Is your marriage stuck in a painful cycle of blame, anger, emotional disconnection, or resentment? Do you feel like you’re walking on eggshells, constantly triggered by your partner, and wondering how the two of you even got here? Maybe, you’re avoiding each other altogether, living more like roommates than romantic partners. Or, you are barely speaking unless it’s a fight, and then it is really high conflict? From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you can shift out of hopeless, frustrating fights and into a secure attachment style and intimate sex life.
If you’re feeling exhausted from the same arguments over and over again…
And, if your marriage has become sexless, distant, or filled with tension…
If you’re scared that divorce might be your only option…
You’re in the right place for trauma specialized high conflict marriage counseling with Katie Ziskind.
Stuck in a painful, high conflict cycle where every disagreement turns into a blow-up or complete shutdown?
Start in couples counseling when you can’t have a calm conversation without someone getting defensive or raising voices. Are you stuck walking away, or completely shutting down? These fights go in circles and never get resolved, leaving you both emotionally raw, resentful, and drained.
Right now, you feel like you’re constantly on edge, just waiting for the next explosion—or emotional withdrawal.
Are you stuck in the blame game cycle, shouting, or the silent treatment?
Another sign you’re stuck is when there’s more blame than curiosity in your communication.
Instead of listening to understand, you find yourselves attacking, defending, or making statements like “You always…” or “You never…” The emotional safety it takes to be vulnerable is gone. You don’t feel heard, and any attempt to share feelings quickly escalates into accusations, criticism, or avoidance.
Do you feel emotional disconnection and need a safe place to talk away from friend and family?
You may also feel emotionally disconnected and unseen. Even though you live in the same house, it can feel like you’re miles apart—like strangers or just roommates.
The warmth, affection, and friendship in your marriage have faded. You long to feel loved and understood again, but you don’t know how to reach each other, and every attempt seems to fall flat or lead to another argument. Trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, teaches you how to rebuild security, playfulness, and enjoy each other’s presence again.
Is sex emotionally upsetting, causes anxiety, leads to rejection or avoidance?
Sex may have become a source of pain, tension, or complete avoidance. You might be having less sex—or none at all—and when you do, it feels emotionally disconnected.
There may be resentment, rejection, or unspoken anger that has built up, making physical intimacy feel more like pressure than connection. Both of you are carrying unmet emotional needs, and it’s showing up in the bedroom in heartbreaking ways.
High conflict couples therapy for trauma and PTSD is a speciality at Wisdom Within Counseling.
If you or your partner experienced childhood trauma—like emotional neglect, criticism, or unpredictable parenting—those survival strategies are now hijacking your relationship.
People-pleasing, shutting down, becoming angry, or trying to control everything are signs of deeper childhood wounds. To note, these are PTSD symptoms of trauma. These unconscious patterns can feel impossible to break on your own and continue to fuel your painful fight cycles.
If any of this feels familiar, working with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, can help you stop these destructive patterns.
Katie Ziskind creates a safe, structured space where you can both learn to regulate big emotions. In couples counseling, you can understand each other’s unmet love needs from childhood. You can see the connection from these wounds and rebuild the emotional safety that’s been lost.
Her trauma-informed approach helps you reconnect not only as partners, but as friends. From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you both have the power to help each other feel worthy of love, care, attention, security, and respect.
With trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you and your partner will begin to see that your biggest arguments aren’t really about dirty dishes, sex, or parenting styles—they’re about old emotional wounds that have never been acknowledged.
When one of you feels ignored, rejected, or criticized, it often stirs up unresolved pain from childhood.
Maybe, the feeling of being invisible to a highly critical, strict, narcissistic parent.
Or, constantly trying to earn love through perfection or people-pleasing, from childhood trauma.
Trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, helps you connect the dots between your past and present.
What makes Katie Ziskind’s approach so powerful is that she helps you validate not just each other’s current emotions, but the inner child within you both who’s still longing to feel safe, accepted, and loved.
Within the process of couples therapy, you stop reacting from trauma, PTSD, and survival mode and start responding with empathy and understanding.
Instead of blaming each other, you’ll learn how to recognize the unmet love needs driving the fight—like the need to be comforted, chosen, or respected—and how to express those needs clearly and without shame.
With Katie Ziskind’s expert support, your conflicts become powerful opportunities for healing, connection, and deep emotional growth as a couple.
Trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, teaches you how to connect more deeply than ever before.
Work with Katie Ziskind, LMFT, Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional, Gottman Level II Trained, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist
I help couples just like you. High conflict couples who are emotionally raw, stuck in anxious and avoidant dynamics, caught in painful push-pull patterns that feel impossible to break. I specialize in working with couples who love each other but have lost their way—couples who need real tools, expert guidance, and a clear roadmap to rebuild emotional safety, communication, and sexual connection.
As a Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional, Gottman Level II trained marriage therapist, and emotionally focused couples therapist, I offer a holistic and compassionate approach that gets to the heart of what’s really going on.
I bring in somatic trauma therapy tools and trauma-informed strategies to calm the nervous system and regulate emotions. And, you can learn to move out of fight, flight, and freeze patterns that show up in high conflict relationships.
Start Working with Katie Ziskind, LMFT, Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional, Gottman Level II Trained, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist
You two are getting stuck in the same destructive cycles right now in your marriage.
Maybe it starts with a look, a tone of voice, or a small misunderstanding—but suddenly, you’re back in the same pattern again. Your partner snaps at you, yells, or gets explosive.
Or maybe they withdraw, go cold, and shut you out emotionally for days. You feel like no matter what you do, you can’t win.
You feel exhausted, misunderstood, and deeply alone in your relationship. These moments are painful, and they leave you wondering,
How did we get here? and Can this even be fixed?
What’s happening between you isn’t just about the surface fights—it’s about what’s happening underneath.
When you feel hurt or rejected by your partner, your nervous system goes into survival mode.
One of you might become anxious and want to talk it out right away, while the other shuts down and avoids the conversation completely. These reactions are natural, but when they become your default dynamic, they block emotional connection and intimacy. You’re both trying to protect yourselves, but it ends up driving a wedge between you. You start living more like enemies or strangers than the loving team you used to be.
Working with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, means you’ll stop spinning in circles and finally start healing.
As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional, and Gottman Level II trained couples therapist, I specialize in working with couples just like you—couples who are hurting deeply but still have hope.
I help you and your partner understand why you’re getting stuck and what each of you truly needs underneath all that frustration, anger, or emotional distance.
In our high conflict marriage therapy sessions, Katie Ziskind slows things down.
She creates a couples therapy space where you’re no longer in attack or defense mode.
I help you both learn to speak from your heart, not your hurt. You’ll learn to recognize the emotional wounds you’ve both been carrying—many of which have nothing to do with the current argument—and how they’re playing out in your relationship.
Whether it’s childhood trauma or abandonment fears, we talk about it. Or, feeling emotionally neglected, we’ll bring compassion and understanding to those deeper places.
Trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, gets to the root of the conflicts in your relationship.
If you’ve been struggling with emotional or physical disconnection, we’ll also explore the impact of intimacy wounds.
As a sex therapy informed professional, I can help you navigate the emotional blocks to sexual closeness.
Because sexual avoidance, low desire, or infrequent intimacy are often symptoms of unresolved emotional pain and resentment. When trust is rebuilt emotionally, sexual connection often naturally begins to return.
