality that the person holds. And we do this by making a different type of surprise. When the client thinks that accessing this memory is going to cause hyper-vigilance, um uh blood pressure, like their heart beating, hyperventilating. Instead, we're looking at a forest and you take an action. Instead, we're looking at your favorite video game, like streamer or like your favorite artist, or listening to music you like, you got your dog in the background. Clients are holding their pets in the session, and they're their pets are my greatest co-therapists. Their pets are helping to get the work done. And while they're holding the animal, it could be blinking, it could be finger tapping, it could be searching for numbers, it could be an action. But the key thing is that we are doing something that the brain is not expecting, and that allows us to have a sliver of time where the memory becomes labile and where we can update the memory accordingly.SPEAKER_01: 42:22
Yes.SPEAKER_02: 42:23
That is why we are trying to redefine it's not just the eyes that are causing the reconsolidation to take place, it's not just the fake physical tapping, it's that there is an action that you're taking uh from your own agency that is a disconfirmation of what is typically expected from the old pattern of how you experience that trauma. I love this so much. It opens up the possibility of what can be therapeutic. It means that this case, this glasses case could be therapeutic. It means that the mouse could be therapeutic. It means ultimately that the client is the resource they've been dreaming of. The client is the resource. Can I get the Freud or sorry, do you have a reflection on that?Lisa Danylchuk: 43:08
I do. I just want to say I love this so much, and this is why I so enjoy doing this podcast, having conversations like this, but also the threads that weave together. One of the co-authors on the deep brain reorienting book, Henry Young. We've been talking about her coming on the podcast, and she had just emailed me and said, I'm writing a paper on predictive processing. Can we do it after I'm done with it? And I was like, perfect. So we're gonna weave right back to that in a future episode and keep talking about it. And it's so essential what you're describing, that we understand this is a way that we can shift the whole frame of what we're expecting, what what what our brain has been trained to attune to and to see in life based on harm or care or whatever happened in our past in different ways, we can start to like pattern interrupt, right?SPEAKER_01: 43:59
Exactly.Lisa Danylchuk: 44:00
And look for opportunities where, oh, it's not going to be the same thing again. Every relationship, every experience is not always going to feel the same, even if that's how it was when I was growing up and that's what my brain learned. Of course it did. That's its job. There's something else out there. There's another way, there's another opportunity. And I just love that those moments when we can question our own assumption or pattern when we have enough awareness to go, oh, there's gotta be so many other options here. You got it where I'm going with this, or where I think it's gonna go. I think there's so much opportunity for healing and connection in that.SPEAKER_02: 44:40
Let them know in the keynote. Let them know. Let them know this is what we're doing. This is what we're doing. Because oh, it makes it so that it no longer needs to be that we are fitting our clients into the machines of our psychotherapies.SPEAKER_01: 44:54
Yeah.SPEAKER_02: 44:55
Instead, we are making it so that it is truly a client-led psychotherapy.SPEAKER_01: 44:59
Yeah.SPEAKER_02: 44:59
It is instead, it is that the client is able to know that they are the source of the insight. And if we can do because you can do this with individuals, I do it with groups. Again, you can do it with multiple people in the same group. Tom is doing it, hundreds of people in the same room, healing from trauma. We don't need to know every specific thing that they're talking about. It's not about the content, it's about the processes and neurobiological intervention. But I will say though, is that this, I believe that this I'm glad to hear someone's writing about this topic. I'd love to, I'm gonna start writing my book too, because man, state of the art stuff, you know? Yes, but the the main thing though is just we is that your eighth book? This this will be this will be my sixth. This will be my sixth. I recently, recently had a chapter published in this one. This is IFS EMDR. I'm chapter 10. Yeah, I'm chapter 10. This is edited by David Politi, amazing individual. Chapter 10 was just talking about revolutionizing EMDR therapy and IFS and anti-racist psychotherapy. But anti-racist psychotherapy was originally designed to make it so that our therapy would fit our clients, regardless of where they come from, regardless of how they are. Now the next stage is being able to use predictive processing in our understanding of the brain to make it so that we realize that uh we want the clients to create their own therapy and to create and choose their own healing.SPEAKER_01: 46:25
Yeah.SPEAKER_02: 46:25
