Are you and your partner struggling to connect because your brains work differently? Do everyday misunderstandings snowball into shutdowns or meltdowns? Does one of you crave routine, structure, and order, while the other thrives on spontaneity — leading to frustration and distance? Katie Ziskind and the team at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
Maybe one or both of you are neurodivergent — living with ADHD, OCD, autism spectrum traits, sensory processing sensitivity, or learning differences — and your relationship challenges feel misunderstood by traditional therapists. Maybe you’re also carrying the weight of complex childhood trauma, religious trauma, or attachment wounds that make emotional intimacy feel unsafe or confusing.
When ADHD is harming your marriage bond, we specialize in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
Do you often find yourself distracted or forgetful during important conversations with your partner, leading to misunderstandings or unresolved conflicts? ADHD can make it difficult to stay focused, and this can leave your partner feeling unheard, which may lead to fights and emotional disconnection.
Are you struggling to maintain intimacy and connection during sex, either due to difficulty staying present in the moment or getting easily overwhelmed? ADHD can affect your ability to tune into your partner’s needs and enjoy sexual intimacy, which might lead to frustration or a lack of desire.
Do you feel like you’re constantly in a cycle of starting arguments, or do small issues escalate quickly, leaving both you and your partner emotionally drained? Impulsivity and emotional reactivity are common with ADHD, which can contribute to conflict escalation, even over minor issues.
As well, do you often feel misunderstood by your partner, as if they don’t “get” your struggles with focus, organization, or emotional regulation, leaving you feeling isolated or defensive? ADHD can sometimes make it hard for partners to empathize with each other’s challenges, leading to emotional distance or resentment.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind and the team of therapists specialize with couples dealing with ADHD, sensory overwhelm, emotional shutdown, religious trauma, and childhood trauma from narcissistic parents.
To begin, click below to start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
Your marriage just needs the help of a specialist and the support from our team at Wisdom Within Counseling.
If you and your partner feel misunderstood by most therapists — like your communication style, your sensitivity, or your emotional needs are “too much” or “too different” — you’re not alone.
You might both be neurodivergent, or maybe one of you is and the other is trying hard to understand. Wisdom Within Counseling specializes in ADHD, autism spectrum traits, OCD, sensory processing challenges, and sexual dysfunctions.
Your relationship deserves a space where your therapist understands and values your unique brains and emotional wiring. Our therapists are not generalists. Instead, you get paired up with a couples therapist who is trained in seeing complex dynamics between neurodivergent couples who are also navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and C-PTSD.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we specialize in working with couples just like you — couples who love each other deeply but struggle with emotional overwhelm, shutdowns, misunderstood intentions, and the exhaustion of masking or trying to “be normal.”
Being neurodivergent in a relationship means emotions can feel bigger, faster, and harder to manage.
When you’re neurodivergent, stress and anxiety can flood your nervous system much more quickly.
One of you might get overstimulated from too much talking or too many emotional demands, while the other feels abandoned or rejected when communication stops. This mismatch creates a cycle of disconnection: one of you may shut down or go into freeze mode to protect yourself from overwhelm, while the other pursues more emotional closeness, unknowingly triggering further withdrawal.
These aren’t personal attacks — they’re nervous system survival strategies. In neurodivergent specialized marriage therapy, Katie Ziskind, your couples therapist, helps you understand these patterns so you can respond to each other with empathy instead of criticism.
When you and your spouse fight, does it get really out of hand really quick? Do you feel hopeless and alone after arguments?
Conflict isn’t the problem — not knowing how to co-regulate together is.
When arguments escalate quickly or one of you feels stuck in a loop of overexplaining, correcting, or emotionally distancing, it’s not because you’re bad at love.
It’s because no one taught you how to co-regulate with another human.
Co-regulation is a core skill we teach in couples therapy: using calm tone, steady presence, and attuned responses to help one another feel emotionally safe. When you both learn how to stay present during hard conversations — even if that means taking breaks, using sensory tools, or learning scripts — your relationship shifts from conflict to connection.
Couples counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma provides in-session co-regulation tools.
Religious trauma and spiritual abuse have a deep impact on your ability to feel safe with emotional and sexual intimacy.
Maybe you are the partner who wants to have more sex, but your spouse keeps rejecting you sexually. Perhaps, you have a higher libido and you struggle to get your partner to flirt with you back. Maybe, it seems like your partner is no longer interested in having sex all together.
Now, you are stuck in a sexless marriage without hope. Or, your partner has sensory processing issues and struggles with smells, taste, and bodily fluids. Perhaps, your partner is on the autism spectrum and struggles with high levels of anxiety and nervousness around being naked together.
Also, growing up in high-control religious environments makes people believe that having a voice is a bad thing. Many adolescents learn to suppress their needs.
Maybe, you shame your body, fear sexual urges, or distrust your intuition. Overall, these shame, guilt, and fear messages don’t disappear in adulthood.
Sexual anxiety, shame, and guilt from religious trauma live secretly in your nervous system. Maybe, love means self-sacrifice, obedience matters more than boundaries, or that sexuality was sinful.
In your marriage today, this may show up as emotional withholding, shutdown around physical touch, guilt around asking for your needs, or resentment that explodes when ignored for too long.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, your marriage specialists gently unpacks these internalized beliefs. Marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma helps you reclaim your right to emotional safety, sex, intimacy, and joy — without fear.
Start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
Did you or your spouse have a narcissistic, belittling, angry, explosive, or perfectionistic parent?
Did you grow up with a narcissistic or emotionally unavailable parent? If yes, it shaped the way you connect and disconnect in your marriage and adult romantic relationship today.
If you grow up walking on eggshells and constantly trying to meet the emotional needs of a self-centered, angry, or distant parent, your nervous system learns to monitor others while ignoring your own needs.
Often, at the root of conflict cycles, avoidance, and disconnection, are painful inner child wounds.
You may have developed people-pleasing tendencies, emotional fawning, or hyper-independence.
In your current romantic relationship, this can look like shutting down when your partner expresses hurt, feeling rejected by even small criticism, or needing constant reassurance that you’re not “messing up.”
Together in couples therapy, Katie Ziskind and the team at Wisdom Within Counseling help you rewire these childhood survival strategies into adult connection skills. So, you can stop reacting from the past and start relating from the present. Marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma helps you understand how inner child wounds contribute to current marital disconnection.
Are you both stuck in cycles of pain, rejection, avoidance, helplessness, loneliness, and confusion?
Sensory overload and emotional shutdown are often misinterpreted as rejection in neurodivergent couples.
If you or your partner get flooded by noise, lights, textures, or intense feelings, your natural coping mechanism may involve retreating.
But to the other person, this can feel like abandonment or indifference. You may find yourselves caught in painful cycles where one partner feels overstimulated and needs space, while the other feels anxious and needs closeness.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma helps you understand yourself and your spouse better.
In neurodivergent specialized couples therapy, we help you name your sensory and emotional needs clearly, without shame.
Couples therapy helps you both create rituals and tools for taking breaks that don’t feel like rejection.
And, in marriage therapy specialized for neurodivergent couples, we teach you how to reconnect afterward in soothing, loving, and validating ways.
Katie Ziskind specializes in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma especially when anxiety and sensory processing disorder harm your marriage and intimacy.
Do certain sounds, lights, or textures overwhelm you to the point where you withdraw or shut down during intimate moments or everyday interactions with your partner? Sensory overload can create an emotional and physical barrier, making it difficult to stay engaged during sex or even in routine conversations.
As well, do you often feel irritated or agitated by your partner’s touch, even when it’s meant to be affectionate, leading to emotional distance or avoidance of intimacy? Sensory sensitivities can make physical touch feel overwhelming or uncomfortable, which can cause you to pull away, even if you deeply care for your partner.
Are you more likely to avoid sexual intimacy because certain sensations, like specific types of touch or lighting, feel too intense or uncomfortable? Sensory processing issues can directly affect your ability to engage in or enjoy sex, leading to a cycle of avoidance that could negatively impact your connection.
Do you find it difficult to communicate your sensory needs to your partner, leading to frustration or misunderstandings during fights or intimate moments? If you struggle to express how sensory triggers affect you, it can create conflict, with both partners feeling frustrated or misunderstood.
When you experience sensory overload, do you tend to emotionally withdraw, making it harder for you to connect with your partner and intensifying the cycle of disconnection and avoidance in your marriage?