I also incorporate emotionally focused therapy (EFT), a proven approach that helps couples shift from negative cycles into new, positive patterns of connection.
EFT gives you a clear roadmap to move from disconnection to closeness. You’ll stop reacting out of fear or frustration, and instead, learn to turn toward each other with empathy, understanding, and love. You’ll learn how to become a safe space for each other—so that even hard conversations can bring you closer, not drive you further apart.
I bring in somatic and trauma-informed strategies to help calm your nervous system. When emotions run high, it’s easy to say or do things you regret. By learning how to regulate your body’s response to stress, you’ll be able to stay present in the moment and respond instead of react. This is especially important for couples dealing with explosive fights or long periods of silent treatment. Your body needs to feel safe before your heart can open—and I’ll show you how.
In high conflict specialized marriage therapy, you will also learn concrete tools from the Gottman Method to improve communication, rebuild trust, and create rituals of connection.
Whether it’s using a repair attempt before things escalate, setting emotional check-ins, or creating new shared meaning in your daily life, these tools are grounded in research and customized for your unique relationship. You won’t just talk about your problems—you’ll actively build solutions that help you feel seen, heard, and appreciated.
Ultimately, this work is about helping you feel like a team again.
When you learn how to navigate conflict with compassion and emotional maturity, everything changes. The yelling softens, the walls begin to come down, and you start feeling like your partner is finally with you again—not against you. You stop fearing the next blow-up and begin looking forward to the next meaningful conversation, shared laugh, or intimate connection.
If you’re ready to stop hurting each other and start healing together, I’m here to help. You don’t have to stay stuck in painful cycles. Your relationship can shift from chaos and emotional distance into a place of calm, connection, and intimacy.
Let’s start that transformation—together in high conflict couples counseling.
How can working with Katie Ziskind, LMFT, Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional, Gottman Level II Trained, EFT Couples Therapist, help you get to the root of inner child healing, rather than repeating generational dysfunction?
What does childhood trauma look like that leads couples to subconsciously repeat the same destructive cycles in their own marriage?
Emotionally focused couples therapy teaches you skills and strategies to create a secure bond.
If you grew up with a mother who was highly critical, you probably learned early on that love felt conditional.
You may have worked endlessly to be “good enough,” only to still feel unworthy, unseen, or never quite measuring up. In your adult relationship, this can show up as people-pleasing. Or, this can show up as over-explaining, or even lashing out when you feel misunderstood or powerless.
That harsh inner voice that once came from your mother may now live inside your own head.
And, it can spill out in your marriage, creating arguments, perfectionism, or emotional distance. With Katie Ziskind’s compassionate guidance in high conflict couples therapy. Also, you’ll learn how to recognize this inner critic and begin to soften it. Through high conflict couples counseling, you can begin replacing criticism in your fights, with curiosity and compassion toward yourself and your partner.
If you had a highly critical mother, you may have grown up feeling like nothing you did was ever quite good enough.
Your highly critical, narcissistic mother pointed out the one thing you missed instead of praising the effort you made.
You could get straight A’s, but she’d ask why you didn’t get an A+ in math. She may have believed she was “motivating” you. But, in reality, her words planted deep seeds of self-doubt.
As an adult, you might constantly second-guess yourself, striving for perfection, afraid of disappointing others—especially in your marriage.
You may have experienced emotional devaluing. Your feelings may have been dismissed, minimized, or mocked.
If you were upset, your narcissistic, emotionally abusive mother may have told you to “stop being dramatic,” or “toughen up,” or “you’re too sensitive.”
Over time, this teaches you not to trust your own emotional experience. Now, as an adult, you might feel ashamed for having feelings at all. You may bottle things up until they explode or hide your pain behind a smile. As a child, you were silently suffering. And, you hold you voice in to this day. In your marriage, this often leads to emotional disconnection or resentment that builds beneath the surface.
Gaslighting might have been part of your daily reality in your abusive childhood and in childhood trauma experiences.
If your mother denied things she clearly said or did, or accused you of being “too emotional,” you may have grown up feeling confused and questioning your perception of reality.
Maybe, you were blamed for her bad moods or told you were imagining things when you expressed hurt. This emotional manipulation can lead to intense self-doubt in adulthood. You might feel like you’re “too much” or “not enough,” constantly seeking validation from your partner but never quite believing it when you receive it.
A selfish, narcissistic, critical mother often uses guilt-tripping as a way to control and manipulate you.
Maybe she reminded you of everything she sacrificed for you, or made you feel selfish for setting boundaries.
Statements like, “After everything I’ve done for you,” or “I guess I’m just a bad mother,” taught you to suppress your needs to avoid guilt.
As an adult, this might show up as putting your partner’s or children’s needs before your own until you’re completely depleted—and feeling unappreciated, but unsure how to express it.
Shame may have been a weapon your narcissistic, critical mother used often.
Maybe, she shamed you for your body, your emotions, your decisions, or your mistakes.
You may have heard things like, “What will people think?” or “You should be embarrassed.”
These experiences can lead you to feel fundamentally flawed. Even today, when you try to speak your truth, part of you might shrink inside, fearing judgment.
In your romantic relationship, this often translates to fear of vulnerability, deep insecurity, or reacting defensively when you feel criticized.
As a child, you likely learned that love was conditional. You were loved when you performed, pleased, obeyed, and conformed—but when you had a need, expressed a feeling, or asserted yourself, you were punished emotionally or rejected.
This can lead to emotional people-pleasing as an adult. You might go out of your way to keep the peace, avoid conflict, or constantly monitor your partner’s mood.
Dur to childhood abuse, neglect, and trauma, you may feel responsible for your spouse’s happiness. As a child, you were forced to be responsible for your mother’s or father’s happiness. And, if your spouse is upset, you immediately assume it’s your fault.
You may now struggle with boundaries because growing up, your emotional needs were dismissed or punished.
And, you might find it hard to say “no,” even when you’re overwhelmed.
Trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, helps couples see the connection between current fights, and inner child unmet love needs.
You may overextend yourself in relationships and feel resentful afterward.
Or, you might attract a romantic partner who are emotionally unavailable or critical themselves. Because that dynamic, though painful, feels familiar.
You may not even realize that you’re recreating the same relationship patterns you had with your narcissistic, critical mother until they begin to seriously damage your romantic life. This is where working with Katie Ziskind, high conflict couples specialist, comes in.
Criticism from a mother figure often leaves a legacy of inner shame and self-rejection.
You may have an inner voice that mimics hers—telling you you’re lazy, too much, not good enough, or a burden.
This voice can sabotage your ability to accept love or trust your partner. Even in moments of connection, you might feel like an imposter, waiting to be judged or rejected. That inner critic is not your truth—it’s a learned voice, and with support, you can begin to rewrite the narrative.
In your marriage, all of these unhealed inner child wounds can create a cycle of distance, arguments, or emotional disconnection.
You may become overly critical of your partner, or hypersensitive to their feedback.
As well, you might shut down during conflict or over-apologize just to keep the peace. Rather than “keeping the peace,” and staying silent, you can have a voice.
Trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, helps couples re-build security, emotional closeness, and physical intimacy.
As a trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind helps you and your partner uncover the hidden emotional injuries from childhood that are showing up in your current fights.
You might find yourselves locked in painful patterns of blame, withdrawal, or defensiveness. But, underneath those reactions are deep unmet love needs: the need to feel seen, valued, wanted, and safe.