And uh so this is an exciting time. That's why I'm saying, yes, there's terrible things that are on the news. It's not that we need to dissociate from them, it's not that we it's it's not that we need to pretend that they're not there, okay? It's not that we need to dive into them and completely engage with all the trolls and the bots that are on the you know, sometimes you don't even know if you're arguing with a person. It couldn't be a bot from from grok or something like that. Anyways, it's uh that we need to find the middle the middle path, and the middle path in this specific situation is going to be that we observe that there is suffering in the world and we heal. Yes, we observe that there is injustice and we advocate. You know, the client brings in their suffering, the the reason for the problem, and we help them to realize that they're the solution to the problem as well. Yeah, um on that note, bringing it to Freud because I feel that this is related. I feel that this is related. Okay, and my pronunciation might be a little off, but in Paris, there was this Salpétrière, and that's where there was um uh Pierre Genet and Charcot and these other people who influence our field, but then became overshadowed by the influence of Freud. And Freud again has done a lot of great things because he's added to our lexicon, he's added ego, super ego, and all of these things. You know, defense mechanisms. We weren't talking about the well, I wasn't around, but we but the thing is that he added a lot of words and like made it so that he became famous and all of these things. It's just the sad thing is that his focus was more on the defense mechanisms instead of etiology. His focus was more on how these things are prevented from reaching consciousness rather than what it is, what is causing the dissociation to work as an adaptive measure in an individual. So, this is why we need to advance our technology by about 100 years as well. And that's why we need to use Zoom calls. That's why I'm using YouTube videos, that's why I'm using music. The person cannot go to nature. We bring nature to them through the internet, they're watching a video of nature. I had a client last week using a video called Mongolian Valley. They've never been to like these countries, but they're just bringing either you're seeing statue of Genghis Khan, and this is making them smile and making them heal.Lisa Danylchuk: 48:44
It's making me smile.SPEAKER_02: 48:47
Yeah. And so this so the there are surprises we can bring up that are planned in our therapy. We can bring the surprise of joy. Yes, joy too can lead to an interoceptive disconfirmation in a person's body. Yeah, we are trying to make it that they're that instead of the expected path of if I talk about racism, white people are gonna feel bad, or as a white person, I'm gonna feel bad. Instead of that, we can think about the discomfort, and maybe we can lean into the discomfort. The discomfort becomes something different. We want to make it that anti-racism is meant to open up the field so that more people can benefit. Predictive processing, I hope, unless capitalism comes in and tries to because that's always a threat as well. But the the goal is to make it that even our neurodivergent people will be able to adjust and and heal if it's not about reciting fancy cognitive distortions from our lexicon. Like instead, our clients can draw and heal at the same time. They could look at numbers and they can heal at the same time, they could pet their animals and all these things.SPEAKER_01: 49:51
Yes.SPEAKER_02: 49:51
So all of that to say, I think that uh in our society we become uh habituated to not being as empathic to the words of suffering, of thinking that maybe this is just penis envy, maybe this is just eatable complex, maybe this is this other person's issue and not mine. But I think that for me, I'm connected to each of the clients that I meet with. Their suffering, of course, whether you like it or not with mirror neurons, we're gonna feel some of that. But there's a way of being able to help people to heal without relying on catharsis, without relying on some of these ideas from hundreds of years ago. If we've been able to update our technology with our Zoom calls and our video conferences, there's no reason why we can't update psychotherapy to meet the needs and the revolutionary needs of 2026, 2027, 2028.Lisa Danylchuk: 50:41
Again, just that's all. Right? Yes.SPEAKER_02: 50:47
But you're here, Lisa. You make the this conversation wouldn't happen if you didn't invite me. So you're part of this. This is this is us. Thank you so much for giving me the space to be able to share with you.Lisa Danylchuk: 50:58
I celebrate it, I enjoy it, I appreciate it. All of it. It's it's so good to hear from you. And I mean, people pay for you to do keynotes for a good reason because there's a sense of uh truth and like you were saying about not denying, not avoiding, not dissociating from and being so committed to joy, being committed to your awesomeness, like being so rooted in this full experience of being human. And I think we really need that type of leadership and guidepost and reminder. Like, even if we're someone who's going out and and doing keynotes or offering trainings, like we need to be reminded, we need to be in community, we need to be supported around that because it can feel like yeah, you're in an echo chamber with a bunch of bots sometimes, right? And so the human connection and like I've met you in person at a conference, I know you're for real. Like hopefully.SPEAKER_01: 52:00
