First and foremost, I am a Christian. While my faith in God is very strong, I work within the parameters established by my clients. If they do not believe, and do not request faith-based services, this will never come up in our work together, but I hope to treat you with all the compassion that Jesus would. That was the greatest compliment I ever had from a Lesbian client, that for the first time in her life, she felt treated as Jesus would have treated her. I am a trauma survivor myself. I know the difficult road back from childhood and adult traumatic events first-hand, not just from the textbooks. I dedicated my life and 35-year career running a nonprofit serving survivors of trauma--child abuse victims, veterans, domestic violence, sexual trauma, surviving family members of homicide victims, and terroristic attacks. It is unconscionable what human beings will do to one another, and it can perpetuate for generations if you neglect your own recovery. I am also a mediator and have had the honor of reconciling many marriages--some who even came to me for divorce and custody originally, wanting to save their marriage but not knowing what else to try. I've seen healing in many generational disputes, and in interventions with families trying to get an addicted or severely mentally ill member to treatment. I do Workplace Mediation and Eldercare and Guardianship Mediation as well. Have differences in parenting? Parenting and Discipline Planning are accomplished expeditiously in mediation. Want the perfect wedding gift? Give them Pre-marital or Re-marital Mediation so they can discuss and agree on life choices together before they get married and start arguing endlessly about them.
What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?
In our first session, I want to know who you are, what works well in your life and what you would like to change for the better. I will explain who I am as a counselor and how I approach the relationship that is counseling, which is a bit of an odd relationship to say the least. You are entrusting your innermost thoughts and feelings to someone you hardly know, and I do not take that for granted at all. I am honored and humbled by it and want this process to feel as safe as it possibly can for you to do the work you need to do. I will explain how that can happen, but I do not assume that this is an easy step for you. I admire your courage and appreciate your trust in me and intend to nurture that trust.
Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.
I think my greatest strengths are my empathy and ability to instill hope in my clients that they can and will get better and be able to live their best lives in the future, regardless of what they have lived through so far. I have a gift of discernment, which I believe is largely from my ability to empathize with clients and put myself in their shoes to understand their experiences. I am in my latter 60's now and have had many life experiences myself. As mentioned previously, I am not a stranger to trauma and have spent 35 years treating trauma victim/survivors. I pull from a great wealth of knowledge having supervised hundreds of counselors with a variety of specialties over these 3 and a half decades as well. So, all in all, perhaps 'experience' is really my greatest asset.
About Sharon Bayus
Specializes in
Licensed in
Accepts
Appointments
VirtualMy treatment methods
Trauma-Focused CBT
The majority of my 35-year practice has been with trauma survivors, but in those decades, I have seen a bit of every kind of issue. I focus a great deal on the relationship with my individual clients and I use our relationship as a means to provide opportunities for learning and practice of new skills that my clients wish to generalize to their lives outside the treatment setting. A relationship that is nonjudgmental and exists solely for your personal healing, is the safest place to do that. CBT says, first come thoughts, then come feelings, and then come behaviors. If we want to eliminate unhealthy emotions from coming up and then the unhealthy reactions to those emotions, our battle exists in our minds, not our feelings or our behavior. For those who have suffered very severe trauma in life, I use the evidence-based treatment of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. People who have suffered trauma have damage in 3 areas of life: 1) how they think about themselves: their worth and value, as well as their capability to protect themselves; 2) how they think about and allow themselves to trust other people again within relationships; and 3) how they think and feel about God or how they BELIEVE God thinks and feels about them and their value. "If God did not stop the abuse or attack(s) when I prayed for it to stop, how can I believe in God's love for me?" We must work on all these areas and repair distorted beliefs and the resulting emotional reactions and behaviors that come from these faulty beliefs. You need and deserve freedom from them to truly live and fully become who you were meant to become in life to your full potential.
Faith based therapy
For those for whom faith is central to living life at its fullest, I am very skilled in faith-based or Christian Counseling, but only on the request and definition of what my clients want that to entail during treatment. What can that entail? It can include prayer, application of scripture to various problem areas, and/or forgiveness work. What won't I deal with in this format? If you want to decide what denomination to join or leave, I will refer you to the 101 classes at those denominations. I find that those with a core of faith tend to heal faster. I suppose that is because God is there for you 24-7 and I get only an hour a week! I am also comfortable with anyone who is angry with God, unsure how they feel about God for any number of reasons, or even questions if any God really exists. Many people legitimately question how such horrific life experiences can happen under the watch of a loving God and need a nonjudgemental place to struggle with those questions. Some people experienced abuse at the hands of religious leaders and blame God as much as the leader who perpetrated that violence on them or feel God can't possibly love them or would have stopped it. I get that, and so does God.
Prolonged Exposure Therapy
In addition to Trauma Informed CBT, I also use Prolonged Exposure for treatment of severe trauma. The name of this treatment is not what I would have chosen for it, because it sounds terrifying to a trauma survivor! They relive the trauma enough already, why they would want to 'expose' themselves in a more 'prolonged' way, sounds absolutely crazy! I agree it sounds that way but ask me about it anyway. This approach can give YOU mastery of the trauma symptoms rather than their mastering you, and can do so in 12 weeks! Imagine being FREE of your symptoms' domination of your life in just 3 months! It will take courage to walk through trauma treatment no matter what approach you take to tackle your trauma symptoms. It's a choice of looking at it intensely for a short time to get it 'unstuck' in your psyche or living with it long term and allowing it to impair your relationships and potential for success in work and/or school. You are in charge of that choice. You are also in charge of everything within this form of treatment.
Eclectic
While I rely a great deal on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, my practice has been eclectic in mixing different approaches and variety of techniques most needed by my clients at the time.
Solution Focused Brief Treatment
I try to remain solution-focused and assist people in achieving their goals and objectives for therapy in the briefest time possible, that will still allow those skills to stick with them long-term.