Maybe, you had a critical parent, a neglectful caregiver, or unpredictable love growing up. Katie gently helps you trace those early experiences and understand how they shape the way you argue, shut down, or reach for connection in your marriage today.
The value of working with Katie Ziskind is in the depth of healing she offers. She doesn’t just teach you to fight “better”—she shows you how to speak to each other’s core wounds with compassion.
In marriage therapy sessions, she’ll pause you both mid-conflict, give you tools to regulate, and guide you to validate each other’s deepest emotional needs.
You’ll stop fighting the wrong battles and begin repairing the emotional safety that was never modeled for you. With Katie Ziskind, you’ll finally learn how to love and be loved from a place of emotional wholeness—not pain.
Marriage counseling for a sexless marriage and emotional disconnection supports a foundation of emotional closeness for sexual intimacy.
These trauma and PTSD responses aren’t your fault—they’re the trauma and abuse survival skills you learned to cope with a critical caregiver.
But, they’re also not serving you anymore, and they harm your marriage bond.
Negative communication is passed down subconsciously, generationally.
To have the healthy, emotionally safe relationship you long for, you’ll need to begin the journey of healing your inner child.
Working with Katie Ziskind, LMFT, Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional, and Gottman Level II Trained EFT Couples Therapist, gives you the safe space to unpack these childhood wounds without shame.
You’ll learn how to reparent your inner child, challenge the inner critic, and develop emotional safety within yourself and your relationship.
Through compassionate guidance and trauma-informed strategies, Katie Ziskind helps you release the guilt, shame, and fear that no longer belong to you. Instead of repeating the pain of the past, you can finally write a new story. Couples therapy helps you write a story rooted in self-worth, emotional intimacy, and authentic love.
What else can look like childhood trauma, that leads to high conflict fights and conflicts in your marriage?
If you had a sibling who bullied you, mocked your sensitivities, or competed for attention, you may now find it hard to trust even those closest to you.
You might expect to be attacked or belittled, especially when you’re feeling vulnerable. In your marriage, this can create a cycle where you either shut down to protect yourself or lash out to defend your worth.
You might not even realize that your partner’s words are triggering wounds from your childhood, but your body and emotions remember.
Working with Katie Ziskind, a trauma-informed, emotionally focused couples therapist, you’ll begin to untangle these old survival strategies. From high conflict couples counseling, you can create a new way of relating—one that feels safe, supportive, and rooted in mutual respect.
Growing up with an alcoholic father, especially one with explosive anger, often means you learned to walk on eggshells.
You became hypervigilant, always scanning for danger, trying to stay one step ahead of the next outburst. As a result, you may now struggle to feel emotionally safe with your partner.
You may find yourself overreacting to small things or avoiding and withdrawing completely when conflict in your marriage arises.
These reactions aren’t flaws. They are trauma responses and PTSD symptoms. Katie Ziskind uses somatic tools and emotionally focused therapy (EFT). These help you feel safe in your body again. This way, you can respond to your partner from your heart instead of reacting from past fear.
If your father was in the military, discipline, control, and emotional suppression may have been the norm.
You may have been praised for being tough or independent but discouraged from expressing feelings.
Now, in your marriage, emotions may feel confusing, weak, or even dangerous.
You may avoid vulnerability at all costs—or judge your partner when they express emotions. This stoicism may have helped you survive childhood, but it can be deeply damaging to intimacy. Through Katie Ziskind’s holistic and emotionally focused approach, you’ll learn that vulnerability is strength. And, expressing your feelings is the key to creating true emotional connection.
Was your mother emotionally unstable—loving one moment and withdrawing or explosive the next?
When your mother is emotionally unstable, you may never know what version of her you get.
You likely developed deep anxiety around emotional connection and learned to self-regulate or avoid feelings entirely.
In your marriage, this often shows up as anxious attachment, fear of abandonment, emotional outbursts, or shutting down completely. You may crave closeness but fear rejection at the same time.
Katie Ziskind helps you understand these attachment patterns with gentleness and clarity. As well, Katie Ziskind guide you toward healing your inner child that never felt consistently safe, loved, or emotionally held. The craving to be safe, loved, and emotionally close is hidden under anger and high conflict fights.
All of these childhood dynamics live in your nervous system and shape how you show up in your romantic relationship.
You may wonder why the same fights keep happening.
Right now, you wonder why you feel triggered by your partner’s tone or silence? Do you wonder why you feel chronically misunderstood?
These aren’t just relationship problems—they’re echoes of your earliest traumas and parent-child relationships.
When you work with Katie Ziskind, she helps you connect the dots between your past and present. She brings a trauma-informed marriage therapy lens that honors the protective strategies you developed as a child.
High conflict couples therapy helps you learn new tools that allow for emotional safety, closeness, and healing.
Katie Ziskind blends the Gottman Method’s evidence-based relationship tools with emotionally focused therapy to help you and your partner repair your bond from the inside out.
You’ll learn how to pause destructive cycles, speak from your vulnerable truth, and respond to your partner in a way that creates connection instead of conflict. She helps you move from blame and reactivity into empathy and deep emotional presence.
Together, you’ll rewrite the story of your marriage, not by ignoring your childhood pain, but by courageously facing and healing it—together.
Inner child healing is essential for breaking the generational cycles of high conflict fights, criticism, anger, alcoholism and family dysfunction.
Without it, you’ll keep reacting from old wounds, hurting the person you love most, and staying stuck in patterns that feel out of your control.
But, when you work with Katie Ziskind, you’ll learn how to meet your inner child with love, tend to those old wounds, and bring your full adult self into your relationship. That’s when true healing and emotional intimacy become possible.
Couples therapy for anxious and avoidant attachment teaches you how to build a secure attachment style together.
From high conflict couples therapy with Katie Ziskind, you’ll feel freer, more connected, and more emotionally alive than ever before.
Katie Ziskind also uses somatic yoga therapy for trauma. Somatic yoga therapy for PTSD brings body-based healing into marriage therapy.
Trauma isn’t just stored in the mind. Really, trauma, abuse, and neglect from childhood lives in your muscles, your breath, your posture, and your nervous system.
If your body still feels like it’s in survival mode, you’ll struggle to feel calm, intimate, or emotionally safe in your relationship.
With Katie Ziskind’s unique somatic approach in high conflict marriage counseling, you’ll learn how to regulate your nervous system. As well, you can learn to ground your emotions, and move from reactivity to presence—allowing your body to become a safe place for connection, pleasure, and intimacy.
Your childhood trauma may have shaped you, but it doesn’t have to define your marital future.
Trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, gives you a safe place to talk about having a mother or father with narcissism.
In high conflict marriage counseling, you and your partner can learn how to co-create a relationship that’s emotionally secure, sexually connected, and deeply respectful.
Whether you’re struggling with criticism, emotional shutdown, defensiveness, or fear of vulnerability, Katie Ziskind can guide you through the healing process.
You’ll gain the insight, tools, and support you need to stop repeating the past. And, from couples therapy, you can finally build the loving, secure relationship you’ve always longed for.
Through video telehealth therapy, you and your partner can work with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, no matter where you live.
Whether you’re in crisis, feeling emotionally disconnected, or struggling with the aftermath of infidelity or childhood trauma, Katie Ziskind brings expert-level care and guidance directly to your home.
