When you’re stuck in the same painful fight—again—and you and your spouse feel more like enemies than teammates, it can feel like divorce is the only way out. Maybe one of you gets louder, more intense, anxious, and desperate to be heard, while the other shuts down, withdraws, and retreats further with every argument. This heartbreaking cycle leaves you both feeling abandoned, rejected, and hopeless. You’re exhausted from the misunderstandings, and you’re scared that if something doesn’t change soon, your marriage won’t survive. In Connecticut, Katie Ziskind specializes in therapy for couples on the brink of divorce.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind and her team of compassionate therapists specialize in helping couples on the brink of divorce find their way back to each other. We know you’re not here because you’ve given up. You’re here because, deep down, you both still want to fight for your marriage. In reality, you just need the right guidance to get there.
Why Couples End Up Here—and How We Help You Rebuild
When one partner is anxiously attached and the other is avoidantly attached, conflict can escalate quickly.
One of you might feel invisible, unimportant, and unloved. The other might feel overwhelmed, suffocated, and attacked. These anxious-avoidant fight patterns are not your fault. To note, they’re often rooted in childhood trauma, emotional neglect, or growing up in families where feelings weren’t safe to express.
Katie Ziskind, the owner of Wisdom Within Counseling, is a Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional (CSTIP), Gottman Level Two trained marriage therapist, and complex trauma specialist.
Her clinical focus is on healing emotional and sexual disconnection in couples who want to stay together—but are hurting.
To add, Katie Ziskind and her team of marriage therapists work with couples who are dealing with:
- Constant fights that spiral and go nowhere
- Sexual rejection and avoidance
- Betrayals and infidelity that shattered trust
- Emotional numbness, withdrawal, and detachment
- Difficulty feeling safe, seen, or heard by each other
- Grief, parenting stress, infertility, and chronic illness
- Loss of passion, friendship, and emotional intimacy
You Can Rebuild Your Relationship Through Therapy For Couples on the Brink of Divorce—Even If You’re Hanging by a Thread
At Wisdom Within Counseling, our couples therapists offer a structured, trauma-informed approach to help you:
- Feel safe and respected in hard conversations
- Understand each other’s emotional wounds and triggers
- Replace criticism and defensiveness with curiosity and compassion
- Learn how to express emotions and needs without blame
- Rebuild emotional closeness and want to be sexual again
- Navigate tough transitions like new parenthood, special needs parenting, or caring for aging parents
- Process the hurt from affairs, porn addiction, or emotional betrayals
- Reconnect as romantic partners—not just roommates or co-parents
Our work focuses on emotional safety, because without it, there can be no intimacy. Katie believes intimacy is not just physical—it starts with vulnerability, softness, and the willingness to be known by your spouse.
Affair Recovery, Sexual Reconnection, and Trauma Healing for Couples
If you’re recovering from an affair or breach of trust, you need a guide who understands how delicate and intentional this healing process is.
Katie is trained in affair recovery counseling and offers specific, step-by-step support to help you rebuild trust, reconnect emotionally, and rediscover why you chose each other in the first place.
If you’ve experienced religious sexual shame, grew up in a strict conservative household, or were taught that sex is dirty or sinful, your body may have shut down sexually to survive.
Katie Ziskind helps couples deconstruct guilt, anxiety, and sexual avoidance and replace them with pleasure, consent, and embodiment.
You’ll learn how to:
- Talk about sex in a safe, open, non-judgmental space
- Explore playful, erotic, and connective sexual experiences
- Understand female and male arousal and foreplay
- Reignite desire and deepen erotic trust with your spouse
- Feel confident and excited in your sexual relationship again
We Help You Talk About What Was Never Safe to Say Before
You were never taught how to name your needs. You never learned how to say “I feel hurt” without a fight breaking out. At Wisdom Within Counseling, we help you and your spouse create a new emotional language—one that brings you closer rather than pushing you apart.
We help couples move from disconnection to deep emotional and sexual intimacy.