Sensory sensitivities can lead to emotional shutdowns, which may prevent you from engaging with your partner during stressful or intimate moments, further fueling feelings of isolation or disconnection.
To begin, click below to start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
Do you want to work with a specialist who has extensive training in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma, and other complex issues?
You need more than just communication skills — you need emotional attunement that works with your brain.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, marriage therapy for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma gives you live, in-session skills to rebuild closeness.
Many couples therapy models focus on teaching “I statements” or active listening. While helpful, they often fall flat for neurodivergent couples because they miss the deeper emotional regulation challenges. You might know what to say — but your nervous system won’t let you say it. Or you say it, but it doesn’t land emotionally.
That’s why our approach at Wisdom Within Counseling includes somatic calming tools. Your couples therapist will include sensory-friendly practices, and trauma-informed dialogue that meet you where you are.
We don’t just teach you how to talk. Marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma helps you feel safe enough to connect. Your marriage therapist uses bonding skills, Gottman skills, and Imago techniques, especially during vulnerable, heated, or emotionally charged moments.
Now, do you feel overwhelm, anxiety, or frozen when you think about where to start, and are you both needing help understanding and meeting each other’s needs?
Your needs are not too much. Currently, in your painful fight cycle, your spouse is misunderstanding you. Right now, you might feel like your need for structure, routine, reassurance, quiet, or space makes you “too much” or “too difficult” to love.
Or maybe you’ve been told you’re “too sensitive,” “too emotional,” or “not emotional enough.”
You’ve spent years masking, adapting, and over-functioning — and you’re exhausted. In our counseling space, your needs are valid.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, your couples therapist helps you both work together to understand your unique emotional and sensory landscape. This way, your marriage and your relationship can become a place of refuge, not pressure, overwhelm, or stress.
From marriage therapy for neurodivergent couples, you and your partner learn to support each other without shame, resentment, or pressure to change core parts of yourselves.
Marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma gives you skills to work together.
Healing happens faster when you’re doing it together — not just in individual therapy.
Many neurodivergent individuals do years of individual therapy, but still struggle in their relationship because. Doing therapy alone doesn’t teach you how to co-regulate, repair after conflict, or build shared rituals of emotional safety. That’s where specialized neurodivergent couples therapy comes in.
From marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma, you both learn how to show up differently. You both develop validation skills, empathy, presence, and understanding. From couples counseling specialized for neurodivergent people, you learn how to meet each other’s nervous system with compassion instead of critique. And, you learn how to hold each other emotionally during the storms, instead of shutting down or walking away. This is the power of relational healing.
Couples counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma helps you build meaningful connection and overcome difficult emotions as a team.
Your relationship is worth fighting for — and you don’t have to do it alone.
You and your partner are already brave. You’re facing challenges that most people don’t even recognize — from sensory differences and executive dysfunction to religious shame and childhood wounds.
But here’s the truth: You’re not alone anymore. At Wisdom Within Counseling, we offer neurodivergent-affirming, trauma-informed, spiritually sensitive couples therapy. Whether you’re in East Lyme or Waterford, Connecticut, or seeking online telehealth support, our marriage therapists help you rebuild a marriage where you can breathe deeply. From there, you can both show up authentically, resolve conflict, and feel safe loving each other again.
Start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
Marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma is our speciality at Wisdom Within Counseling.
If this sounds like you, you’re not alone.
And, your romantic relationship has hope. Katie Ziskind specializes with sex and intimacy, neurodivergent couples, ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
You simply need a therapist who understands your wiring, your sensory world, and your lived experiences. At Wisdom Within Counseling, you get a marriage therapist who can help you turn those “too much” or “not enough” moments into healing opportunities.
As well, at Wisdom Within Counseling, our marriage therapists specialize in working with neurodivergent couples who want to build stronger, safer, and more emotionally connected relationships.
Marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma supports you both when trauma, anxiety, sensory overload, or spiritual shame has made your marital bond strained and conflict cycle very difficult.
Why Does Traditional Marriage Counseling Often Fall Short for Neurodivergent Couples?
You may have tried couples therapy before and walked away feeling invalidated, pathologized, or like the therapist didn’t get it.
That’s because many traditional or more general therapists are trained to work with “neurotypical” couples — assuming both partners:
- Interpret tone of voice the same way
- Regulate emotions the same way
- Want the same amount of eye contact, physical touch, and routine
- Process conflict through verbal conversation
But if you or your partner have ADHD, OCD, autism traits, or complex trauma, your nervous system functions differently. You may:
- Get overwhelmed by emotional intensity, loud sounds, or eye contact
- Need more transition time and breaks during conflict
- Feel exhausted by constant masking or people-pleasing
- Experience touch as overstimulating or comforting, depending on the context
- Struggle to articulate your inner world in the moment
We honor all of this.
In marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma, you don’t have to “act normal.”
You get to be your real, emotional self.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, Our Couples Therapists Understand Neurodivergence and the Sensory, Emotional, and Communication Differences That Come With It
Here’s what sets our approach apart:
ADHD-Sensitive Couples Counseling
We support couples where one or both partners struggle with attention, impulsivity, emotional flooding, time blindness, or rejection sensitivity.
You’ll learn:
- How to de-escalate when ADHD-driven defensiveness kicks in
- How to co-create structure without shame or parent-child dynamics
- How to recognize overstimulation vs under-stimulation in your relationship
We help you build compassion for each other’s executive function struggles instead of staying stuck in blame and misunderstanding.
OCD-Informed Relationship Therapy
If OCD shows up in your relationship — whether through intrusive thoughts, compulsions, or perfectionism — we help you create safety without enabling or shaming.
You’ll learn:
- How to talk about OCD patterns with empathy
- How to support a partner without reinforcing rituals
- How to gently separate the person from the anxiety cycle
We don’t pathologize — we help you find collaborative, respectful ways to deal with obsessive thinking in a relationship.
Sensory-Aware Counseling for Highly Sensitive Couples
If sound, light, touch, or temperature set off overwhelm for one or both of you, we build a sensory-safe relationship container.
You’ll learn:
- How to communicate sensory needs without guilt
- How to reduce overwhelm in daily interactions and intimacy
- How to create co-regulation rituals that soothe your bodies, not just your minds
Our marriage therapists bring a trauma-informed, somatic approach to help you feel safe in your skin and in your connection.
Marriage Counseling for Neurodivergent Couples Navigating ADHD, OCD, Sensory Processing Challenges Addresses Complex Childhood Trauma and Religious Trauma Together
Many neurodivergent adults have also lived through early emotional neglect, parentification, abuse, or spiritual environments that taught them their needs were wrong, sinful, or selfish.
This often shows up in relationships as:
- Fear of being “too much” or “not enough”
- Shame around emotional needs or sexual desire
- Difficulty asking for comfort or support
- Hyper-independence or codependent dynamics
In marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma, our therapists use emotionally focused therapy (EFT), somatic tools, and inner child work to help you:
- Understand your trauma responses (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) in your relationship
- Express your needs vulnerably without fear of rejection
- Reclaim your voice, especially if you were silenced in religious spaces
- Rebuild a secure foundation of emotional safety and mutual care
We honor your whole story, including the parts that feel tangled in guilt, shame, or emotional shutdown.
💬 What Couples Say About This Work
“This was the first time we felt like a therapist actually understood our brains. I didn’t have to explain why I needed to stim during a hard conversation. We learned how to take breaks that worked for both of us.”
“Katie helped us stop our trauma from running the show. Now we pause, check in, and reconnect — without needing to be perfect.”
“We both grew up in high-control religious households. This work helped us unlearn shame around our emotions, our boundaries, and even our sexuality. Our relationship feels sacred now — not scary.”
Start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
Tools We Teach in Marriage Counseling for Neurodivergent Couples Navigating ADHD, OCD, Sensory Processing Challenges and Complex Trauma:
- Co-regulation for trauma triggers
- Neurodivergent-friendly communication strategies
- Creating low-sensory emotional intimacy rituals
- Nonverbal and touch-based repair techniques
- Managing ADHD arguments and OCD loops
- Undoing spiritual trauma and perfectionism in your marriage
- Building emotional safety without masking
This is not cookie-cutter therapy. It’s custom-built for how you both function.
What You’ll Experience Here:
You’ll feel seen and understood, not pathologized.
From marriage therapy, you’ll learn how to repair without blame and communicate without overwhelm.
You’ll rediscover emotional safety, sexual intimacy, and playful connection.
In marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma, you’ll develop tools to thrive together, even when the world feels overstimulating or chaotic.
Ready to Feel Emotionally Safe With Each Other Again?
Whether you’ve felt emotionally misattuned for years, or you’re just beginning to notice the neurodivergent or trauma dynamics in your relationship — we’re here to help.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we offer:
- Specialized neurodivergent-affirming couples therapy
- Online and in-person sessions in East Lyme, Old Lyme, Madison, Clinton, Niantic, and Waterford, Connecticut (and in Melbourne, Florida)
- A compassionate, LGBTQIA+ affirming, sex-positive space
Let’s help you feel emotionally safe, connected, and understood — together.
Let’s talk about the impacts of having emotionally abusive, hurtful, explosive and angry parents.
If you were raised by a narcissistic parent, your nervous system learned to prioritize survival over connection.
As a child, you may have constantly walked on eggshells, trying to predict and manage your parent’s moods.
You learned quickly that love was conditional: you were praised for performing, staying quiet, pleasing others, or hiding your emotions.
This shaped how your nervous system operates even today. In moments of stress or emotional intensity in your marriage, your body might automatically default to a fight, flight, or freeze response—not because you want to hurt your partner, but because your inner child is still trying to stay safe in what feels like a threatening environment. These are trauma responses, not character flaws. At Wisdom Within Counseling, our marriage therapists specialize in the intersectionality of neurodivergence, C-PTSD, complex trauma, narcissistic parents, ADHD, OCD, sensory processing disorder, and anxiety.
To begin, click below to start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
Marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma helps you both co-create long-lasting love after love was conditional.
When you receive love only for achieving something, like scoring a touchdown or bringing home straight A’s, your nervous system wires itself to associate worthiness with performance.
For a young boy whose father only praised him during moments of visible success, but withheld warmth, affection, or emotional support the rest of the time, the message becomes clear: “I am only lovable when I win or produce.”
This creates deep anxiety and insecurity that follows him into adulthood, especially in intimate relationships.
When he perceives that he’s failed, disappointed his partner, or isn’t “enough,” his body might automatically go into fight, flight, or freeze. He may lash out in defensiveness (fight), withdraw to avoid feeling like a failure (flight), or shut down completely, going numb and emotionless (freeze).
These are not conscious choices—they’re protective reflexes from a time when love felt scarce, unpredictable, and earned rather than freely given. These trauma responses in your marriage create painful cycles of disconnection unless you and your partner compassionately understand and heal them with the support of a trained professional.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind and the team of marriage therapists specialize in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and complex trauma.
Did you have to earn love growing up through achievements, obedience, or being the “good” child?
This pattern of conditional love creates a deep emotional wound—one where self-worth becomes entirely tied to achievement and approval from others.
When this boy becomes a man, he may enter his marriage feeling unconsciously pressured to always be impressive, productive, or emotionally “together.”
If he senses criticism, even gentle feedback, it can trigger that same panic he once felt when his dad was distant or disappointed.
His nervous system may react instantly: he might raise his voice to prove he’s right (fight), go silent and disappear into work or a hobby (flight), or freeze—unable to explain what he’s feeling, going blank or emotionally paralyzed.
Then, his partner may feel shut out or confused, not realizing he’s reliving an old pain where love meant pressure, performance, and never feeling safe to just be himself.
In couples therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling, especially with a trauma-informed, neurodiversity-affirming approach, we help both of you see the important of these inner child wounds.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, you and your partner can start to see these reactions not as personal flaws or signs of dysfunction, but as deeply rooted nervous system responses shaped by childhood experiences. Inner child experiences play a huge role in breaking cycles of conflict, confusion, helplessness, betrayal, and arguments.
Through exploring the inner child wounds left by conditional love, you can begin to replace shame with compassion.
In marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma, you get positive skills for bonding. You’ll learn new tools for co-regulation, emotional safety, and trust—so love no longer feels like something you have to earn, but something you can receive just for being who you are.
Couples therapy with our specialists in complex trauma and neurodivergence, ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges helps you rewrite that old story: that you are lovable, even when you’re imperfect, struggling, or simply being human.
What does the fight trauma response look like?
The ‘fight’ response might look like blaming, criticism, defensiveness, or needing to win the argument.
If anger was modeled as power in your childhood home, you may now find yourself reacting strongly when you feel unseen or dismissed.
When your spouse brings up an issue, your nervous system might perceive it as an attack, and suddenly you’re in fight mode—raising your voice, pointing fingers, or defending yourself before they’ve even finished speaking. Deep down, you may fear being controlled, silenced, or made to feel small again, just like you did with a narcissistic parent.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and complex trauma takes into account your childhood memories. When looking at analyzing and helping you break a negative fight cycle, understanding childhood trauma and inner child wounds are key.
In order to build emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy, Katie Ziskind, your couples therapist, asks you about unmet love needs and painful moments from childhood. These moments of “fight” aren’t just about your current marital disagreement—they’re often your past pain surfacing in the present.
For many adults with narcissistic parents, fighting was a survival strategy developed in childhood.
People often misunderstand the fight trauma response as simple anger or aggression.
If you were guilt-tripped, silenced, or punished for having your own thoughts, feelings, or needs, your inner child may have learned to fight to be seen or heard.
You may have had to defend yourself against manipulative tactics like gaslighting, blame-shifting, or the constant message that you were “too much” or “not enough.”
And, you use that fight energy to reclaim a sense of personal power that others repeatedly took away.
In your marriage today, when conflict arises, that same wounded child can feel cornered. And, suddenly you’re fighting not just with your spouse, but with every painful childhood memory of being made to feel small, voiceless, and invisible.
In these intense moments, the emotional intensity often isn’t about the issue at hand. It’s about an old wound re-opening.
If your spouse questions you or expresses a need, your nervous system may hear it as a threat: a sign that you’re being criticized, blamed, or about to be emotionally abandoned again.
Marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and complex trauma looks at your deeper survival responses, to then create emotional safety and intimacy.
The fight response kicks in—you raise your voice, interrupt, argue, or defend before your partner has even finished speaking.
This reaction is deeply protective. It says, “I will not be silenced again.” But what often gets missed is that your partner may not understand that they’re speaking to your inner child’s pain, not just the adult in front of them. Without tools to slow down, name these triggers, and communicate vulnerably, you may feel stuck in an exhausting cycle of conflict and disconnection.
To begin, click below to start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
Working with Katie Ziskind at Wisdom Within Counseling offers a powerful path to healing these deeply embedded patterns.
Katie Ziskind specializes in helping couples unpack the inner child wounds that drive their fight responses—especially for those who grew up with narcissistic, emotionally manipulative, or controlling parents.
You’ll learn how to recognize when your nervous system is hijacking your reactions and how to gently tend to the younger part of you that still needs safety and validation. With Katie Ziskind’s trauma-informed, emotionally focused approach, you and your partner can develop new ways of staying emotionally connected—even during conflict.
Katie Ziskind will support you in rebuilding trust. You gain skills for reclaiming your voice without overpowering your spouse. And, you can work on co-creating a relationship where both of you feel heard, respected, and safe to express your true selves.
Let’s talk about the flight response in high conflict arguments.
The ‘flight’ response shows up when you emotionally numb or physically check out.
If you were taught not to cry, express needs, or show vulnerability growing up, you may now avoid emotional conversations altogether.
You might change the subject, walk away, stay busy with work, or numb out with screens. Your inner child may believe that showing emotion leads to punishment, abandonment, or being made to feel weak.
In your marriage, this can feel like emotional unavailability, and your partner may feel hurt by your distance.
But what’s really happening is your nervous system fleeing from perceived danger—even if that danger is simply your spouse asking, “Can we talk?”
Do you numb out without realizing it?
The flight trauma response often hides in plain sight. Unlike the visible intensity of the fight response, flight can look like productivity, busyness, or even success on the surface. But underneath, it’s usually driven by a deep inner child wound—one shaped by a narcissistic parent who taught you that emotions were unsafe.
Maybe you were shamed for crying, punished for showing fear, or ignored when you needed comfort. Your younger self learned, “If I stay busy, I won’t feel the pain.”
This emotional avoidance might have protected you in childhood, but in your adult life and marriage, it can create distance, disconnection, and loneliness for both you and your partner.
Start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
When your nervous system is stuck in flight, you might automatically escape conflict and avoid intimacy.