Yes, uh this is not an AR.Lisa Danylchuk: 52:02
I am wearing up and down. I know it's hard to tell these days, but like the humanity is so central to all of this and the creativity, and I just love how you bring so many different things together, and it just feels so grounded and honest. And so I appreciate that about you. And I know it's honest because you have young kids and you don't have the energy.SPEAKER_02: 52:25
Yeah, yeah, yeah.Lisa Danylchuk: 52:26
This is this is too much.SPEAKER_02: 52:30
Yeah, but it's it's that I I oftentimes tell that to trainees. I had a training a few weeks ago, and they're explaining that with EMDR therapy, is just to know that, like our clients who have been betrayed, they often can smell insincerity a mile away. Oh, it's a kilometer, kilometer for us again.Lisa Danylchuk: 52:52
Hundreds of kilometers away.SPEAKER_02: 52:54
But but they're able to know, they're able to know. And this is why it's we have a responsibility for us as practitioners to heal ourselves and to care for ourselves. And of course, it's true. I care about this topic, I care about therapists, I care about you, Lisa, I care about your listeners and all of this. We need to just realize as we did during COVID, is knowing that we're all interconnected. Yeah. And so our empathy is the solution, our radical empathy is the solution to to meet the needs of this of this uh occasion that we're that we're at right now. Now, what we need to do is know that our healing is linked with other people's healing. If we don't heal, other people might not be healing. If they are unhealed or if they are suffering, we might be commit uh contributing or even benefiting from their suffering as well. And so we only heal, uh, we can't leave anyone behind. We only heal if if everyone's healed as well. And that's why we need to think about individual caring about dissociation, caring about complex trauma. Real quick, can I say one quick thing? Yes. Sorry, I know that I'm over the time, but it's just look, man, the thing is that you're dropping knowledge, Lisa. You're dropping knowledge. So I got I gotta come correct, man. This is this is what I gotta do. But it's like recently on uh LinkedIn, there was someone who shared a post. They're talking about how there was a study talking about schizophrenia patients and people who had this diagnosis, and about 30% of those who had the diagnosis of schizophrenia, uh, actually their symptoms lined up more with dissociative symptoms, and they actually didn't have schizophrenia as a diagnosis. Okay. This means that there's a large proportion of individuals who might be diagnosed with something and may not be receiving the treatment they actually need.SPEAKER_01: 54:40
Yes.SPEAKER_02: 54:40
In my reposts, I spoke about how Jonathan Metzel, psychiatrist, Dr. Heather Hall. Yes, amazing individual, psychiatrist. These are people who specialize in their work, treating people who had schizophrenia. But they also spoke about the over-diagnosis of schizophrenia for black Americans.SPEAKER_01: 54:58
Yes.SPEAKER_02: 54:59
Just knowing that sometimes you might get a psychiatrist or psychologist who's not anti-racist. And they hear that the person is talking about I'm being followed in the supermarket. The police are kind of tailgating me. ICE is like kind of like, yo, you know what I mean? And so then they might be like, uh, sounds like a delusion. I don't believe that stuff. I'm gonna give them this diagnosis. And again, it's not a problem to have a schizophrenia diagnosis. But the problem comes when therapists, practitioners are not aware of dissociation and the reality of it, or they're not and they're not doing their assessments, because it's an important thing to assess for dissociation and complex trauma and all these things, but they're also not assessing for racial trauma. They're also walking into there, not thinking about the impact of multi-generational stresses, identity-based stresses, homophobia, et cetera. When we do this, we are then contributing to social defeat. We are contributing to the fact that the public can no longer trust us if we're not giving them the service that they need, and that's actually going to help them.SPEAKER_01: 55:59
Yes.SPEAKER_02: 55:59
So this is why anti-racism is linked with complex trauma. This is why our healing is connected to others. And as we as practitioners, we heal our biases, we heal our insecurities so that we can then model how other people should be as well when they're in our vicinity. We need to heal ourselves, and then we're in the best capacity to heal others.Lisa Danylchuk: 56:21
I'm so glad you brought up Dr. Heather Hall. I was thinking of her as soon as you started talking about this. And I had her, I think it was season one in 2022, because she gave a presentation on dissociation, schizophrenia, racism, and social defeat.SPEAKER_02: 56:37