Our style of emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce is especially transformative for couples dealing with:
- The aftermath of trauma, loss, or emotional neglect
- Conflict cycles driven by unmet emotional needs
- High-conflict parenting situations or co-parenting breakdowns
- Life transitions that have shaken the foundation of your marriage
Whether you’re dealing with childhood trauma, sexual shame, chronic resentment, or just a slow fading of love—you don’t have to navigate this alone.
Start Rebuilding Your Marriage with Katie Ziskind, Specialist with High Conflict Couples Today
Katie Ziskind and her team of skilled therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling are here to help you and your spouse repair the foundation of your relationship.
Your marriage isn’t broken beyond repair—it just needs expert help, skilled support, emotional safety, and a commitment to grow together.
You can also listen to Katie Ziskind’s podcast, “All Things Love and Intimacy,” available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, where she shares powerful tools and real conversations about rebuilding love, sex, and trust in your relationship.
Ready to Reconnect Through Therapy For Couples on the Brink of Divorce?
Katie Ziskind specializes in therapy for couples on the brink of divorce.
If your marriage feels like it’s at a breaking point—but you still love each other and want to try—you’re in the right place for specialized marriage therapy. Katie Ziskind specializes in emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce.
Schedule a time on our website to get started. You’ll receive our phone screening questionnaire and next steps. Once completed, we’ll reach out with 2–3 available openings. We make the process simple, respectful, and trauma-informed.
👉 Your relationship can heal. Let’s rebuild it—together in emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce. .
Book your time now and I’ll email you a questionnaire to complete. Then, text 860-451-9364 once your questionnaire is complete.
Wisdom Within Counseling in Connecticut, New Jersey, Florida, Couples Retreats, and Marriage Coaching | Emotionally Safe. Sex-Positive Couples Counseling. Trauma-Informed Marriage Therapy.
In many struggling marriages, one of the most common yet misunderstood patterns is the anxious-avoidant cycle.
You might be anxiously attached. At times, you are constantly worrying that your spouse is pulling away. When you have an anxious attachment style, you may be reading into every silence. There is a deep need for security and closeness. And, you end up feeling like you’re too much or not enough.
Or, you might be the avoidantly attached partner. Maybe, you feel overwhelmed when your spouse gets emotional. Perhaps, you go right to shutting down when there’s conflict. And, you might be needing space but not knowing how to ask for it without hurting your partner.
You avoid and ignore conflicts because you don’t know what to do. Katie Ziskind specializes in emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce. From very specialized marriage counseling, you learn how to help your spouse feel seen, loved, appreciated, and important.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind and her team specialize in helping couples understand what soothes an anxious attachment style. And, you gain an understanding of an avoidant attachment style. From specialized marriage therapy, you can finally feel safe, emotionally close, and connected in your relationship.
An anxious attachment style often develops in childhood when love felt unpredictable.
Maybe, a parent was physically present but emotionally unavailable, or maybe your needs were dismissed or minimized. Did you feel quieted, silenced, and had no voice growing up?
As an adult, this can translate into high sensitivity to rejection, emotional reactivity, and fear of abandonment. You might feel desperate for reassurance, terrified of being left, or feel panicked when your partner pulls away.
In your marriage, this looks like chasing your spouse emotionally, asking, “Do you still love me?” and feeling like you’re walking on eggshells when you’re not getting constant affirmation.
From emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce, how can couples understand how an avoidant attachment style develops?
Now, an avoidant attachment style often stems from growing up in a home where emotions were dismissed, punished, or ignored.
Were you told you were “the problem,” “too sensitive” or “too much?”
If you were told to “toughen up” or “stop crying,” you may have learned to deal with stress alone and internalize your emotions.
As an adult, when your partner gets emotional, you may instinctively shut down. You’re not trying to hurt them—you just don’t know how to stay present when the emotional temperature rises.
In your marriage, you might withdraw during conflict, feel criticized even when your partner is trying to connect, and feel guilty for needing space.
This anxious-avoidant cycle can be incredibly painful.
Katie Ziskind specializes in emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce, where couples are stuck in anxious-avoidant attachment conflicts.