For one, you stay late at work, keep your calendar full, or scroll for hours to avoid stillness. You might turn to alcohol, food, drugs, or even overusing prescribed medication—not because you’re trying to self-destruct, but because your body believes it must flee from overwhelming feelings.
Your inner child feels afraid that emotional vulnerability will be met with rejection, punishment, or humiliation – just like it was with a narcissistic parent. So you shut down, check out, or run away emotionally when closeness gets too real.
This can leave your spouse feeling unloved, unwanted, or emotionally abandoned, even though you’re just trying to stay safe.
In marriage counseling with Katie Ziskind at Wisdom Within Counseling, you’ll start learning how to slow down, name what’s happening in your body, and begin to feel safe with emotions again.
Katie Ziskind specializes in how complex trauma, especially from narcissistic parents, leads to self-protective flight responses and deep fears around emotional exposure.
She helps you gently reconnect with your inner child—the part of you that never got to feel safe being real, vulnerable, or human.
Instead of numbing, avoiding, or pushing your feelings away, you’ll learn to explore them with compassion and curiosity—first in a safe space with your therapist, and then with your partner.
Katie Ziskind’s approach to neurodivergent couples counseling includes helping you and your partner co-regulate—meaning you’ll develop skills to stay emotionally connected, even when you feel the urge to flee.
Marriage therapy helps you practice saying things like, “I’m overwhelmed right now,” instead of disappearing or shutting down.
You’ll learn how to be present without feeling like emotions are a threat to your safety or your relationship. In doing so, you start to re-associate emotional vulnerability with positive, safe outcomes.
You may have spent decades running from closeness, but here, you get to rewrite that story—so emotional intimacy feels nourishing, not dangerous.
Over time, your nervous system begins to settle. Your marriage becomes a place where you can be real without fear of punishment or shame.
That little boy or girl inside of you who once believed that love was conditional, or that feelings made you weak, starts to trust again. Katie Ziskind helps couples like you build this emotional safety through trauma-informed, neurodiversity-affirming therapy.
Whether you’re healing from alcohol dependence, workaholism, or emotional numbing, Katie Ziskind guides you toward healthier ways of coping. Positive coping skills become ways that lead to connecting with your spouse rather than isolating.
And best of all, you’ll begin to feel that it’s okay to stop running and start feeling vulnerable and emotionally safe together.
What is the freeze trauma response and how can marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and complex trauma support you both?
Freeze looks like emotional paralysis, people-pleasing, or feeling stuck in confusion.
Sometimes, the trauma response isn’t fight or flight—it’s freeze. If your caregivers taught you to suppress your instincts or never modeled emotional regulation, you may now shut down completely when conflict arises.
Your brain may go blank. And, you stop speaking. You might not know what you’re feeling or how to respond. And, you could freeze in fear, go numb, or go along with your partner’s wishes just to keep the peace.
It can feel like your body is here but your spirit is gone. This is your nervous system going into lockdown, a survival response developed in childhood when fighting back or running away wasn’t an option.
If you grew up with narcissistic parents who shamed or dismissed your emotions, you may have learned that going still and silent was the safest way to survive.
People often misunderstand the freeze trauma response. And, it typically roots itself deeply in early childhood experiences.
When emotional chaos erupted in your home, you might have shut down to avoid making things worse or drawing attention to yourself. Over time, your inner child internalized the belief that expressing feelings was dangerous, that speaking up would lead to punishment or rejection. As an adult, this shows up in marriage as emotional numbing, stonewalling, or total withdrawal when conflict arises.
When your nervous system freezes, your mind might go blank, your heart races, and your body feels stuck. You go silent—not because you don’t care. But, because everything is overwhelming, and your system is shutting down.
Start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
You may even give the silent treatment unintentionally, simply because you don’t know what to say or how to soothe the panic rising inside.
Unfortunately, this response can be incredibly damaging to your relationship. Your partner might interpret your withdrawal as coldness, punishment, or lack of interest, when really, you’re in survival mode. Their fears of abandonment may spike, leading them to protest louder, which only makes you shut down further.
This emotional disconnection can also extend into the bedroom, where feeling emotionally unsafe leads to sexual avoidance and tension.
Katie Ziskind at Wisdom Within Counseling specializes in helping couples who struggle with freeze responses, especially those with complex trauma, ADHD, OCD, and neurodivergence.
She understands that freeze isn’t laziness or stubbornness—it’s your nervous system doing its best to protect you based on the emotional environment you grew up in. In therapy, you’ll begin to safely explore the roots of your shutdown response, unpack the childhood messages you received about emotion, and develop new tools for expressing your inner world.
Katie Ziskind’s trauma-informed, emotionally focused approach helps you feel seen, heard, and accepted, even when words are hard to find.
To begin, click below to start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
With Katie Ziskind at Wisdom Within Counseling, you and your partner will learn how to co-regulate—so that when you start to shut down, your partner knows how to support you instead of escalating the conflict.
This helps break the cycle of fear and reactivity. You’ll practice staying present during difficult conversations, using grounding techniques, body awareness, and emotional vocabulary to remain connected instead of disappearing.
Over time, you can rebuild trust in yourself and in your relationship, learning that vulnerability won’t lead to rejection, but to deeper intimacy.
You’ll also explore how your neurodivergent traits, like sensory sensitivity or overwhelm from ADHD or OCD, contribute to your freeze response—and learn tools to manage those challenges with compassion.
Ultimately, working with Katie Ziskind offers a path toward healing the inner child who had to go numb to feel safe.
You don’t have to keep freezing your feelings to protect yourself. In couples counseling for neurodivergent couples, you will experience the safety of being full acceptance, even when you struggle.
And from that safety, real connection can grow—emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Through this process, your marriage can become the secure, emotionally attuned bond that your inner child always longed for.
In fights, you are re-experiencing trauma symptoms and survival responses. And, that is why healing requires a trained specialist, not judgment.
When you experience fight, flight, or freeze in your marriage, it can be confusing and frustrating—for both of you.
But instead of shaming yourself for “shutting down” or “making everything a big deal,” know this: your body is trying to protect you from what it learned was unsafe. There is nothign wrong with you if you struggle with fight, flight, and freeze trauma responses.
These responses mean you were once in a situation where your needs weren’t met, your voice didn’t matter, or love came with strings attached.
Through trauma-informed couples counseling with a specialist like Katie Ziskind, you can start to gently untangle these childhood patterns.
In marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and complex trauma, you gain skills to create a secure bond where your nervous system finally feels safe. From that safety, you can then level up sexual intimacy and sexual expression.
What is Complex-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
When you go through a traumatic experience in childhood, you develop fight, flight and freeze responses. And, these survival responses stay with you and show up in your current painful cycle fo conflict in your marriage.
Through creative painting, somatic yoga therapy, walk-and-talk sessions, and holistic support, you can unlearn fear and re-learn connection.
Right in marriage therapy, you can start to talk about trauma and learn how to soothe each others’ fears of abandonment and rejection. We are trauma experts, marriage therapists, and sex-positive couples counselors. At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind and the couples therapists help you build a secure relationship after childhood trauma and loss.
Complex trauma that usually comes from long-term, repeated emotional abuse, narcissistic abuse, neglect, or exposure to controlling or unsafe environments.
Often in childhood, trauma occurs at the hands of a neglectful, angry, explosive, or avoidant narcissistic mother or father.
Our team specializes in creative painting, somatic yoga therapy, walk-and-talk therapy, and other holistic approaches for C-PTSD.
Do you experience emotional flashbacks and negative beleiefs?
People with C-PTSD feel emotions from the past like shame, fear, or worthlessness—suddenly and overwhelmingly. It can feel like you’re right back in the trauma. C-PTSD from narcissistic or abusive parents leaves people in a constant state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, which show up in married life and in conflicts.
You might believe you are unlovable, broken, too much, or not good enough. These thoughts come from how others treated you—not from who you truly are.
But they can feel like truth. Using positive affirmations can be very helpful ie, “I am whole, complete, and perfect as I am. I am calm and relaxed.”
Are you suspicious your spouse will betray you, so you feel numb or numb out?
Because your early relationships may have been unsafe, manipulative, or emotionally neglectful, it may be hard to feel safe with people—even those who love you now. You might expect betrayal, rejection, or abandonment.
Our team offers helps couples with C-PTSD heal from the deep wounds caused by narcissistic, verbally abusive, and physically abusive parents.