Her virtual telehealth sessions are just as intimate and impactful as in-person therapy.
She offers a safe, structured space to pause toxic dysfunctional generational patterns. As as specialist, she helps you learn tools for emotional co-regulation, and begin healing your couple bubble from the inside out.
How does religious shame, guilt and religious trauma impact your fight cycle and attachment style?
Religious trauma can leave you with deep, invisible wounds that affect your body, your voice, your sense of self—and especially your sexuality. To note, religious trauma is common for women, vulva owners, and females.
If you were raised to believe that “good girls” don’t talk about sex, don’t desire sex, and don’t have sexual needs of their own, you may now feel ashamed or frozen when it comes to your body and intimacy.
You might feel guilt for wanting sexual pleasure and guilt for saying no.
Trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, gives you a safe place to talk about religious trauma and religious shame, fear, and guilt.
Were taught to “keep the peace,” and not to rock the boat?
As well, were you taught to never question male authority—even in your own marriage. This internalized shame silences you, emotionally and sexually.
You may have grown up hearing that sex was something you give to your husband—not something you share, co-create, or enjoy.
Sex was for him, not for you. Your body was not yours—it was a tool to serve, to please, to obey, and to stay “pure.” Sexual pleasure, agency, desire—those were either dangerous or sinful.
And now, as a grown woman in a long-term relationship or marriage, you might feel disconnected from your sexuality altogether.
Sex therapy informed marriage counseling in Connecticut supports healthy sexual expression.
You may dread sex, avoid it, or feel guilty both when you say yes and when you say no.
Many women with religious trauma find themselves emotionally dissociating during sex.
Are you doing what you feel is expected of you but feeling miles away in your heart, body and mind? Do you say “yes” to sex out of obligation, even when sex isn’t pleasurable, or you don’t feel safe? Did you try to make your man happy sexually, out of fear of abandonment, putting your own needs last?
You might go through the motions, trying to “be a good wife,” but afterward feel used, unseen, or even resentful. Never were you taught that your needs matter. That your sexual pleasure is holy and your birthright. That your “no” is sacred.
So, instead of being able to say no freely, you say yes with a tight chest and a heavy heart—and then feel ashamed for not feeling connected.
Religious messaging may have taught you that your worth is based on how submissive, quiet, pretty, and obedient you are.
That your job is to clean the house, smile politely, and never speak out. That good women serve and support their husbands, even at the cost of their own bodies and souls.
You may have learned to abandon your feelings, your desires, and your truth just to be accepted. But, over time, this leads to a deep disconnection—from yourself, your partner, and your voice.
And, in marriage, that disconnection becomes a breeding ground for resentment and fights.
When you’re conditioned to believe that saying no to your husband is a sin, or that you should be available for sex anytime he wants it, your body no longer feels like your own.
You may feel trapped, obligated, or even angry during intimacy—but also afraid to speak up.
This push-pull dynamic creates sexual avoidance and disconnection. You begin to fear being touched, not because you don’t love your partner, but because you don’t feel safe emotionally or spiritually to be fully you.
Sex becomes a duty and obligation, not a desire. And, your heart starts to shut down.
You may carry intense shame around your natural, healthy sexual desires.
If you were taught that eroticism and sexual pleasure is dangerous, you might now recoil from it—even when you long for connection.
You might dress modestly out of fear of judgment, or judge yourself for wanting to feel sexy. The idea of exploring your body or receiving pleasure may feel terrifying, even though a part of you craves it. This inner conflict—between who you were told to be and who you actually are—creates deep emotional pain and sexual disconnection.
Couples therapy after infidelity, betrayal, and sexual rejection teaches you how to have a strong couple bubble.
In your marriage, these patterns often show up as ongoing tension and conflict.
You may snap at your partner, feel emotionally distant, or avoid touch altogether. This is not because you don’t want love, but because you’ve been taught to betray your own needs and voice due to religious trauma, sexual shame, and guilt.
Or, you may comply with sex, but cry afterward or be angry at your spouse. You may feel angry and not know why.
This is the grief of never having had a voice.
To note, the grief of not being taught that your body belongs to you. That your sexual pleasure matters. That you have the right to say no and the right to say yes with joy.
Working with a trauma-informed sex therapy professional like Katie Ziskind gives you a safe space to reclaim your voice.
Katie Ziskind, trauma-informed sex therapy professional, helps you unravel these toxic, religiously rooted beliefs that have kept you silent and disconnected.
She helps you rebuild a relationship with your body that is based on consent, choice, and celebration. You’ll learn that sexual desire isn’t dirty—it’s divine. That sex is not something you owe.
Couples therapy teaches you that sex is something you get to share when you feel emotionally connected and safe.
In marriage therapy with Katie Ziskind, trauma-informed sex therapy professional, you’ll learn how to identify what you want and need, how to say no without guilt, and how to say yes from a place of empowered choice.
You’ll begin to reconnect with your body through somatic work, breath, movement, and touch—on your terms.
From marriage counseling with Katie Ziskind, trauma-informed sex therapy professional, you’ll begin to understand that being a woman does not mean abandoning yourself.
In trauma-informed sex therapy professional, you can learn that sex means honoring yourself. Couples therapy means having a voice, not being obedient or submissive. You’ll stop performing sexually and start feeling. You’ll stop shutting down and start opening up, gently, one layer at a time.
Healing from religious sexual trauma is sacred work.
It’s about reclaiming your body, your boundaries, your voice, and your pleasure. It’s about knowing you are worthy of respect, safety, and emotional connection.
With Katie Ziskind’s compassionate guidance and expertise, you and your partner can begin to understand each other in new ways—repairing emotional ruptures, deepening intimacy, and co-creating a sexual relationship that is rooted in mutual love, presence, and truth.
You don’t have to live trapped in shame. You deserve to feel whole, worthy, and alive.
Trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, helps couples heal from childhood trauma and emotional neglect.
Are you anxious, hyper-attuned to others’ moods, desperate to earn love, and afraid of rejection or abandonment?
Childhood trauma can lead directly to the development of an anxious attachment style by disrupting the way you experienced love, safety, and connection in your earliest relationships—especially with your caregivers. When your emotional needs were inconsistently met, ignored, or dismissed in childhood, your nervous system adapted for survival.
This survival strategy becomes the foundation of anxious attachment in romantic relationships.
Here’s how childhood trauma plays a role in your marriage dynamic:
Inconsistent Care and Emotional Availability
If your caregivers were sometimes nurturing but other times emotionally distant, critical, or unpredictable, you never knew what version of them you were going to get. You learned that love was unreliable, and this created emotional anxiety. As an adult, this can show up as clinging, over-apologizing, needing constant reassurance, or fearing that your partner will leave you.
Neglect or Emotional Abandonment
Being emotionally ignored or not comforted when you were sad, scared, or hurt teaches you that your emotions don’t matter. As a result, you may feel unworthy or ashamed of your feelings, and try to suppress them or overcompensate by becoming overly accommodating. You crave closeness, but fear you’ll be too much or not enough.
Parentification or Role Reversal
If you had to emotionally care for your parent—like calming down a depressed, anxious, or alcoholic parent—you may have felt responsible for keeping the peace. You learned to earn love through performance and emotional labor. Now, in adult relationships, you might fear abandonment if you’re not constantly proving your worth or fixing things.