One of you is reaching out, trying to connect.
The other is pulling away, trying to find relief. You both end up hurt, misunderstood, and emotionally exhausted. It can feel like you’re speaking different emotional languages, and the harder you try to fix things, the worse they get. This is where Katie Ziskind’s expertise can bring life-changing support.
Katie Ziskind is a Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional (CSTIP), Gottman Level Two trained, and a complex trauma specialist who deeply understands the emotional roots of these anxious and avoidant attachment style patterns.
She brings a warm, trauma-informed approach to couples counseling, helping you and your spouse name your patterns without shame and learn how to create a secure attachment style—one where love feels safe, calm, mutual, and emotionally fulfilling.
In couples counseling at Wisdom Within, you and your spouse will learn how to slow down your reactions.
You both understand the deep emotional needs underneath your fights.
If you’re anxiously attached, Katie Ziskind will help you find language to express your fears in a way your partner can hear. You’ll learn how to self-soothe and co-regulate. And, you can learn to recognize when you are afraid, upset, or feeling inadequate. As well, you learn tools regarding how to build trust. Your avoidantly attached partner can learn to offer you security and reassurance.
Now, if you’re avoidantly attached, Katie Ziskind will help you feel safer in emotional moments. Instead of avoiding emotions, you learn to identify and express them. You learn that it is safe to cry and feel. And, you notice how having a narcissistic, militant, emotionally abusive parent impacted you.
Therapy for couples contemplating divorce gives you tools to stay present vs. avoid conflict.
You also learn tools to communicate needing a pause especially when you feel overwhelmed or attacked.
A secure attachment style is not about being perfect—it’s about feeling safe enough to be imperfect together. In a secure bond, you can say “I’m scared,” “I need you,” or “I feel hurt.” And, a secure attachment bond is what couples counseling is all about. This is a felt sense that your partner will meet you with empathy instead of shutdown or criticism. It is the feeling of “I am at home with you.” This is part of Katie Ziskind’s process of therapy for couples contemplating divorce.
Katie Ziskind helps couples learn how to regulate their nervous systems. Teaming up, you can calm emotional reactivity and intense fights. And, from couples therapy, you can co-create a relationship where you both safe to be yourselves, even in conflict.
Katie Ziskind’s marriage counseling approach is particularly helpful for couples who have experienced childhood trauma, emotional neglect, or religious shame that makes intimacy difficult.
These early wounds often shape how you attach as an adult—and unless they’re acknowledged and worked through, they can sabotage even the most loving relationships. At Wisdom Within, couples learn how to reparent themselves. You gain awareness of inner child wounds. And, you can express previously hidden emotions.
From emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce, you create a relationship culture of safety. Security, closeness, empathy, and mutual support are all benefits of marriage therapy.
Through structured, emotionally focused sessions, Katie Ziskind helps couples stop reacting from fear and start responding from love. You’ll learn what emotional safety actually looks like in daily life. For instance, creating routines of connection, knowing how to apologize meaningfully.
As well, emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce helps you create space for play and sexuality again.
Your secure attachment style grows over time, with small moments of attunement, validation, and safety. Katie Ziskind helps couples in counseling track those moments and build on them to create lasting change.
Even if your marriage feels tense, distant, or on the verge of collapse, healing is possible. When you understand each other’s attachment styles, you see your dynamic differently.
And, from couples therapy, you learn how to meet emotional needs with gentleness. As both you gain emotional maturity, your romantic relationship transforms. Katie Ziskind specializes in emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce. You gain strategies and skills, right in session.
What once felt like endless fighting becomes a pathway to deeper connection. What once felt like emotional abandonment becomes an opportunity to say, “I’m here, I love you, and we’re in this together.”
If you and your partner are stuck in an anxious-avoidant dance that feels lonely, painful, and exhausting, couples counseling with Katie Ziskind can help you move toward secure, loving connection.