Instead of feeling too much, you might feel nothing at all. You may go through life feeling detached, foggy, or like you’re watching yourself from far away. This is your nervous system protecting you from overwhelm.
From marriage therapy, couples can start to say, “I feel my chest tighten when I think about my dad yelling.”
To begin, click below to start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
Struggling with chronic anxiety, angry, or avoidant reactions yourself?
People with C-PTSD often live in “survival mode,” always scanning for danger—even when there’s none. You might feel on edge all the time, easily startled, or like you can never fully relax, even in safe situations. Unfortunately, addictions to alcohol, drugs, caffeine, rx, drugs, porn, and work can develop.
You might either lash out in anger or totally shut down when triggered. These are survival responses. Your nervous system is trying to protect you in the only ways it knows how and how you learned to survive abuse and neglect in childhood when you were powerless: by fighting, fleeing, freezing, or fawning.
Do shame and guilt feel so heavy?
A deep sense of shame can live in your body, even if you did nothing wrong. You may blame yourself for how others treated you or feel guilty for taking up space, having needs, or wanting more.
If your early caregivers never modeled empathy, emotional safety, or healthy love, our Wisdom Within Counseling marriage therapists can help you build a secure attachment with your spouse.
Marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and complex trauma supports you and your spouse in processing inner child wounds. Right now, though, you both are re-triggereing each other’s more painful memories, fears of abandonment, shame, guilt, and anxiety. But, with couples therapy, your love can be so powerful that it heals these deep wounds of the past.
If you’re stuck in the same fight over and over again, it’s not because you’re broken — it’s because your nervous systems are still trying to protect you.
When you and your partner argue, shut down, or disconnect emotionally, it’s easy to believe that something is wrong with your relationship. But the truth is, many of these painful patterns stem from inner child wounds and unmet childhood love needs.
If you were raised by emotionally unavailable, narcissistic, or unpredictable parents, you learned to survive by minimizing your needs, hyper-focusing on others, or retreating to keep yourself safe.
These survival strategies show up in your marriage today as emotional distance, sexual dysfunction, conflict avoidance, or angry outbursts — not because you don’t love each other, but because your younger selves are still guarding your hearts.
Imago relationship therapy gives your inner child a voice — and teaches your partner how to respond with love, not defense.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind uses Imago therapy to help couples stop reacting to the surface-level conflict and start exploring what’s underneath: your childhood wounds, and attachment ruptures. As well, you may have core fears of being unlovable or unworthy of love.
You may find that what triggers you most in your partner today is actually an echo of what you longed for — or feared — as a child. In session, we slow things down, create emotional safety, and guide you through healing conversations that allow you and your partner to speak from your vulnerable inner selves rather than from anger or shutdown.
Most therapists focus on communication skills — but neurodivergent couples need more than that.
If you or your partner has ADHD, OCD, sensory processing disorder, or complex PTSD, traditional talk therapy often isn’t enough. You might struggle to express your emotions clearly, get overwhelmed by intense feelings, or avoid intimacy altogether. You might forget what you wanted to say, feel anxious under pressure, or shut down when things get too loud, fast, or emotionally intense. These aren’t character flaws — they’re real neurological and sensory differences that deserve validation, not judgment. At Wisdom Within Counseling, we work with your unique brain wiring and nervous system needs, offering sensory-friendly, trauma-informed tools that support your emotional connection without overwhelming you.
Your emotional shutdowns, fights about tone, sexual avoidance, and irritability are not random — they’re signals from your nervous system.
Do you lash out or go silent when you feel your spouse is being unloving, critical, or too intense?
You might not even realize that a trigger is occuring.
Many couples try to “fix” the symptoms with more date nights, better sex tips, communication hacks. However, without marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma, you never understand the root cause. Your younger selves are hungry for validation, acceptance, and emotional security.
Katie Ziskind helps you explore how emotional reactivity, sexual disconnection, and constant conflict are actually protective patterns from earlier experiences. When these get compassionately addressed, your relationship becomes safer, more connected, and more sexually fulfilling.
Religious trauma and childhood emotional neglect can shape your ability to give and receive love in adulthood.
Growing up in a home where crying was wrong is hard. Maybe, you feelings were shamed, spirituality was weaponized, or obedience mattered more than authenticity.
You may now struggle to trust intimacy — emotional or sexual. As well, you may feel guilty asking for your needs, or freeze when your partner gets too close.
As well, you might feel pulled to people-please or manage your partner’s mood at the cost of your own. These behaviors are not your fault.
In specialized couples counseling with Katie Ziskind, we gently unpack the spiritual wounds and childhood experiences that taught you love was conditional or unsafe. As well, you replace those limiting beliefs with holistic, positive tools for secure, reciprocal connection.
Katie Ziskind deeply understands how neurodivergence and trauma interact in relationships.
Many generalist therapists miss the connection between neurodivergent traits (like impulsivity, emotional flooding, rigid thinking, or sensory overwhelm) and the unmet emotional needs from childhood.
But at Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind has extensive experience helping couples like you — who may feel “too much,” “too sensitive,” or “too different” — find balance, safety, and connection again.
Whether one or both of you has ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges, or trauma responses like freeze, fawn, or dissociation, Katie Ziskind offers a space where your relationship is seen with compassion and clarity.
Sexual dysfunction and avoidance often stem from emotional disconnection and trauma, not lack of desire.
When your nervous system doesn’t feel safe, your body doesn’t want to open up sexually — and for good reason. For neurodivergent couples and couples with trauma histories, touch can feel overstimulating or emotionally loaded. You may feel shut down, pressured, or guilty about your sexual needs — or lack thereof.
Instead of forcing connection, Katie Ziskind helps you rebuild emotional intimacy first, using tools like non-sexual physical closeness, emotional co-regulation, inner child work, and gentle dialogue. From this grounded place, sexual desire can return naturally — not from duty or guilt, but from genuine emotional safety.
You and your partner are not failing — you’re responding to childhood trauma and inner child wounds that need healing.
The painful, challenging cycles you’re stuck in are possible to change with the right guidance.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind specializes in neurodivergent couples who are stuck chasing and withdrawing, blaming and defending. If you both use painful cycles of silence and rage, Katie Ziskind will guide you through healing inner child trauma together. High conflict fights have roots in survival mechanisms and protective patterns from childhood.
Fights and a sexless marriage aren’t signs of a doomed marriage. Divorce isn’t the answer.
Katie Ziskind specializes with complex couples therapy issues, sex and intimacy problems, and helps couples rebuild intimacy, closeness, playfulness, safety, and romance.
Cycles of painful conflict is an opportunity to start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma. Having trauma triggers, ADHD, and sensory processing disorder come up are invitations to heal in couples therapy.
With Katie Ziskind’s guidance, you’ll learn to spot these cycles without shame. Katie Ziskind specializes in complex marriage therapy issues that other therapists don’t have the training to treat.
From marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and complex trauma, you can shift from disconnection to bonding. Emotional intimacy is the foundation for a beautiful sex life to unfold.
You get tools to understand where painful feelings come from, and choose different, more loving responses. As well, instead of criticism from your spouse, you’ll finally feel what it’s like to receive validation. And, both of you can learn to show up for each other with compassion, validation, and build true intimacy.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, you’ll feel understood from the moment you walk in the door or meeting on telehealth on video.
Katie Ziskind doesn’t make you educate her about masking, shutdowns, executive functioning struggles, or why religious holidays are triggering.
She already gets it. Katie Ziskind creates a space sensitive and affirming to your neurodivergent traits. This allows you to focus on building a deeper connection with your partner instead of defending your experiences.
If you’re ready to stop repeating the past and start building a connected future, couples therapy with Katie Ziskind is the next step.
Your relationship deserves more than just surface-level fixes.
You deserve a therapist who understands how your brain, your trauma history, and your attachment wounds shape your marriage.
Furthermore, you deserve a place where you can show up as your full, complex, beautiful selves — and be met with compassion.
At Wisdom Within Counseling in East Lyme and Waterford, Connecticut, Katie Ziskind offers specialized couples therapy for neurodivergent couples ready to break free from painful cycles and create a new story of healing, intimacy, and emotional safety.
To begin, click below to start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
Couples therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling teaches you how to get calm together, espcially when anxious, angry, hurt, or overwhelmed.
Until you begin in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma, you can learn about co-regulation below.
Co-regulation is key for couples navigating PTSD and complex trauma symptoms. At Wisdom Within Counseling in East Lyme, Connecticut, our marriage therapists specialize in neurodivergent couples who have past complex trauma experiences.