Verbal Abuse, Guilt, or Shame
Children who are constantly criticized or shamed learn that love is conditional. If you heard messages like “You’re too sensitive,” “You’re a burden,” or “Stop crying,” you internalized the belief that you are fundamentally flawed. This leads to anxious attachment because you’re constantly seeking validation from others to feel okay inside.
Fear of Rejection or Abandonment
If one or both parents physically left (through divorce, death, incarceration, or emotional absence), you may have developed an intense fear of being left behind. As an adult, this can cause panic in relationships, jealousy, or feeling triggered by any signs of distance—like unanswered texts or quietness.
Internalized Beliefs of Unworthiness
Trauma teaches you to believe that love must be earned, not given freely. If your emotional needs were met with anger or withdrawal, you learned that your needs push people away. As a result, anxious attachment causes you to minimize your needs while anxiously trying to meet your partner’s—hoping they won’t leave.
Hypervigilance
Trauma survivors often develop hypervigilance—being constantly on edge and scanning for signs of danger or disconnection. In relationships, this shows up as overanalyzing texts, panicking over changes in tone, or feeling devastated by perceived rejection. Your nervous system is wired for survival, not connection.
Overdependence on Reassurance
Because your self-worth wasn’t built on unconditional love, you may now rely on your partner to regulate your emotions. You might feel anxious when you’re apart, overly distressed during conflict, or terrified of being abandoned. You may chase connection even when it’s unhealthy or unreciprocated.
Fear of Conflict
If conflict in childhood meant yelling, withdrawal, or punishment, you may now associate any disagreement with rejection. This makes you more likely to suppress your needs, people-please, or panic during emotional conversations, which only worsens the disconnection you fear.
Hope for Repair
Despite all this pain, anxious attachers still deeply long for connection and love. The drive to be close is strong—but it often comes with fear, clinginess, and emotional over-functioning. The good news is, with emotionally focused therapy and healing work—like what Katie Ziskind offers—you can begin to shift this pattern, heal your inner child, and build secure attachment through safe, consistent, emotionally available relationships.
You are not broken—you are wounded. And your anxious attachment is a brilliant survival strategy your child self created to protect you. Now, with the right support, you can begin to feel safe in love again.
Therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, is available over telehealth video.
What is an anxious attachment style and how does it develop from childhood?
An anxious attachment style often begins in childhood when love, affection, or attention from a caregiver was inconsistent.
Maybe, your narcissistic mother or father was warm and present at times, but suddenly cold, distracted, angry, or emotionally unavailable at others.
As a child, you may have felt like you had to “earn” love. Or, you had to tiptoe around moods to keep connection.
You became hyper-aware of how others felt because your emotional safety depended on it. That deep, early fear of abandonment shaped how you connect with your partner now—especially during conflict.
When you have an anxious attachment style, you may feel easily triggered when your partner pulls away, gets quiet, or seems emotionally distant.
You might interpret their withdrawal as rejection or abandonment, even if that’s not their intent.
The silence feels suffocating, and your thoughts can spiral: Do they still love me? Are they leaving? What did I do wrong?
This often leads to protest behaviors like yelling, clinging, begging for reassurance, or starting an argument just to feel something instead of the terrifying emotional void.
You likely developed anxious attachment because your deep need for consistent emotional attunement as a child wasn’t met due to trauma and abuse.
In childhood, you needed a parent who could tune into your emotions, soothe you, and help you feel safe. Instead, you may have experienced unpredictability, emotional neglect, or a parent who made your feelings about them. As a result, your nervous system became wired to detect the slightest shifts in others’ moods as threats.
Now, in your marriage, you may struggle to relax unless you’re absolutely sure your partner is emotionally present and committed.
An anxious attachment is not about being “needy” or “too much.”
It’s about carrying unresolved fear from childhood—fear that love will disappear when you need it most. So when you fight with your partner, it might not just be about the current argument. It’s about the younger you, the inner child who felt scared, rejected, or unworthy of love.
That part of you flares up during high-conflict moments, desperately needing comfort and connection but not knowing how to ask for it in a calm, regulated way.
During high-conflict fights, deep unmet love needs rise to the surface in painful ways.
You may feel like you’re begging your partner to see you, hear you, and love you in the way you always needed—but your words come out as criticism, demands, or anger. You don’t want to push your partner away, but your fear of being left or unloved becomes overwhelming.
Underneath the fight, what you’re really saying is: Please choose me, please don’t leave, please tell me I matter.
You may feel a deep need for emotional reassurance, consistency, safety, affection, and being prioritized.
These needs aren’t bad—they are completely human. But if you learned that expressing needs in childhood led to being ignored or punished, you may now either explode emotionally or shut down with shame when those same needs come up in your relationship.
You might feel unworthy of love unless you’re performing, pleasing, or proving your value—and that exhaustion seeps into your fights and connection.
When you have anxious attachment, even small moments of disconnection can feel like rejection.
A short text, a distracted tone of voice, or your partner turning away in bed can ignite panic.
You might try to fix it immediately—call, text, push for a conversation—because waiting feels unbearable.
But, these survival behaviors often backfire, overwhelming your partner and increasing the very distance you fear.
It becomes a painful cycle: you crave closeness, but your fear-based reactions push your partner away.
Therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, supports you through online couples therapy when you have an emotionally avoidant or emotionally unavailable spouse.
An anxious attachment style is rooted in a longing to be securely loved.
You want to feel seen, chosen, and emotionally held. But, the fear of losing that love can make you emotionally intense or reactive. If you are looking to understand how childhood trauma affects your marriage, you are in the right place. From couples therapy, you can learn to stop high conflict fights in your relationship. You gain skills to reconnect emotionally with your spouse.
Heal from emotional neglect and critical parenting through marriage counseling. Katie Ziskind specializes in attachment-based marriage counseling.
Maybe, you get anxious or overwhelmed easily.
You might feel shame afterward, wondering, Why did I say that, why can’t I just be normal?
But, these trauma responses and patterns aren’t flaws. They’re trauma responses. Your brain and body are still trying to protect you from past wounds, even though they’re no longer helpful in the present.
Learn to build emotional safety and trust in your marriage by working with Katie Ziskind.
Working with Katie Ziskind, LMFT, Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional, and Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist, helps you identify and begin healing these old attachment wounds.
She helps you access the younger parts of yourself that are still hurting and gently teaches you how to meet your needs in ways that build safety and closeness instead of conflict.
Through her trauma-informed, emotionally-focused approach, you’ll learn how to soothe your anxiety, regulate your emotions, and create secure, loving communication with your partner.
When you heal your anxious attachment, you no longer have to live in fear of being too much or not enough.
You begin to trust that you are lovable even when you’re not perfect, and that real love doesn’t vanish when you have needs. From high conflict marriage counseling, your fights no longer have to be explosions of panic or silence. Instead, you and your partner can learn to talk from a place of emotional safety, tenderness, and truth.
That’s when deep, lasting intimacy becomes possible—and your anxious inner child finally gets the love they’ve always needed.
What is an avoidant attachment style and how does it develop from childhood trauma, and harm your marriage?
If you have an avoidant attachment style, you probably learned early on that it was safer to shut down your feelings than to express them. You might have had a parent—often a father—who was explosive, critical, unpredictable, or narcissistic.
As a child, when you cried, asked for comfort, or needed help, your needs may have been met with anger, punishment, or rejection. You learned to survive by not needing anything at all. Now, as an adult, you may appear calm on the outside but feel emotionally walled off on the inside—especially in your romantic relationship.
