EMDR was built to trust the client's system. David Archer asks the question that honors that premise and then extends it: whose system, from whose culture, holding whose history? Before some clinicians of color would even register for an EMDR training, they asked David whether it works for their communities. This episode is his answer — and it reshaped how he trains, consults, and sits with clients.
David returns to the podcast (his first visit was 2022) as an anti-racist psychotherapist, EMDR trainer, and author of five books, to walk through rhythm and processing (RAP): his approach to the mental health consequences of complex racial trauma, grounded in predictive processing and memory reconsolidation. The mechanics are concrete. The client generates their own list of trauma targets, including the racial trauma questions most intakes never ask. The client — not the therapist — chooses the resource: a photo from a trip to Jamaica, a pet's nervous system alongside their own, a ten-hour video of a Sahara sand dune. Then a present-moment action lets the body discover that the old prediction no longer holds. Salience, not positivity, is the key — and it can't be chosen for the client, because the therapist can't feel what the sand dune means. What emerges is a way to help people heal with a lower risk of abreaction — a way to heal, in David's words, through joy.
Along the way: why race and gender are constructions with real consequences in the nervous system, what a genogram reveals for white and white-passing clients that a symptom checklist never will, where structural dissociation fits alongside parts work, and the seven Afrocentric dimensions that widen what we mean by resourcing — spirituality, collectivism, and an understanding of ancestorhood in which a person remains present as long as their name is spoken. David closes with an invitation to be a revolutionary therapist: carry the sword, and carry the shield.
In this episode
David Archer — social worker, marriage and family therapist, anti-racist psychotherapist, and EMDR trainer in Montreal (Tiohtià:ke, the unceded territory the city sits on) — returns four years after his first conversation with Bridger. Since then he has written five books, seen his work included in required readings for newly trained EMDR therapists, and developed rhythm and processing (RAP): strategies for the mental health consequences of complex racial trauma. This conversation moves from the sociopolitical moment into the session room — and stays there long enough to show you how the work actually looks.
Key themes
Race is constructed; racial trauma is not. Race is not a biological or scientific category — it was built for colonization, extraction, and slavery. And its consequences live in the nervous system. David's African clients name it precisely: "The first time I ever had racial trauma is when I came to Canada. And then I found out I was black." The same lens applies to gender — these are not logical problems, so logic alone will miss the target. A trauma-focused understanding is required.
The white therapist, too — heal thyself. Whiteness is not a monolith ("Canadian" is not a race). White and white-passing clients carry unasked-about histories — immigration, refugee status, witnessed trauma — and therapists carry their own. The work of anti-racist psychotherapy includes the therapist's own healing, not as a disclaimer but as a clinical necessity.
Where words run out. Five years as an addictions counselor in Indigenous communities around Montreal taught David that words couldn't reach the depths of his clients' suffering — the survival responses underneath had no words at all. That's what drew him to EMDR: insight that arrives from the client's own associative work, not the therapist's interpretation.
Loving an approach means staying critical of it. Some trainees finish basic training without confidence across the spectrum of dissociation; some communities have to ask whether EMDR was built for them. RAP puts race, social identity, complex racial trauma, dissociation, therapist self-care, and community care into the frame from phase one onward.
The RAP technique: disconfirmation through client-chosen salience. Through a predictive-processing lens, healing is memory reconsolidation: reactivate the prediction, then let the body meet evidence that no longer fits. The client chooses the image or video — their trip, their pet, their culture, their spirituality — and a present-moment action (tapping, blinking, an epistemic search) anchors the body in the now. Salience, not positivity, is the criterion — the resource can look boring from the outside and still carry everything.
Parts, under-resourcing, and structural dissociation. Different parts may need different resources — the oven mitts before what's coming out of the oven. RAP sits alongside IFS-informed EMDR work and adds explicit consideration of structural dissociation.
An Afrocentric frame, for every client. Drawing on Belgrave & Allison's Afrocentric dimensions: spirituality (connection to something greater, religious or not), collectivism over the individualism David sees at the root of much Western suffering, and ancestorhood — the understanding that a person remains in community, and in the present, as long as their name is spoken.
The revolutionary therapist. Do therapeutic things even where you aren't a therapist. Stay aware of climate as a mental-health context. Remember poverty is a policy outcome, not a personal one. Carry the sword (boundaries, advocacy) and the shield (protection from misinformation and vicarious trauma). And on AI: "You have actual intelligence."