With PTSD, the nervous system gets hyper-vigilant, flooded, or shut down. It’s a powerful intimacy tool.
We help couples see how one partner’s calm, grounded presence creates safety, emotional connection, and calm for the other. Non-sexual forms of co-regulation like massage, yoga, and connection with pets are powerful nervous system tools for couples navigating PTSD. These help build safety and emotional intimacy without pressure or performance.
Trauma responses pull the mind into the past. Co-regulating language brings your partner back into the present using your safe, calm voice.
Cozy sensory aspects
Cuddle and both lie down in bed with a heated blanket, dim lights, and a calming playlist. One partner reads out loud or simply strokes their partner’s hair. Provide deep comfort, like a nervous system lullaby.
When someone’s nervous system experiences overwhelm, these non-verbal co-regulation rituals provide deep comfort.
Deep breathing
When one partner has overwhelming emotions, the other gently invites them into slow, deep breathing together. It’s not about fixing—it’s about being present. “Can you breathe with me? In for 4, out for 6. Let’s do it together.”
Positive statements
Use grounding, repetitive language to remind your partner they are safe now esp. during flashbacks. “You’re here with me.” “You’re not alone. I’ve got you.” “You’re safe now. No one is hurting you.” “I’m staying right here. We’ll get through this together.”
This prevents shame. It creates emotional attunement, helping the partner with PTSD feel seen and accepted, not defective.
Long hugs
Thirty to sixty second hugs soothe your nervous system. Safe touch down-regulates trauma responses. Long hugs restore a sense of being cared for. As well, long hugs provide a sense of safety beyond words. If wondering, ask, “Would it help if I held your hand or touched your back?”
Create a plan
Make a written or spoken agreement about what helps when PTSD symptoms arise. “If I’m pacing or restless, offer to go for a walk with me to help regulate.” “When I get quiet and can’t speak, I want you to just sit with me and rub my back.” Prepare before the storm, not during it.
Having a plan empowers both partners. The person with PTSD feels more agency and safety, and the supporting partner feels more capable.
Soothing touch
A foot rub while watching a funny show. Enjoy the quiet intimacy of pressure and presence. One partner rubs lotion into the other’s hands during a flashback or panic moment, helping them reconnect to the here and now.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, our couples counselors specialize in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples, complex trauma, couples with sensory processing disorders, ADHD, and OCD.
Couples yoga
Couples yoga isn’t about complicated poses—it’s about co-regulating through slow, synchronized breathing and body awareness. Sit back to back and breathe together for 5–10 minutes. Do a child’s pose with partner holding your lower back. Katie Ziskind is a somatic yoga therapist as well as sex therapy informed professional and trauma expert.
Touch your pets
Pet your dog or cat together on the couch while talking through a tough moment or after a therapy session. This boosts dopamine and serotonin and regulates cortisol (stress hormone). Walk your dog to shift out of conflict mode.
Validate instead of fix
Validate instead of fix, so say: “Your emotions make sense,” and “I’m here with you in it.” Unfortunately, when someone with PTSD hears solutions, it feels like a defeating reminder of childhood pain: “You’re too much” or, “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll pull away.”
Use humor together
Create a shared language and “you and me only” jokes. Make silly pet nicknames. Do tickle fights (if consensual). Goofy dance parties in the kitchen. Reference that ridiculous trip with the Airbnb disaster! Joke, “We can only continue this fight using opera voices.”
Couples living with PTSD need emotional intimacy that is non-demanding, nervous-system safe, and anchored in compassion.
Co-regulation skills from marriage counseling allows both partners to feel like a team—not enemies, not therapists, not fixers. From marriage counseling, you become soul allies walking through trauma, together.
Start at Wisdom Within Counseling in East Lyme, Connecticut
Couples therapy is more effective than individual counseling when the goal is to rebuild trust, connection, and emotional safety after a betrayal, infidelity, addiction, sexual problems, or emotional abandonment.
You both practice in-session co-regulation — breathing together, making eye contact, listening without defending, using grounding touch. Katie Ziskind, your couples therapist, guides real-time emotional repairs, which build secure attachment.
How can working with Katie Ziskind support a deeper expression of sexual intimacy for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing disorder and complex trauma?
Working with Katie Ziskind at Wisdom Within Counseling can be a transformational experience if you and your partner are struggling with sexual avoidance, disconnection, or anxiety around intimacy—especially in the context of neurodivergence, ADHD, OCD, sensory processing disorder, and complex trauma.
Katie Ziskind is not just a marriage counselor; she is a certified sex therapy-informed professional who deeply understands how neurodivergent wiring and unresolved childhood pain can show up in your adult relationship—particularly in the bedroom.
Stopped having sex? Do you feel like roommates instead of lovers? Or, experience stress or shutdown when your spouse bring up sex? You are in the right place. Know that you’re not broken—your nervous system has just been protecting you. Marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma supports you in re-associating pleasure with sex.
For many neurodivergent individuals and couples, complex emotions come up around sexual connection. Sensory sensitivities, intrusive thoughts from OCD, or distractibility from ADHD can make it difficult to relax into the moment.
When your family members are ignoring your needs and voice, it hurts. It is betrayal.
On top of that, when love is conditional, it hurts too. So, your inner child learns to equate closeness with danger or shame.
Sexual performance anxiety, fear of rejection, and emotional shutdown can all take root. Katie Ziskind helps couples untangle these patterns slowly, gently, and with deep compassion.
Instead of focusing on “fixing” the lack of sex, she helps you and your partner reconnect emotionally first. Marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma helps you co-build a foundation of safety, presence, and attunement.
Katie Ziskind knows that true intimacy isn’t about performing.
True intimacy is about emotional connection, pleasure, comfort, and security.
Through emotionally focused couples therapy, she helps you explore your inner world and communicate your desires, fears, and needs openly, even if you’ve never done that before.
You’ll learn how to turn toward each other instead of away, how to co-regulate your nervous systems when you feel overwhelmed or anxious, and how to gently reintroduce non-sexual touch as a way to reawaken affection and comfort. From this emotional foundation, you can begin to explore sexual pleasure in a way that feels safe, authentic, and pressure-free.
What sets Katie Ziskind apart is her neurodivergence-affirming, sex-positive, and trauma-informed approach.
She understands how sensory overload, overstimulation, or a fear of being “too much” or “not enough” can shut you down. She creates a space where all parts of you are welcome. Whether you’re learning how to navigate physical intimacy slowly, creating rituals for connection, or developing new language around consent and pleasure, Katie offers personalized, step-by-step support.
For couples who’ve stopped having sex for months—or even years—this can be the beginning of a meaningful return to closeness and erotic play.
Ultimately, working with Katie Ziskind is about healing from the inside out. It’s about discovering that emotional connection is the key to sexual connection—and that you deserve to feel desired, safe, and fully alive in your relationship.
Through her specialized guidance, you’ll learn that you don’t need to perform to be loved—you simply need to be real, vulnerable, and open to rebuilding trust, one step at a time.
Are you ready to feel close again?
Katie can help you and your partner find your way back to each other. Marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and complex trauma gives you a safe space to rebuild sexual pleasure, sexual desire, sexual intimacy, and sexual playfulness. She loves helping neurodivergent women navigating sexual avoidance and stuck in cycles of sexual disinterest.
She helps women and their spouses talk about religious trauma. Katie Ziskind helps women on their journey toward reclaiming sexual pleasure and embodiment in couples counseling.
If you’re a neurodivergent woman—living with ADHD, OCD, autism, or sensory processing differences—who avoids sex with your spouse, you’re in the right place.
Katie Ziskind is a certified sex therapy informed professional. Many neurodivergent women carry deep, painful histories of sexual disconnection and unsatisfying experiences that never truly centered their pleasure.
Perhaps much of your past intimacy was rushed, male-focused, and centered around penetration, leaving you feeling sexually unseen and unfulfilled.
There is obligation around sex. For one, because there is an expectation. As well, women never learn that it is okay to have a voice and speak up about sexual needs. Over time, this can create a shut-down response in your nervous system where sex becomes something to avoid, rather than anticipate with joy.
For women raised in religious environments—especially those shaped by purity culture, abstinence-only education, or patriarchal values—this issue becomes even more complex.
If you were taught that your worth was based on being pure, modest, or self-sacrificing, then you may have grown up with shame about your sexual body.