Yes.Lisa Danylchuk: 56:38
Bunch of things that you just referenced. And so I was like, we got to talk about this. So she came on the podcast and she actually used to work at um San Francisco General Hospital, it was called at the time. It's now named after a social media uh leader.SPEAKER_01: 56:51
Oh, okay.Lisa Danylchuk: 56:53
Zuckerman Hospital. Um really? Yeah. Yeah, I think it still is, I believe. Anyhow, she was there and people would come in and if she just listened to their story, people say, Oh, they're schizophrenic, they're hearing voices. And she would just listen, and slowly over time, things would start to make sense. You know, it all start to fit into their trauma narrative. So this was kind of the opposite of, you know, you say you don't want to like push someone to tell their story. Well, when their story's already spilling over and they're shouting it to somebody on the street corner, walking out of the grocery store with their milk, like give them some space and let it come out and see what happens. And she would see people spontaneous spontaneously over time with the someone listening, a psychiatrist at that listening, um, they would start to self-organize and they would meet criteria more for complex trauma and dissociation.SPEAKER_02: 57:44
Yes. And can I say, can I say there too is that someone was then listening, which which uh was a disconfirmation of what would typically happen.Lisa Danylchuk: 57:51
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, rather than being dismissed or responded to in fear, and you know, that it could be scary if someone's shouting and you don't understand the context and they're you know replaying their trauma on the street corner. Yeah, you know, you don't need to engage with that. But if you're a mental health professional and you're in the hospital that they end up in, hold this context. And you know, rather than going, oh, voices, schizophrenia, listen a little longer and see, well, what are the voices saying and where are they coming from? And exactly, oh, that actually really fits in. And what if it does start to make some sense in it with their narrative or with their experiences, like much more likely to look into you know the whole question of what happened rather than what's wrong, like what happened here and what's what's right, what makes sense here and what's adaptive. I want to have you on for five more hours, but can I ask you one more question?SPEAKER_02: 58:41
Yes.Lisa Danylchuk: 58:42
Another shout out to Jennifer Gomez. Say it on repeat every episode. Yes. If you could dream storm the way the world uh functions with so much healing under its belt that things are are working well and going smooth, and everyone's everyone gets it, right? Everyone's picked up what you're putting down. They've listened to the hip-hop song, they're singing it walking down the street. What does that world look and feel like?SPEAKER_02: 59:08
Okay. Well, the thing is, it's a form of socialism, okay? It's going to be it's going to be a system. Yeah. I know that's a bad word. It's a bad word depending on who you say it. And again, some of you guys' politics is coming over here and all these things. But the key thing is that it's a government that cares about its people.SPEAKER_01: 59:27
Yes.SPEAKER_02: 59:28
It's a government that I could even use the word loves its people, that is willing to protect its people. It's that families would also love themselves and love other families. It's a form again, there's no way that I can really think of it, but it's a way of knowing that families have ways of being able to heal even without a therapist. Because we know that when we're talking about Salpétrier, which was child sexual abuse in Paris, when people were aware of it, they didn't like to know that all of this stuff was happening in Paris. So we know that there were a lot of a lot of forensic psychologists and psychiatrists and all that who probably weren't speaking about it in my uh town or my other cities around here and all these things. This means then that we need to have a truly trauma-focused society. One that knows that suffering is a reality, and one that's not afraid to hide or to protect the elite for the consequences of their actions. We need to make it that it's truly a society that um is past the idea of there being people who deserve all the money and other people needing to fight for survival. And again, this is why psychotherapy it needs to evolve beyond just an individual or an intra-psychic issue. And I think that engaging with society on this broader level of really the association speaking up about the vicarious trauma, what is this gonna have as an impact of many children seeing ice all the time on their social media? What many people seeing genocide in Palestine all the time, people denying what's going on with the genocides in Sudan and all this stuff. Like, what does that do to a society that denies the lives of other people? Yeah, and that is the that is my if you're talking about a dream storm, I'm only dreaming of revolution. This is the only thing that I'm thinking is that we revolutionize the way our society operates, we revolutionize the way our psycho psychotherapy operates, and we help all people to know that they are capable of healing. Every single person has an innate processing model with uh module within them. This is what EMDR therapy is all about with the AIP. All of us can heal. We just need the space, as you said before, about planting the seeds. We just need the space where we can cultivate the soil.Lisa Danylchuk: 1:01:48
