The Importance of Self-Care for Burnout

Rebecca Kase is a licensed clinical social worker and expert in EMDR. She experienced her worst burnout when working with a nonprofit organization in community mental health. A combination of toxic authoritarian leadership, unsafe work environment, and clinically challenging patients was the perfect recipe for burnout. Rebecca started to fall into maladaptive coping behaviors and received signals from her body that it was time to change paths. She realized she could not fix the problems with the mental health system that she was part of and instead needed to find ways to help others that would also allow her to also better serve herself. Through a greater understanding of how the nervous system works and how to use EMDR as a biohack for healing from trauma, Rebecca has found a way to help others that still aligns with her own values. Tune into this episode to learn more.

“I think of EMDR as kind of like Drano for the brain-o. Like an antacid for your nervous system,” shares Rebecca Kase when explaining how EMDR helps to clear away old, harmful memories, patterns, and feelings from where they have become stuck in the nervous system. EMDR or eye movement desensitization reprocessing is an evidence-based treatment approach that is the standard treatment for PTSD, but also helps with anxiety, chronic pain, depression, and a myriad of other conditions. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation through visual or auditory cues to cause a patient’s eyes to move back and forth in a way that is similar to how our eyes move during REM sleep. This helps patients to reprocess traumatic memories in a healthier way so that they can finally move forward and their nervous systems can get unstuck. 

Tune into today’s episode of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast for a conversation with Rebecca Kase about using EMDR to heal from trauma. Learn more about the three different states of the nervous system, how neuroception works to keep us safe, and how sometimes the best self care is a box cake. 

Quotes

· “One of my self care items is I make myself just a cheap box cake and I just go to town on it for about a day. So my husband always knows when he sees the self care cake. He's like, ‘Oh, that's where we are. We're calling out the big guns’.” (4:21-4:38 | Rebecca)

· “My number one tip is reframe your burnout as a sign that your nervous system is working as it's supposed to and it’s not always something to fix, or mend, or self care gratitude journal away.” (6:27-6:39 | Rebecca) 

· “It's not meant to be like toxic positivity or spiritual bypassing, because it's not saying, ‘shits not on fire’, yes, shits on fire, and the birds are singing while it's burning down. It’s about being able to find the balance, the dialectic of life, that I think is really important and helpful when our neuroception is like, ‘danger, danger, danger’.” (13:38-13:58 | Rebecca)

· “All of our strategies that we go to when we are out of that window of tolerance are all attempts to cope, whether they’re adaptive or not, everything you do throughout the day is an attempt to regulate yourself.” (20:46-20:57 | Rebecca)

· “There's a shortage in the mental health community and in the medical profession. I see that as leverage. That is leverage. So therefore, you do not have to settle for some shitty deal that is not good for your wellness, your sanity, your body, your mind, heart, brain or your family.” (27:13-27:31 | Rebecca)

Links

Connect with Rebecca Kase:

https://rebeccakase.com 

https://instagram.com/rebeccakase.co 

https://emdria.org 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists?search=emdr 

XOXO,

C

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