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Personal Coaching

Sharon Ellison offers individual, couple, and family coaching for people who want to use Powerful Non-Defensive Communication to resolve conflict and strengthen personal and/or professional relationships. Her experience includes a long history (Sharon's background) of providing coaching and she has over 35 years experience as a counselor.

Sharon is direct, honest and gentle in her approach. She is informal and down-to-earth. Often people who are uncomfortable in traditional therapeutic settings or don't see the value in learning how to communicate differently feel at home and like the process, thus becoming more open to change. At the same time, people who have had therapy and many personal growth experiences still find working with Sharon challenging and enlightening.

Sharon's approach is to provides a systemic analysis of relationship patterns, identifying key patterns that contribute to a breakdown in the health of the relationship(s). Then she coaches the person(s) in how to use non-defensive communication to "interrupt" key destructive patterns and create patterns that support healing and growth. Whether working with an individual, a couple, or a family, Sharon not only teaches people how to interrupt their own self-defeating patterns, she actually "interrupts the pattern" herself whenever she see it occurring during coaching sessions and guides the person(s) in how to respond in new ways. This provides powerful modeling for people in breaking the "spell" of old relationship habits and building new ones.

In using this approach, Sharon departs dramatically from the traditional therapeutic "50 minute hour." An initial session for one person usually lasts two to three hours for a couple or a family, three to five hours.* While this can sound intimidating initially (or exhausting) almost all clients comment on how quickly the time goes. By the end of the first session, Sharon provides a systemic analysis of the relationship systems and an overview of what she believes needs to happen to create change that will bring people into more fulfilling relationships, based on respect and reciprocity. Subsequent sessions usually last 2 hours.

The coaching may consist of one session or a series of sessions. It may focus on a single "situation" or on one or more relationships. Many people work with Sharon periodically, in conjunction with working with an individual or family therapist.

Individuals: Sharon can work with you privately on either personal or professional relationship patterns and communication. She will focus on how you can change your own patterns and thus alter what happens in a relationship whether you have the other person's "cooperation" or not. It is an empowering approach which can strengthens your ability to shift from feeling helpless or victimized to taking positive action to respond differently to particular issues/relationships.

Couples: Sharon identifies patterns you each have individually and how some of those individual patterns interact within your relationship in ways that are destructive to it and unhealthy for each of you. Then she models and coaches each of you in how to use non-defensive communication to "interrupt" the patterns with each other. Using these methods, you can eliminate co-dependent behavior while creating relationships based on genuine reciprocity and respect. This can strengthen your ability as a couple to balance independence with intimacy.

Families: Sharon has been working with children and providing parent training for over thirty years. She has developed unique programs where she provides coaching in the family home, giving on the spot-feed-back to interrupt patterns that tear apart family solidarity. Her goal is to guide parents in setting limits that give the child security in balance with communicating in ways that enhance her/his sense of freedom and creativity. Sharon also coaches children, ranging from pre-schoolers to high school and college students in developing non-defensive communication skills. In a family setting, Sharon might coach a mother, a father a five year old, and/or a 14 year old in conversation together.

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