Growing up with a narcissistic or explosively angry father meant walking on eggshells emotionally.
Your emotional world didn’t feel safe, so you adapted by numbing your feelings. Maybe, you were praised for being “strong” or “independent,” when in reality, you had to become self-sufficient because there was no safe adult to turn to.
You may have internalized the belief that vulnerability is weakness and that needing others will only lead to pain.
This childhood trauma survival strategy shaped how you show up in your marriage—careful, avoidant, cold, distant, guarded.
As an avoidantly attached partner, you may crave love deep down, but feel overwhelmed or trapped when someone gets too close.
You may pull away, emotionally shut down, or become hyper-logical during conflict. Your partner may say you feel “cold” or “disconnected,” but in truth, you’re protecting yourself.
As well, from childhood trauma and neglect, you learned that emotions lead to chaos or criticism, so you keep them locked up. But, this emotional distance can leave your partner feeling abandoned, which only fuels more marital conflict.
You likely developed this attachment style because your deep love needs—comfort, safety, gentleness, and consistent affection—were unmet or punished in childhood.
This is a traumatic experience. From your narcissistic father, you learned it was safer to be alone than to risk rejection. But, in your romantic relationship, these wounds don’t just disappear.
They show up when your partner reaches for closeness.
Instead of leaning in, your body might freeze, your walls go up, and you retreat. You may even feel irritated or smothered when your partner expresses emotional needs.
In high-conflict fights, your avoidant patterns often clash with your partner’s anxiety or emotional intensity.
If your partner becomes tearful, angry, or desperate for connection, you might shut down or walk away. This isn’t because you don’t care—it’s because your nervous system is flooded.
You’re overwhelmed, and emotional intensity reminds you of the abusive, neglectful, and chaotic childhood trauma experiences you worked so hard to escape.
But your silence or withdrawal can feel like abandonment to your partner, and the cycle continues.
Avoidantly attached people often have deep unmet needs for emotional safety, respect, being seen beyond performance, and being loved without pressure or expectations. But, you may not know how to ask for those things, or even admit you need them.
Also, you might pride yourself on hyper independence, but feel lonely deep down. You may crave deep emotional intimacy, yet avoid it out of fear that it will turn into control, conflict, or chaos—just like it did when you were little.
You may also struggle to express affection or reassurance, not because you don’t love your partner, but because you never learned how.
Affection might feel awkward or vulnerable. You may freeze when your partner cries or talks about their feelings.
Or, you might want to say something comforting, but the words just won’t come. This inability to connect in emotionally raw moments often leaves your partner feeling unloved—and leaves you feeling like a failure, ashamed and frustrated with yourself.
The truth is, you do want closeness—you’ve just spent your whole life building walls to survive betrayal, abandonment, and loss from trauma.
Those walls and self-protective trauma mechanisms kept you safe as a child with a narcissistic parent, but now they’re blocking deep love.
You might notice that you feel more comfortable with space than with intimacy, more in control alone than together.
But, you also might feel confused by why you keep sabotaging good relationships or why you feel emotionally distant from your partner even though you want to feel close.
Working with Katie Ziskind, LMFT, Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional, and Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist, gives you a path to heal your avoidant patterns with compassion, not shame.
Katie Ziskind helps you gently access the younger parts of you that were overwhelmed, ignored, or rejected. And, in high conflict couples therapy, she teaches you how to safely feel, express, and receive love again. Trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, has a very unique, out-of-the-box way of supporting couples in crisis.
You’ll learn how to stay present during emotional moments without shutting down, and how to reconnect without losing yourself.
When you begin healing your avoidant attachment style in high conflict couples therapy, you start to feel safe being emotionally open.
You stop seeing vulnerability as a threat and begin to understand that real love doesn’t require perfection or performance—it just asks for presence.
High conflict couples counseling gives your trauma wounds a voice- a voice you never had in childhood. Your partner stops feeling pushed away, and you stop feeling so alone.
With professional expertise and support from Katie Ziskind, your walls come down, not all at once, but little by little. And in their place, you build a bridge to true intimacy—one where love feels calm, safe, and deeply connected.
What does it look like to build a secure attachment style in high conflict marriage counseling for trauma?
Building a secure attachment in your high-conflict marriage starts with learning how to feel safe again—with each other, in your own body, and in your relationship.
When you’ve both experienced trauma or PTSD from childhood, you’re not just reacting to each other in the present. High conflict fights are from deep emotional wounds that have never been healed.
Your nervous system is wired to fight, flee, or freeze when marital conflict arises. In specialized high conflict marriage counseling with Katie Ziskind, you’ll learn how to regulate your body. As well, you can learn to calm your stress response, and approach conflict with emotional safety instead of fear.
Developing a secure attachment style in high conflict couples therapy means that you and your partner become each other’s safe place.
This doesn’t happen overnight, especially when childhood trauma has taught you that closeness is dangerous or that love disappears when you need it most. But in high conflict marriage therapy, you’ll learn how to be emotionally available, responsive, and engaged with one another.
You’ll stop the cycle of conflict and misattunement—where one of you shuts down while the other escalates. From high conflict couples therapy, you can start building moments of connection that feel honest, vulnerable, and healing.
Katie Ziskind uses a combination of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, Gottman Method tools, and trauma-informed somatic couples counseling practices to guide your healing journey.
This means she doesn’t just address surface-level behaviors—she helps you dig deep into the why behind your disconnection.
You’ll identify the emotional patterns that come from your childhood. For example, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, or fear of losing control. And, in trauma focused marriage counseling, you can learn how to talk about them with each other in a way that invites closeness instead of chaos.
Build secure attachment in marriage counseling with Katie Ziskind. You will develop the ability to have hard conversations without emotional explosions or silent withdrawals. You learn to slow down, identify your feelings, and express your needs clearly.
In high conflict marriage counseling, you begin to trust that your partner is on your team, even in moments of disagreement.
And most importantly, you stop blaming each other for your pain. Katie Ziskind will stop and pause you both in couples therapy if a high conflict pattern starts. She will give you skills and tools to validate each other. This is a process of emotional attunement. From high conflict marriage counseling, you start holding space for each other’s stories—stories that go all the way back to childhood trauma.
When you’re in a high-conflict marriage, it can feel like every conversation turns into a fight.
You try to talk about your feelings, but somehow it ends in yelling, defensiveness, or shutting down. Right now, you walk on eggshells, trying to avoid conflict—but the tension only builds.
This painful cycle often stems from childhood trauma.
If you grew up with a narcissistic, emotionally abusive, or explosive parent, you may have never learned how to have safe, calm, respectful communication.
That’s why working with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, can be the turning point for your relationship.
In your couples therapy sessions, Katie Ziskind will stop and pause both of you when a high-conflict pattern starts to take over.
She recognizes when you’re slipping into trauma symptoms and survival mode. When old habits like criticism, blaming, or defensiveness are trying to hijack the conversation, she stops you in couples therapy.
She knows these behaviors didn’t start in your marriage. Hurtful communication was wired into you as a child trying to survive emotional chaos. Katie Ziskind won’t let you spiral into another destructive argument in marriage therapy. She steps in with compassion and clarity, helping you both return to the present moment.
As a trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind knows that criticism and belittling are not about the dishes or the tone of voice—they’re rooted in your childhood wounds.
