Sharika Pruitt

I specialize in working with women who are uniquely impacted as eldest daughters—especially those navigating complex, toxic, or dysfunctional family systems. If you’ve felt responsible for everyone else, like you were “raised too fast,” or like love came with strings, surveillance, and emotional conditions, you’re in the right place.

My clients often identify with roles such as:

• -The Eldest Daughter who carries the family’s emotional weight
• -The Black Sheep who is blamed, misunderstood, or “kept in line”
• -The Scapegoat who absorbs conflict to protect the family’s image
• -The Golden Child who learned to succeed outwardly while staying dysregulated inwardly

If your family dynamics include narcissistic patterns, chronic conflict, manipulation, intimidation, emotional neglect, or volatility, we’ll work clinically and compassionately, without minimizing what you’ve lived.

• Integrative and evidence-informed: I combine IFS, Somatic experiencing, nervous system regulation, Acceptance Therapy, psychoeducation, and bounded neurofeedback to support healing from the inside out.
• Internal Family Systems (IFS): identify and communicate with internal parts (e.g., part seeking safety, part overwhelmed by fear) to reduce internal conflict and restore harmony.
• Nervous system regulation: grounding, pacing, and co-regulation techniques to move from hypervigilance toward safety and resilience. Neurofeedback option: when appropriate, supports brain regulation as part of a broader healing plan.
• Client empowerment: you lead the goals; I provide support, skill-building, and evidence-based tools to help you become the best version of yourself.

My approach is trauma-informed and mind-body oriented, with an emphasis on relational healing and nervous system recovery.

I frequently use:

Family systems therapy tools (to understand roles, patterns, and “why you keep getting pulled back in”)

• Acceptance-based therapy to reduce shame, self-blame, and the internal pressure to “fix” what isn’t fixable
• Nervous system regulation practices to help you recover from toxic stress and regain executive functioning, calm, and choice
• Mindfulness to build awareness of triggers, emotional cycles, and physiological responses—so you can interrupt them sooner

For clients affected by toxic attachment, chronic criticism, or ongoing relational harm, we focus on helping you develop internal steadiness; so you’re not constantly reacting to old dynamics.

I often provide inner child healing homework and structured activities to address residual wounds that may still be shaping your present-day patterns, such as:

• -people-pleasing and fear of retaliation
• -difficulty saying no guilt when establishing boundaries
• -hypervigilance, emotional shutdown, or constant overthinking
• -repeating the same relational script with other people

These exercises are designed to help your healing become embodied, so that change isn’t just intellectual, it’s lived.