To succeed as a licensed therapist in a world full of self-help influencers and confusing — often incorrect — wellness information, continuing education and training are necessary to set oneself apart from the unlicensed, untrained fray. Those who have experienced trauma in their lives need access to highly trained therapists to arrive at a place of healing.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy is one of the most recognized and successful approaches for trauma processing. Rebecca Kase, an LCSW and long-time practitioner of EMDR, recognized quickly in her practice that there was a need for improvement in continuing education and training for therapists.
Kase has set out to create a thoughtfully designed training program and consultation resource for therapists interested in helping people with trauma and employing EMDR in their practices. She founded Kase & CO. as a way to bring exceptional trauma therapy and EMDR training to therapists so that they can enhance their practices through continuing education.
Experience and leadership
Rebecca Kase has had years of experience as a licensed clinical social worker, yoga instructor, author, and inspirational speaker. She has leveraged her experience and leadership skills to bring trauma-informed training to other therapists.
“We emphasize the power of courage and humility as a way of living and holding space for others,” Kase explains. “We hope to help individuals overcome their fears, build self-confidence, and find their own inner strength. We create shame-free spaces for learning. Learning EMDR and trauma therapy can be a vulnerable experience. We recognize this and take responsibility for holding space, so no one walks away from training with a vulnerability hangover.”
The consulting and training space Kase has developed — alongside her team of highly-trained therapists — is a safe space for other therapists to uplevel their practice and skills. They work hard to make the environment fun and inviting for participants and allow therapists who attend their training to work through the intricacies of EMDR and trauma-informed therapy, and to make mistakes — learning from them as they go. It is a space where no one needs to feel like they have to be a perfect clinician, but where they can feel relaxed enough to truly explore trauma therapy.
“I think that training with us is just a very different experience,” says Kase. “Certainly, we are trauma experts, but we don’t feel like an overly academic, dry, strict, boring, or dull training where you are just lectured at.”
The approach Kase & CO. has perfected has been wildly successful and garnered glowing reviews from therapists who have learned from them.
A compassionate and authentic presence
What makes Kase & CO. — and Rebecca Kase herself — different from more traditional training and therapy approaches is the concentration on a compassionate, open, and authentic presence. “We bring so much humor, we bring so much play [to training],” Kase says, “One of my main mantras is ‘Don’t take yourself too seriously.’”
This may seem paradoxical in a world as serious as trauma therapy, but Kase knows that it is easy to get bogged down in the seriousness and sometimes dark reaches of their chosen profession. “Trauma therapy training is heavy content,” says Kase, “but let’s see if we can have fun with it, because we are in the business of healing.”
That healing journey involves deep dives into applying EMDR therapy, an approach that has been around since the late 1980s and has shown — through clinical trials and studies — to be a quick way to help someone dealing with trauma.
“EMDR is an evidence-based therapy used in psychotherapy practices that can be used for anything that’s ‘stuck’ and ‘causing yuck,’” says Kase. “Sometimes, too much has happened or an experience has been way too overwhelming, and it gets stuck in your nervous system. This causes symptoms like anxiety, depression, or panic. EMDR helps target those experiences that have gotten stuck and helps your nervous system metabolize them and digest them.”
Kase and her team teach EMDR through the lens of Polyvagal Theory, which considers how the nervous system correlates to presenting symptoms. The team teaches therapists how to employ mindfulness techniques such as yoga, breathing exercises, and guided meditation to help clients work through trauma.
The training that Kase & CO. offers to other therapists requires that those therapists experience EMDR for themselves, so that they can offer more informed and compassionate help to their clients. The training is inclusive and shame-free, allowing therapists to dig deep into their own trauma-processing to better help others.
Prioritizing approachable teaching
Kase wants the therapists she trains to show up for their clients authentically and bravely. This informs every training session she holds. Training courses are offered live or on-demand, and come with a wealth of resources and supportive material for the therapists in training.
Kase and the other therapists on her faculty hope that the therapists who take their training come out on the other side of the space they are holding for them to better understand EMDR and how to apply it within their practices. “The experience you get from training with us will be unlike any other professional training you’ve been to,” says Kase.