Practical clinical takeaways (what you can bring into your next session)
Add racial trauma questions to your history-taking for every client — and build a genogram that tracks positive and negative legacies on both sides of the family. For white and white-passing clients, that's often where the unspoken history lives.
Let the client generate the target list. David's RAP intake questions produce a client-authored spreadsheet of specific trauma targets — the client as active participant in their healing, from the first session.
Follow salience, not positivity. Ask what holds vitality for the client — a trip, a pet, a place, a practice from their culture or spirituality — and resist supplying your own favorite. The therapist cannot feel what the sand dune means.
Pair the chosen image with a present-moment action — tapping, blinking, an epistemic search (looking for numbers in the room) — so the body registers now while the old prediction is active. That mismatch is the disconfirmation.
Resource the part, not just the person. Ask which part needs the oven mitts, and consider where your client sits on the spectrum of dissociation before reprocessing.
Widen your resourcing frame: spirituality, collective belonging, ancestors whose names are still spoken. These are resources in the truest neurobiological sense.
Why this episode matters
Much of trauma training quietly assumes healing must pass through pain on the way to relief. This conversation offers a different account: when the client chooses what is salient — their culture, their joy, their sand dune — the disconfirmation can arrive through what is loved rather than only through what is feared, with a lower risk of abreaction. And it restores something the old narrative of trauma took away: the client as the active participant in their own healing. That's not a softer version of the work. It may be a more precise one.
David Archer
Archer Therapy (website, blog & weekly consults): https://archertherapy.com/?utm_source=nt&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=NT_ArcherRAP_Therapists_Summer_2026
What is the RAP Agenda? (rhythm and processing): https://archertherapy.com/what-is-the-rap-agenda/?utm_source=nt&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=NT_ArcherRAP_Therapists_Summer_2026
EMDR consultation & monthly two-hour rhythm and processing workshops (low-cost and no-cost options): https://archertherapy.com/training/consultation/?utm_source=nt&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=NT_ArcherRAP_Therapists_Summer_2026
David's five books
Anti-Racist Psychotherapy: Confronting Systemic Racism and Healing Racial Trauma (also on audiobook): https://archertherapy.com/books/anti-racist-psychotherapy/?utm_source=nt&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=NT_ArcherRAP_Therapists_Summer_2026
Black Meditation: Ten Practices for Self-Care, Mindfulness, and Self-Determination (also on audiobook): https://archertherapy.com/books/black-meditation/?utm_source=nt&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=NT_ArcherRAP_Therapists_Summer_2026
Racial Trauma Recovery: Healing Our Past Using Rhythm and Processing: https://archertherapy.com/books/racial-trauma-recovery/?utm_source=nt&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=NT_ArcherRAP_Therapists_Summer_2026
Black Mountain: Fight for the Future (Afrofuturist novel): https://archertherapy.com/books/black-mountain/?utm_source=nt&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=NT_ArcherRAP_Therapists_Summer_2026
Transforming Complex Trauma: Reflections on Anti-Racist Psychotherapy: https://archertherapy.com/books/transforming-complex-trauma/?utm_source=nt&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=NT_ArcherRAP_Therapists_Summer_2026
Mentioned in the conversation
David's first Notice That conversation (2022): https://emdr-podcast.com/david-archer-anti-racist-74/?utm_source=nt&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=NT_ArcherRAP_Therapists_Summer_2026
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564299/how-to-be-an-antiracist-by-ibram-x-kendi/
Belgrave & Allison, African American Psychology: From Africa to America (the Afrocentric dimensions): https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/african-american-psychology/book248474
IFS-Informed EMDR: Creative and Collaborative Approaches (David Polidi, Routledge, 2025): https://www.routledge.com/IFS-Informed-EMDR-Creative-and-Collaborative-Approaches/Polidi/p/book/9781032891675
Thomas Zimmerman, EMDR Cleveland (David's training collaborator): https://emdrcleveland.com/
Bridger & Jen's book, EMDR and the Therapeutic Relationship: Reclaiming the Relational Thread, and the essay series: https://connectbeyondhealing.com/the-relational-thread/?utm_source=nt&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=relational_thread
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