Maybe you were shamed for expressing feelings. Or, love was earned, not freely given. So now, when you feel vulnerable, your defenses kick in fast. But Katie gives you the language and tools to slow down, notice what’s happening inside, and respond in a healthier way. She’s not just guiding a conversation—she’s teaching you emotional safety.
You may not even realize how normal blaming and emotional shutdowns feel to you.
If you grew up in a home where yelling, sarcasm, or guilt-tripping were part of everyday life, you felt small, powerless, and emotionally neglected.
It’s easy to fall back into those patterns with your partner, in your marriage.
But, these behaviors destroy intimacy.
Katie Ziskind will gently help you notice when you’re repeating those patterns and give you the emotional tools to choose connection instead. This is where real healing begins. From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you both learn to respond from your adult self, not your wounded child self.
In session, you’ll learn how to shift from conflict into appreciation.
That doesn’t mean ignoring the hard stuff—it means learning how to share feelings without attacking.
As a trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, she helps you untangle the emotional knots and teaches you how to express hurt, disappointment, or fear in a way that leads to closeness—not conflict.
To note, Katie Ziskind will teach you how to validate your partner’s experience, even when you don’t agree with their perspective.
You’ll begin to understand that emotional attunement is the foundation of trust. You don’t need to fix or change your partner—you need to learn how to see each other with empathy and respect.
Katie Ziskind is not just a couples therapist—she’s a highly trained emotional translator. Specializing with couples on the brink of divorce, who have high conflict fight patterns, she is an expert in the field.
She understands how trauma distorts perception, and how easy it is to misinterpret your partner’s words when your nervous system feels threatened.
You’ll also begin to notice how shame plays a role in your fights.
If you felt not good enough as a child, any perceived criticism from your partner can feel devastating.
You might lash out or withdraw without even realizing you’re trying to protect a younger version of yourself. Katie helps you recognize those tender parts of you, and helps you share them with your partner in a way that builds emotional intimacy instead of distance.
Over time, with Katie Ziskind’s guidance, you’ll develop a new language for love. You’ll practice curiosity instead of defensiveness.
In high conflict specialized couples therapy, you’ll learn to pause and breathe when you feel triggered. You’ll catch yourselves before the spiral begins. And, most importantly, you’ll begin to feel safer with each other—emotionally, physically, and sexually. This is the deep emotional attunement that transforms high-conflict couples into connected, secure partners.
You don’t have to keep repeating the same painful cycle.
From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you can learn how to slow down, listen, and be heard. You can learn to express your anger without destroying your connection. With the support of trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you’ll begin to feel like you’re finally on the same team again.
Trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, helps you work toward healing instead of tearing each other down.
If you’re ready to rebuild trust, repair emotional wounds, and learn how to love each other from a secure, emotionally attuned place, Katie Ziskind can help.
Her trauma-informed, emotionally focused approach is the missing link for couples stuck in painful patterns. This is not just general marriage counseling—it’s relational healing at the deepest level. From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you start using language like, “couple bubble.” And, you can learn to check in with your spouse regularly on how they feel your couple bubble is doing.
With Katie Ziskind’s help, you’ll learn how to rebuild your couple bubble.
What is your couple bubble? Well, you couple bubble is a safe, sacred space where both of you feel emotionally held and prioritized. This bubble becomes a buffer from the outside world. When one of you feels overwhelmed, the other learns how to soothe and stay close, rather than shut down or escalate.
From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you and your partner will begin to understand that your relationship is not just two individuals coexisting—it’s a living, breathing “couple bubble.”
This sacred space between you holds your connection, your emotional safety, and your shared dreams. When high conflict couples are in crisis, this bubble is often deflated, punctured by years of criticism, avoidance, emotional neglect, and painful arguments.
But, with the right guidance from Katie Ziskind, you can learn how to nurture your couple bubble back to life.
In your marriage therapy sessions with Katie Ziskind, you’ll begin to use new, emotionally intelligent language that shifts you out of attack and defense, and into curiosity and care.
Instead of “Why don’t you ever listen to me?” you’ll learn to ask, “How is our couple bubble feeling for you lately?”
This small but powerful shift opens the door to intimacy and emotional connection instead of conflict. It gives both of you permission to be honest about how safe, seen, and supported you feel in your relationship.
From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you’ll learn that your couple bubble is like a garden.
Your couple bubble needs both of you to show up and tend to it regularly. One person can’t do all the watering. One person can’t always be the sunlight. Marriage takes two emotionally responsible people who are willing to care for the bond between them. And when it’s neglected, weeds of resentment, loneliness, and frustration grow fast.
If you grew up in a home where love was unpredictable, conditional, or even abusive, it might feel foreign to treat your relationship like a cherished garden.
You may be used to relationships (especially with your mother or father with narcissism) filled with chaos, blame, and shutdown.
Katie Ziskind gently teaches you how to slow down. From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you can learn to notice how you’re showing up in the bubble. And, you can learn how to speak in a way that keeps the air warm, intimate, and safe between you.
You’ll learn how to co-regulate instead of co-escalate from couples therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind.
When one of you is triggered, instead of making it worse, you’ll begin to see your partner’s behavior as a signal that the couple bubble needs tending. Maybe, it’s a moment for deeper reassurance, soothing words, or simply a pause to breathe together. Katie Ziskind helps you both recognize that being in a couple means you are stewards of each other’s nervous systems, not adversaries.
In marriage therapy, you’ll also learn that emotional intimacy isn’t just something that happens—it’s something you build, day by day.
From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you’ll start checking in with questions like, “What does our couple bubble need today?” or “What helps you feel close to me?” These simple questions invite emotional closeness and keep your relationship from going into autopilot or survival mode.
Whether you’re dealing with parenting stress, past betrayals, or communication breakdowns, your couple bubble becomes the place where healing starts—not more pain.
Your couple bubble becomes your shared emotional home.
It’s where both of you can go to feel safe, vulnerable, and understood.
Trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, teaches you how to maintain your strong couple bubble even when life gets messy.
Through high conflict specialized marriage therapy work, you’ll come to realize that it’s not you against each other—it’s both of you for the relationship.
This perspective shift is at the core of what makes therapy with Katie Ziskind transformative. You’re not just learning conflict management tools. From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you’re learning to be emotionally generous. Emotional intimacy teaches you how to ask better questions, and to respond with compassion, not defense.
As you tend your garden of marriage with presence and intention, emotional intimacy begins to bloom.
Trust begins to root itself deeper. Playfulness and affection come back.
You’ll feel the emotional shift—not just in your arguments, but in your daily connection.
From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, your couple bubble becomes your most cherished space of emotional safety and connection.
With professional expertise, you can co-create a loving relationship where both of you feel held, heard, and healed. And, that begins by treating your marriage like a living thing that needs tending. Marriage therapy prioritizes your couple bubble again. Katie Ziskind will guide you, moment by moment, to become the emotionally attuned partners you’ve both longed for each other to be.
Having a strong couple bubble is a benefit of co-creating a secure attachment style from therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind.
Co-creating a secure attachment style doesn’t mean perfection. It means you know how to repair quickly after a painful fight or rupture.
You stop letting trauma run the show, and you start living from love, empathy, and emotional truth. From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you can skills and strategies to co-create a secure attachment.
Childhood trauma often leaves you feeling like you have to fight for love or withdraw to protect yourself.
