Rebecca Kase grew up in Missouri and attended the University of Missouri (Mizzou or MU). She declared psychology as her major early in her freshman year of college, right after her first psychology 101 class. She recalls, “I love this. I get it. This makes sense to me. Something just really clicked inside, and I really felt like this is my path.” She also loved taking neuroscience classes and ultimately graduated in about 3 ½ years with a number of graduate level courses in her pocket. Rebecca then took a year to do volunteer work with AmeriCorps helping tutor inner-city elementary school kids in St. Louis, MO and she loved the experience. She used this experience and time to help figure out the next step in her academic journey. She knew she needed to go to graduate school because she thought she couldn’t really do anything with her bachelor’s in psychology, so she considered getting her master’s in counseling, social work, or psychology. In this podcast, Rebecca shares her journey and advice for those faced with a similar decision and discusses how she turned her passion into a successful, and prominent, training and consulting company, Kase & CO, which specializes in comprehensive Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and trauma training for psychotherapists.
Throughout this podcast, Rebecca shares her experience and offers practical advice for those considering a career in psychology, social work, or counseling. She chose to become a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW); however, her advice can be applied to those in the counseling or psychology fields as well. How do you decide on which path to take or in which university or program to enroll? Rebecca says, “consider your end goal.” She suggests asking yourself “Where do I want to end up and based on what I want for my career, which program seems to fit best?” She also reminds us that “where we think we’re going to end up, isn’t necessarily where we end up.” For example, she admits that she never thought she would own one of the largest EMDR training programs in the country and that she would love running a business but that is exactly what she is doing with Kase & CO Training and Consulting.
Rebecca started EMDR training while she was still in graduate school, so she has been practicing EMDR since 2006. She started her LLC in 2009 and as her LLC grew, she became a trainer and consultant. In 2017, Rebecca started diving into Polyvagal theory as it “really resonated” and helped “explain why our nervous system does what it does.” After looking into Polyvagal theory, she realized that she could combine EMDR and Polyvagal theory to help supercharge therapy and the recovery process, so she started incorporating the two into her training and consulting at Kase & CO and has seen its incredible impact on her clients and their clients. Rebecca is also a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) and has been practicing yoga since she was 15 years old. She shares “it has been my saving grace and saved my life multiple times emotionally and physically.” She has integrated yoga into her EMDR training as she points out “research shows that yoga therapy is incredibly useful and powerful to bring into your sessions with clients no matter their presentation or diagnosis.” One of the 8 phases of EMDR focuses on preparation and where you learn about regulation skills and where you build somatic awareness. She says that yoga helps clients who have learned to “check out” from their feelings and sensations and who don’t know how to feel their body.
Rebecca is the author of Polyvagal-Informed EMDR: A Neuro-Informed Approach to Healing (W.W. Norton & Company, May 23, 2023). She said the book started as her pandemic project. She began pulling her thoughts and experiences together and organized them in such a way that one of her friends said “Rebecca, you have a book here.” She explains that both Polyvagal Theory and EMDR offer powerful pathways to healing. She states “and so EMDR gives us this user manual for understanding memory as it contributes to health and wellness, disease, or pathology. Polyvagal Theory talks about what happens in our bodies. But it’s not just one or the other, it’s both. And so that’s why I found that integrating these two gives us this really robust inclusive framework for looking at the whole neurobiological picture when we’re working with common clinical presentations.”
So, how did Rebecca find her passion and decide to open her own business? She states, “I followed my heart and my intuition every step of the way, which is my biggest bit of advice, listen to your heart, your intuition, and your body will always know.”
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https://vimeo.com/852519721
Interests and Specializations
Rebecca Kase specializes in comprehensive Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and trauma training for psychotherapists. Founded in 2017, Kase & CO Training and Consulting is one of the top training providers in the US. They are an approved continuing education provider with EMDRIA, APA, and NBCC. Their structured courses are unique in the field, with dynamic live and on-demand formats designed to keep you engaged and learning.
Education
Bachelor of Arts (BA), Psychology; University of Missouri - Mizzou, Columbia, MO.Master of Social Work (MSW), Social Work (2007); University of Denver, Denver, CO.
Other Sources and Links of Interest
Rebecca Kase: EMDR International AssociationRebecca Kase: EMDR ConferenceRebecca Kase @Amazon: Polyvagal-Informed EMDR: A Neuro-Informed Approach to Healing
Podcast Transcript
00:14 BradleyWelcome to the Master’s in Psychology Podcast, where psychology students can learn from psychologists, educators, and practitioners to better understand what they do, how they got there, and hear the advice they have for those interested in getting a graduate degree in psychology. I'm your host, Brad Schumacher, and today we welcome Rebecca Kase to the show. Rebecca is a force of nature. She is a licensed clinical social worker, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing consultant and trainer, registered yoga teacher and owner of Kase & CO Training and Consulting and EMDR training company. She is an inspirational speaker, author, thought leader, and advanced trauma expert. Her work has been featured in books, articles, podcasts, keynotes, conferences, and workshops. Today, we will learn more about her academic and professional journey, more about her training and consulting practice, and how teaching EMDR through the lens of Polyvagal theory helps supercharge therapy and the recovery process. Rebecca, welcome to our podcast.
01:21 RebeccaHey Brad, so excited to be here. Thanks for sharing space with me.
01:26 BradleyWell, thank you for being on the show with us. I'm excited to talk about your journey and as you've seen probably in other episodes of our podcast, we love talking about your background, your journey, a little bit more and then talking about what you're doing with your credentials, your experience. So, to start off, you know, can you tell us a little bit more about your background and the journey that led you to become a licensed clinical social worker and EMDR expert, consultant, and trainer and then eventually owner of Kase & CO?
01:58 RebeccaYeah, absolutely. So, I got my undergrad in psychology. I declared my major in psych pretty early, I think my freshman year, after I went to my first psych 101 class and I was just like oh my gosh, I love this. I get it. This makes sense to me. Something just really clicked inside, and I really felt like this is my path. I didn't know exactly what my path would look like, but I knew it was along the field of psychology. So, I took a deep dive in undergrad. I graduated early actually and graduated with a number of graduate level courses, uhm, in my pocket because I just loved going to class. I loved taking neuroscience classes. So, I graduated in about 3 1/2 years with my bachelors in Psych. And then I took kind of a break year to figure out what's the next step. And in that break year, I did some volunteer work with an amazing group called AmeriCorps. Probably a lot of people have heard of it. I bet a lot of people in this podcast have actually volunteered with AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps is an awesome organization, nonprofit, that works in a lot of different settings. And so I was in St. Louis, MO. And so, I was in an inner-city school, and I did inner city tutoring with elementary school kids. And I absolutely loved it. And as I was taking kind of that break year that gap year and volunteering with AmeriCorps, I was also trying to figure out what's the next step. I know I gotta go to grad school because I can't really do anything with the bachelors in psych. And there's so many options do I wanna get a doctorate? Do I wanna get a master's in counseling or do I do I wanna do social work? What is social work? And so, I started really comparing programs. And a couple of things that finally landed me in social work. One my experience in AmeriCorps was very much I feel a social work kind of experience. You know, I was working with these kids who came from the inner city of Saint Louis living in poverty, had a lot of A scores. I didn't know about the A study back then, but had a lot of adverse childhood experiences, really struggling in school. Often had a lot of chaos in their family lives and so I felt really involved and engaged in multiple systems of their experience of their day-to-day lives and systems was very much a focus of social work. So, there was something that kind of primed the pump with that. And then as I was looking at different programs, I was certainly interested in some master's in counseling programs and looking at social work programs and, to be completely honest,
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