Yes. I love it. Thank you so much.SPEAKER_02: 1:01:53
Thank you. Thank you.Lisa Danylchuk: 1:01:54
Yeah. How can people connect with you and get more information about your groups, everything you're doing?SPEAKER_02: 1:02:00
Yes. Okay, so maybe we could put some of those links in the description if possible. Okay. So I just want to let people know that the website is archertherapy.com. My name is David Archer. I am a professional social worker, marriage and family therapist, and anti-racist psychotherapist from Montreal, Canada. And what I like to do is help people to recognize their awesomeness. In addition to making it that, there's two-hour rhythm and processing technique groups that I'm doing on a monthly basis. If you want to learn the technique, come on in. And then after you do that, then there's two hour community care groups. If you trained with me or trained with Thomas Zimmerman or know anything about these transformative approaches to Flash, then it's free of charge. I want people who've taken the chance to learn about this surprising therapy or this strange therapy to know that I'm going to consult with you and teach you how to use it effectively as just part of the fact that you believe in me, I believe in you. The third thing is EMDR groups, and all of these links are going to be in the description. But the basic idea is that you don't have to do it alone. We only get through this with community. And so because I've had some clients who have healed, I've had some clients who I've lost, I owe it to all of my clients to make it so that every therapist also feels supported so that we can help all clients moving forward to recognize their awesomeness and heal.Lisa Danylchuk: 1:03:20
Yes. All the links are in the show notes, so folks can go and find you there. Go to archertherapy.com and follow up as needed. Anything you're gonna do today to celebrate your awesomeness? Oh, folks on video, we've got a double photo bomb here. Oh, hello, hello. This is boomy.SPEAKER_02: 1:03:41
Boomy, boomy, yes. What am I gonna do to celebrate? Well, I told you that my daughter was just born a few months ago, so she's getting to know the difference with her circadian rhythm. What is morning and what is not. So I'm probably gonna take a nap.Lisa Danylchuk: 1:03:56
Yes, I celebrate your nap.SPEAKER_02: 1:03:58
It's the small successes. Oh, that's the small successes.Lisa Danylchuk: 1:04:00
Big one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I might just follow your lead and go for a nap myself. We'll see. Yes.SPEAKER_02: 1:04:07
Rest is resistance. That's uh Trisha Hersey, I think is the I for I think that's the name of the author. I'm not sure. But rest is resistance. Even when we're not out on the streets, make sure we're taking care of ourselves. And so I'm gonna rest and then pick up my son from daycare, and that's my day.Lisa Danylchuk: 1:04:22
100%. I love it. Thanks for being here with us, David.SPEAKER_02: 1:04:25
Many blessings. Thank you, everyone. Take good care. Thank you.Lisa Danylchuk: 1:04:34
You made it to the end of the episode. Thanks for listening all the way through. Now that you've been listening for a while, I'd love to hear back from you. What's an idea or a story from this episode that sticks with you as we wrap up? Or what's one small thing you can do today to choose a step in the direction of healing or growth? Share your answers and what's been healing for you in the comments below on YouTube, on Instagram at how we can heal, or send me a message at info at howwecanheal.com. Also check out howwecanheal.com for free resources, trainings, and the full transcript of each show. If you're listening and loving the show, please leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, Audible, or wherever you're listening right now. If you're watching on YouTube, click the buttons to like and subscribe, and keep sharing the show with anyone who can benefit. Before we wrap today, I want to be clear that this podcast isn't offering prescriptions, it's not advice, nor is it any kind of mental health treatment or diagnosis. Your decisions are in your hands, and I encourage you to consult with any healthcare professionals you may need to support you through your unique path of healing. In addition, everyone's opinion here is their own, and opinions can change. Guests share their thoughts, not that of the host or sponsors. I'd like to thank our guest today again, and everyone who Help support this podcast directly and indirectly. Alex, thanks for taking care of the babe and the fur babes while I record. Last and never least, I'd like to send some love to my big brother Matt, who passed away in 2002. He wrote this music, and it makes my heart so very happy to share it with you here. Till next time.
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