Women learn that their sexual desires are dangerous, sinful, or something to suppress.
And now, even in a safe, committed marriage, it can feel impossible to connect to your own sexual pleasure without guilt, numbness, or fear rising to the surface.
That shame doesn’t just disappear. It lives in your nervous system and even the most well-intended touch can be re-triggering.
As a neurodivergent woman, you may also struggle with sensory overload or hypersensitivity.
A light touch might feel startling. You may crave deep pressure but feel overwhelmed by the unpredictability of intimacy. Noise, smells, lighting, and the unspoken pressure to “perform” can all make sex feel overstimulating, not pleasurable.
If you’ve masked or pushed through discomfort in the past, your body may now freeze or shut down in intimate moments, protecting you from what it perceives as danger. These responses are not dysfunction—they are signs that your nervous system is asking for safety, slowness, and presence.
Working with Katie Ziskind can help you begin the healing process in a space that is neurodivergent-affirming, trauma-informed, and sex-positive.
Katie Ziskind understands that healing from sexual avoidance starts with honoring your story—not judging it. In couples counseling, she helps you and your partner explore what has led to disconnection, and slowly rebuild emotional and sexual trust.
She guides you in identifying what actually feels good to your body—not what’s expected, but what’s real. You’ll learn how to co-create intimacy that is based on your needs, your sensory preferences, and your pace.
For many neurodivergent women, especially those who’ve been praised their whole lives for being helpful, nurturing, or self-sacrificing, reclaiming sexual pleasure means challenging old scripts.
You were likely taught that your body was for giving, not receiving. That your value was in being a caretaker, not an erotic being. In working with Katie Ziskind, you’ll learn how to rewire these beliefs, to allow yourself to receive, to explore sensuality, and to delight in your own body as a source of joy—not shame. You’ll learn that you don’t have to perform or fake it to be loved. You can simply be.
Religious trauma often creates the illusion that sexuality and spirituality cannot coexist.
Katie Ziskind helps you reconnect with your body in a way that is deeply affirming and sacred. She invites you to rewrite your inner narrative—from one of shame and suppression to one of autonomy, safety, and curiosity. Through mindfulness, emotional regulation tools, and body-based healing approaches, she supports you in releasing trauma held in the body, and opening up space for new experiences of pleasure, touch, and intimacy that are truly for you.
In this process, your partner also learns how to support you differently. Many spouses are not avoiding you—they simply don’t know what you need.
Katie Ziskind helps your partner understand that sexual avoidance is not rejection, but a signal that safety is missing.
Together, you’ll explore non-sexual forms of intimacy first—emotional presence, massage, shared rituals, cuddling—before moving slowly into more sensual or sexual touch.
For many women—especially those who have experienced past sexual trauma, purity culture conditioning, or years of unsatisfying intimacy—even a simple hug or touch on the back can trigger anxiety.
When every form of affection has become linked to the expectation of sex, the nervous system becomes hyper-alert, bracing for pressure or performance rather than relaxing into connection.
This is where non-sexual affectionate touch becomes essential to healing avoidant sexual cycles and sexual rejection patterns.
Non-sexual touch is a part of marriage counseling.
For instance, a warm hug, holding hands, cuddling while watching a movie, playing with each other’s hair, or giving a foot rub without expectation—helps rewire the nervous system to associate physical closeness with emotional safety rather than sexual obligation.
It allows a woman’s body to breathe, to soften, and to feel seen and valued for more than just her sexual availability.
Over time, safe, consistent, affectionate touch without strings attached can rebuild trust, reduce defensive responses, and create the emotional foundation necessary for deeper intimacy.
In couples therapy with Katie Ziskind, you and your partner can explore how to use non-sexual touch as a bridge to reconnect, repair emotional safety, and help both partners feel loved in a pressure-free way.
This intentional pacing creates a deep emotional connection where your body and nervous system begin to trust again.
Ultimately, working with Katie Ziskind helps you fall in love with your body on your own terms.
It’s not about going from no sex to a “perfect” sex life.
Sex positive marriage counseling is about discovering what feels good, safe, and authentic for you, and letting that be enough. You’ll learn that your pleasure matters.
Your boundaries matter. As well, your pleasure and orgasms matter.
And when you feel emotionally connected, respected, and safe—you can begin to experience sexual intimacy not as a duty. Sexual expression can be a form of self-expression, empowerment, and connection with the person you love.
Why is foreplay inadequate most of the time, and how does this contribute to a sexless marriage?
If you’re a woman who has felt disconnected from sexual pleasure or if sex has felt rushed, painful, or emotionally unfulfilling, you’re not alone.
Porn does not show or teach about the fundamental differences between female and male sexual arousal.
This lack of sex positive education leads to misunderstanding, sexual avoidance, rejection, and even resentment in the bedroom.
While the average male body often reaches full arousal in 4 to 8 minutes, the female body typically requires 45 to 90 minutes of gradual, loving, and emotionally connected foreplay to feel fully ready for sexual intimacy. Foreplay isn’t just about physical stimulation.
Rather, adequate foreplay is about emotional safety, presence, slowness, and trust.
Working with Katie Ziskind, a certified sex therapy-informed professional and marriage counselor who specializes in neurodivergent couples and trauma survivors, you and your partner will learn how to slow down.
From couples therapy, you can learn to communicate honestly, and explore what pleasure truly means for the female body. You’ll discover that real intimacy begins with feeling emotionally seen and safe, not pressured or rushed.
Katie Ziskind is a certified sex therapy informed professional who teaches couples how to redefine foreplay.
Foreplay is not not just as a precursor to sex, but is an essential expression of love and connection. Now, foreplay includes back rubs, emotional closeness, eye contact, sensual touch, and deep, curious conversation. This shift creates the space for women to enjoy their bodies again. A female’s body is not an objects of performance, but a sacred, deserving vessel of pleasure and self-expression.
What exactly is emotional foreplay for female sexual pleasure, to rebuild sexual desire?
Foreplay doesn’t start in the bedroom. For many women, especially those healing from religious trauma or unbalanced sexual experiences focused on male pleasure, foreplay begins hours—or even days—before any physical intimacy.
Furthermore, foreplay starts when your partner listens to you without interrupting, when they help with the dishes without being asked, when they see your exhaustion and offer to rub your shoulders just to care for you. These emotional moments of connection and attunement build trust and soften the nervous system.
Katie Ziskind, certified sex therapy informed professional, helps couples rebuild their connection from the inside out, teaching you how to speak your emotional needs clearly and listen with empathy. She guides couples to explore emotional intimacy first, so physical intimacy can follow naturally and feel safe, mutually enjoyable, and deeply nourishing.
Rituals of Sensual Presence, Not Performance
In many long-term relationships, sex becomes a checklist or a routine focused on performance, not presence. Especially for neurodivergent women who experience sensory overwhelm or past trauma, this can trigger shutdowns or avoidance.
Working with Katie Ziskind, certified sex therapy informed professional, you’ll learn to create intentional, sensory-friendly rituals of foreplay
These playful rituals center female pleasure at the forefront—not as a means to an end, but as a standalone experience.
This might mean setting up a weekly “female pleasure night” where there’s no expectation of penis in vagina penetration.
Furthermore, this is a night for just cozy massages, kissing, warm baths together, or taking turns describing what kind of touch feels best.
These safe spaces allow the female body to relax, explore sensation slowly, and reclaim desire on her own terms. Katie Ziskind, certified sex therapy informed professional, offers couples tools and trauma-informed practices that honor each partner’s nervous system and emotional window of tolerance.
Sexual Foreplay Can Be Non-Genital and Still Transformative
Many people think sexual foreplay must be genital, but the reality is that the entire body is an erogenous zone when touch is intentional and connected.
Neurodivergent women with ADHD, OCD, or sensory processing challenges may need specific kinds of touch to feel good and safe—light vs. firm, rhythmic vs. spontaneous.
Katie Ziskind, certified sex therapy informed professional, helps couples discover these preferences without shame or pressure.
Team up prioritizing safety, emotional presence, and dive into the joy of exploring each other sexually with curiosity and care.
This might include touching the scalp, gently stroking the arms, playing with hair, or deep pressure hugs. Over time, these non-genital forms of foreplay can help rewire your brain and body to feel pleasure without anxiety or the burden of performance.
This is especially healing for women whose sexual pasts were rushed, male-centered, or shamed. Katie Ziskind’s sex positive approach supports each partner in expanding their definition of pleasure.