But a secure attachment style in marriage counseling allows you to stay present and connected even when emotions run high. Katie Ziskind helps you create new emotional experiences together that replace those old trauma cycles and pain-driven patterns.
You begin to feel what it’s like to be chosen, heard, and emotionally safe with each other—maybe for the first time in your life.
This is the power of trauma-informed couples counseling with Katie Ziskind.
As you do this work, you start to see your partner differently—not as the enemy, but as someone with their own wounds and unmet needs. From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you learn how to approach each other with curiosity instead of criticism.
From high conflict marriage counseling, you develop rituals of emotional connection—like daily check-ins, emotional foreplay, or taking time to comfort each other in stress—that keep your bond strong. These practices are essential to keeping the secure attachment alive between you.
Through Katie Ziskind’s specialized care, you’ll also explore the role of emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy in building secure attachment style.
When emotional safety grows, so does desire and passion. You begin to want each other again, not just physically, but emotionally.
From working with Katie Ziskind, LMFT, Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional, Gottman Level II Trained, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist, you reconnect through touch. You learn skills like eye contact, and have deeply emotional conversations that feel meaningful.
As well, you stop using sex to avoid emotions or withdrawing when hurt. Instead, intimacy becomes a reflection of your emotional bond.
The beauty of co-creating a secure attachment style is that it doesn’t erase your past—it transforms it.
From working with Katie Ziskind, LMFT, Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional, Gottman Level II Trained, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist, you and your partner learn how to show up for the wounded parts of each other with compassion.
When emotional triggers arise, you don’t spiral or shout. From high conflict couples counseling, you recognize them, name them, and move through them together.
In doing so, you build a marriage that feels emotionally solid and spiritually bonded. You create a new legacy—one built on safety, truth, and love.
Working with Katie Ziskind, LMFT, Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional, Gottman Level II Trained, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist, gives you more than coping tools.
High conflict specialized marriage counseling gives you a new emotional roadmap.
You stop repeating your narcissistic, emotionally abusive, highly critical parents’ painful patterns. And, instead you work together to build a secure foundation for your love to grow.
Whether you’ve dealt with emotional neglect, explosive anger, abandonment, or betrayal, you can heal those deep wounds together.
This is your chance to stop surviving and start truly connecting—with yourself, with your partner, and with the love you both deserve.
Here’s What Working with Katie Ziskind, LMFT, Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional, Gottman Level II Trained, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist Looks Like:
You’ll learn why the two of you keep getting stuck in the same destructive cycles—and how to break them.
As well, you’ll understand each other’s attachment needs, emotional triggers, and how to show up in a way that feels safe, supportive, and connected.
You’ll move from blame and emotional shutdown into empathy, validation, and true emotional intimacy. From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you gain deeper intimacy.
More so, you’ll rebuild trust—step by step—and learn how to have meaningful, vulnerable conversations that open the door to appreciation, affection, and yes, even desire again.
This isn’t cookie-cutter marriage counseling. From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you gain skills you never learned from your high critical mother or father with narcissism. From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you can heal childhood trauma, anxiety, and avoidance patterns together.
Katie Ziskind offers a direct, trauma-informed, emotionally attuned approach tailored to the deep pain, passion, and potential in your marriage.
With high conflict couples therapist, you co-create a marriage where you feel heard, valued, and desired again.
Let’s work together to create the emotional safety you need to reconnect and rebuild your love. Katie Ziskind, LMFT, Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional, Gottman Level II Trained, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist, loves helping high conflict couples who need a specialist.
💬 Ready to take the first step in rebuilding your marriage bond with a specialist in trauma, attachment, narcissistic parents, trauma, and neglect? Contact me today for high conflict marriage counseling that gets real results.
In couples therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you and your partner will learn that your relationship isn’t just about resolving surface issues.
A healthy marriage is about nurturing the emotional bond you share, your couple bubble. This bubble is a living, breathing space that reflects the health of your emotional connection. With Katie’s guidance, you’ll replace blame, criticism, and emotional shutdowns with questions like, “How is our couple bubble feeling for you?”—a powerful shift from conflict into curiosity and care.
You’ll discover that your marriage is like a garden. It needs both of you to show up, water it with appreciation, and give it sunlight through emotional attunement.
If one partner stops tending to it, resentment and disconnection grow like weeds. Katie teaches you how to pause conflict in the moment, recognize old trauma patterns from childhood, and replace them with empathy, validation, and mutual support. You’ll learn how to co-regulate during arguments, express unmet needs safely, and rebuild emotional intimacy from the ground up.
From therapy with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind, you’ll move from survival mode into secure, connected love.
This approach isn’t just about communication—it’s about healing as a team.
Your couple bubble becomes a safe space where both of you feel seen, valued, and emotionally nourished. Whether you’re recovering from trauma, betrayal, or years of disconnection, Katie Ziskind gives you the tools to create a relationship that feels like a home, not a battlefield. Sex is part of marriage counseling. She also gives you a safe place to talk about sexual avoidance and religious trauma in women. Couples therapy for people-pleasing and shame helps you both be vulnerable and gain a deep emotional and sexual connection.
Get help for your sexless, disconnected marriage with trauma specialized high conflict marriage counselor, Katie Ziskind.
🎙️ Listen to Katie Ziskind’s podcast, “All Things Love and Intimacy,” on Spotify and Apple Podcasts to learn more about her couples therapy approach.
All Things Love and Intimacy with Katie Ziskind is a heart-centered, emotionally intelligent podcast that dives deep into the real struggles couples face in their marriages and intimate lives.
Hosted by Katie Ziskind, LMFT, a Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional, Gottman Level II Trained Couples Therapist, and Trauma Specialist, this podcast offers honest conversations and expert insights for couples on the brink of divorce. She speaks to couples dealing with emotional disconnection, sexless marriages, trauma, infidelity, and the painful cycles of conflict and miscommunication.
On All Things Love and Intimacy, Katie Ziskind brings her grounded, compassionate presence to every episode.
She loves sharing how childhood trauma affects your ability to connect. As well, you learn how anxious and avoidant attachment styles create chaos in relationships. And, how to rebuild trust after betrayal. Each episode offers practical tools and emotional wisdom.
Katie Ziskind helps you and your partner understand the why behind your conflicts and teaches you how to move from blame and shame into secure, emotionally safe love.
If you’re looking for a podcast that goes far deeper than surface-level advice—and want guidance from someone who truly understands how trauma, emotional pain, and unhealed wounds play out in your marriage—All Things Love and Intimacy with Katie Ziskind is for you.
Tune in on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to learn how to reconnect, communicate with heart, rebuild sexual and emotional intimacy, and tend to the garden of your relationship with care. This podcast is your lifeline if you’re ready to transform pain into partnership and create a thriving couple bubble.
Video telehealth therapy with Katie Ziskind offers you and your partner the opportunity to receive expert, high-conflict couples counseling from the comfort and privacy of your own home.
Whether you’re navigating emotional disconnection, betrayal, trauma, or painful communication cycles, Katie brings her calm, grounded presence and trauma-informed expertise right to your screen.
As a specialist in emotionally focused, attachment-based therapy, she helps you slow down heated moments, understand the root of your triggers, and rebuild emotional and sexual intimacy—even through a virtual platform. Telehealth with Katie is accessible, effective, and deeply transformative.