Katie Ziskind helps neurodivergent women reconnect to sexual pleasure, understand their arousal process, and heal from male-centered sex.
Healing from Male-Centered Sex and Rediscovering Your Own Pleasure
If you’ve grown up in a culture where sex was something done to you, not with you, it’s no wonder your body now resists it.
So many women Katie Ziskind works with were taught that the goal of sex was penetration and male orgasm—leaving you feeling like your pleasure was secondary or not even necessary.
You may have endured years of going along with sex out of obligation, disassociating, or even bracing yourself during intimacy. You get support in discovering what brings you joy in couples therapy.
In marriage counseling with Katie Ziskind, you’ll have a safe, supportive space to explore your preferences, slowly unwind performance anxiety, and finally get curious about what kinds of touch, pace, and emotional safety allow you to feel aroused and alive in your body again.
The Female Arousal System Is Not Linear—and That’s Okay
For most women—especially neurodivergent women with ADHD, OCD, or sensory processing differences—arousal is not instant.
Sexual desire is responsive rather than spontaneous, meaning you often need to feel safe, emotionally connected, and deeply relaxed before any physical desire shows up.
Katie Ziskind, certified sex therapy informed professional, helps couples understand that female arousal often requires 45 to 90 minutes of emotional and sensual foreplay, compared to the average 4–8 minutes required by male physiology.
That’s not a problem; it’s simply biology.
In sex positive marriage therapy, you and your partner will learn that when emotional connection and mutual respect are prioritized, sex becomes a joyful, shared experience—rather than a rushed, one-sided routine.
Katie Ziskind, certified sex therapy informed professional, helps partners slow down, become attuned to each other’s nervous systems. You get an opportunity to approach sex with intention, consent, playfulness, pleasure, and care.
Religious Trauma, Purity Culture, and Feeling Ashamed of Desire
If you were raised in a religious setting that equated female desire with sin, impurity, or selfishness, it can be incredibly hard to feel safe in your own sensuality.
Maybe you were told to save yourself until marriage, to serve your husband, or to hide your body. Or, you learned that your worth was in caregiving, not receiving pleasure.
These messages don’t just disappear after the wedding—they linger in your body, causing fear, guilt, and sexual shutdowns.
Katie Ziskind is a certified sex therapy-informed professional who understands how to gently untangle these harmful beliefs. She guides you in creating new sexual narratives—ones where you are not only allowed to feel pleasure, but deserve to. In therapy, you’ll begin to rewrite the story of your body—from shame and silence to celebration and connection.
Understanding Sensory Needs and Creating a Nervous System-Safe Bedroom
Neurodivergent women often experience sensory overwhelm that makes traditional sexual scripts feel overstimulating, uncomfortable, or even unbearable. If lights are too bright, touch is too sudden, or sound is jarring, your body might go into fight, flight, or freeze rather than arousal.
Katie Ziskind helps you and your partner co-create a sensory-safe bedroom that’s calming and responsive to your needs.
For some, it means dim lighting, soft textures, noise-canceling curtains, or background music that soothes your nervous system. She also teaches communication tools to talk about what feels good and what doesn’t without guilt. You get to have a voice, and don’t just have to, “grin and bear it.”
Her goal is to help you build a sensual environment where you can be fully present, unguarded, and curious about what feels good—so intimacy becomes a source of joy, not stress.
Reclaiming Your Body as Beautiful, Worthy, and Erotic
When you’ve spent a lifetime being told your body wasn’t beautiful enough, skinny enough, pure enough, or modest enough, it takes time and intentional healing to reclaim it as a sacred, sensual space.
Katie Ziskind’s approach invites you to befriend your body again.
Through emotionally focused couples work, trauma-informed exercises, and safe sensual exploration, you’ll reconnect with your erotic self—the one who is playful, confident, and fully alive.
Your partner will also learn how to see you through a new lens, not one shaped by performance or expectation, but by reverence and admiration.
Sex can become an act of co-regulation, presence, and mutual care—not obligation. Katie Ziskind, certified sex therapy informed professional, believes every woman deserves to feel cherished.
In couples therapy, you can learn pleasure is your birthright, and experience that truth in your marriage and your body.
To begin, click below to start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
For Many Women, Sex Has Always Been About Others—Not Focused On Female Pleasure
So many neurodivergent women have spent their whole lives people-pleasing, masking, caregiving, and monitoring others’ emotions in order to feel safe.
If you learned as a child that your needs weren’t important—or worse, were a burden—it’s no surprise you’ve internalized that even in the bedroom.
You might go along with sex to avoid conflict, keep the peace, or prevent your partner from feeling rejected. But deep inside, you feel numb, disconnected, or even resentful. Katie Ziskind helps you shift out of that survival pattern.
In sex positive marriage therapy, you’ll learn how to listen to your body, communicate your desires and boundaries, and stop performing. You’ll finally have permission to say no when needed, so that your eventual yes comes from a place of genuine desire.
Touch Can Feel Like Pressure When You’ve Never Felt Choice
For women who were raised in strict religious environments or in homes with narcissistic or emotionally unpredictable parents, touch often didn’t feel safe. Touch was an obligation. You may now freeze or feel panicked when your partner reaches for you, even when they have good intentions.
Katie Ziskind understands this nervous system reaction.
In marriage counseling, she guides you and your partner in deconstructing touch—teaching how to introduce non-sexual, affectionate touch without pressure or expectation. Holding hands, slow cuddling, massage, or even sitting shoulder to shoulder while watching a movie can be powerful when there’s no agenda.
As your nervous system begins to feel safe, you can re-learn touch as something nurturing, loving, and consensual.
ADHD and Sensory Needs Make Your Sexual Arousal Unique—Not Wrong
Women with ADHD often report that their brains are too busy to “drop in” to arousal. You may need more help slowing down, tuning in, and grounding before you can even begin to feel turned on. Combine this with sensory sensitivities—where textures, friction, or sounds feel too much—and traditional, rushed sex can feel like a sensory assault.
Katie Ziskind helps couples understand that female arousal is like a slow burn—and that with the right build-up, your sensuality can absolutely thrive.
In marriage therapy, you’ll learn how to communicate what’s too fast, too loud, too intense, or simply not working.
You’ll be empowered to ask for slowness, sensual exploration, and breathwork. Or, even guided body scans to help your system feel more grounded and receptive.
Sexual Pain, Numbness, and Shutdown Are Often Trauma Responses
For many neurodivergent women, sex isn’t just emotionally unpleasant—it’s physically painful or dissociative.
If you’ve had male-centered sex for years that didn’t consider your arousal window, if you’ve endured sexual trauma, or if your religious upbringing made your body feel shameful, your pelvic muscles may unconsciously brace.
You might have experienced vaginismus, numbness, or simply tuning out. You did so much surviving.
In marriage counseling with Katie Ziskind, you and your partner will learn how to approach intimacy with reverence, curiosity, and consent. You get support in rebuilding trust with your body, creating experiences that feel good, and maybe—slowly—coming back home to your own erotic, sensual self.
Emotional Intimacy Comes Before Sexual Desire
It’s a myth that sexual desire magically returns when you “just try harder.” For neurodivergent women, the truth is often the opposite.
Sexual desire emerges when you feel seen, heard, emotionally supported, and co-regulated. If your relationship is full of stress, unspoken resentment, or misattunement, your body will shut down sexually—it’s a protective mechanism.
Katie Ziskind helps couples rebuild emotional intimacy through structured conversations, nonviolent communication, inner child healing, and nervous system education. She teaches your partner how to emotionally show up for you—so that your heart can soften and your body can follow.
It’s not about forcing sex back into your relationship. It’s about creating emotional safety that naturally leads to closeness, desire, and shared pleasure.
To begin, click below to start in marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma.
You Can Be a Caregiver and a Sexual, Sensual Being
Women get praise for how much they give. How selfless, helpful, or maternal they are—carry guilt for receiving. You might struggle with the idea that your body is for pleasure, not just service.
Katie Ziskind challenges this false belief in the most empowering way. She helps you reconnect with your identity as an erotic being—one who is deserving of pleasure, not for performance, but because you are human.
You’ll work through those voices that say you’re too much, too needy, too demanding.
From marriage counseling for neurodivergent couples navigating ADHD, OCD, sensory processing challenges and trauma, you’ll reclaim your right to receive joy, rest, care, and orgasms that actually come from feeling connected.
You’re not here just to be a wife, a mom, or a helper – you’re here to be whole.