Don’t wait until the damage feels irreversible. You deserve a relationship where you both feel safe, seen, and truly loved. Let us help you get there—together. At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind and the team of marriage counselors specialize in therapy for couples on the brink of divorce.
When your marriage feels like it’s falling apart—constant fights, emotional shutdowns, or the icy silence after another painful disagreement—you need more than just basic communication tips.
You need deep, transformative support that gets to the heart of the pain. At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind offers two powerful, research-backed modalities—Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) and Imago Relationship Therapy—specifically designed for high-conflict couples on the brink of divorce.
Katie Ziskind specializes in therapy for couples on the brink of divorce.
What makes Katie Ziskind’s couples counseling approach stand out is her ability to weave in trauma-informed inner child work to heal the root causes of relationship distress, not just surface-level symptoms.
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT): Rewiring Your Emotional Bond
EFT is based on the science of adult attachment. In this specialized marriage counseling model, conflict isn’t just about chores, sex, or finances. Really, it’s about how secure, loved, and emotionally safe you feel with your partner.
When couples are stuck in distress, emotionally focused couples therapy (EFT) helps them understand their attachment patterns—often one partner pursues while the other withdraws—and teaches them how to move from criticism, blame, and defense into emotional vulnerability and responsiveness.
Katie Ziskind uses emotionally focused couples therapy (EFT) to help couples de-escalate conflict, identify emotional needs, and rebuild a secure attachment bond. Rather than seeing each other as the enemy, partners begin to see the scared inner child behind the reaction—shifting from “Why are you yelling at me?” to “You’re scared I don’t care.” Through this lens, couples develop empathy and emotional intimacy that lasts beyond the therapy room.
Imago Relationship Therapy: Healing the Wounded Inner Child in Relationship
Imago therapy is based on the idea that we are unconsciously drawn to partners who mirror the emotional wounds we experienced in childhood.
That’s why the person you fell in love with can also hurt you in ways that feel eerily familiar.
In Imago couples counseling, Katie Ziskind helps couples move from reactivity to curiosity, guiding them through structured dialogues that slow down conflict and create safety to share vulnerable truths.
With Imago therapy, partners learn to speak to each other’s inner child—the hurt, lonely, scared parts that feel rejected, invisible, or misunderstood. These parts often show up as anger, withdrawal, or criticism.
Katie Ziskind helps couples hear the hurt behind the behavior, offering them tools to validate, soothe, and repair the ruptures that keep repeating. Imago couples counseling helps partners become healing partners for each other, transforming pain into connection.
The Power of Counseling with a Trauma-Informed Marriage Therapist Specialist vs. a Generalist Therapist
Most therapists receive only a few hours of couples training during their graduate education.
They may be well-meaning, but if they don’t deeply understand attachment trauma, nervous system dysregulation, or sexual avoidance due to inner child wounding, they might unintentionally do more harm than good. High-conflict couples need a specialist, not a generalist. In emotionally focused couples therapy, you gain skills your emotionally abusive parents never taught you.
Katie Ziskind is not only a Gottman Level Two trained marriage therapist, but also a Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional (CSTIP) and complex trauma specialist.
She brings years of expertise in working with couples who are dealing with infidelity, abandonment trauma, sexual disconnection, or unresolved childhood emotional neglect. In emotionally focused couples therapy, Katie Ziskind knows how to hold space for the rawest emotions while guiding couples back into safe, structured emotional connection.
She combines emotionally focused couples therapy (EFT) along with training for sexual assault, religious trauma, sexual shame, guilt, addiction issues and more.
When you work with Katie Ziskind, you’re working with a marriage specialist who understands that the partner who gets loud is likely terrified of being left, and the one who shuts down may be trying to protect themselves from shame, criticism, or rejection.
She teaches couples to recognize their protective parts and begin speaking from their authentic, emotionally open selves. Therapy for high conflict couples goes to the source of the trauma cycle.
Why Trauma-Informed Marriage Therapy is Essential for Divorce-Contemplating Couples
Couples on the brink of divorce often say, “We can’t communicate.”
But beneath that is usually a deeper story: “I never felt safe as a child, and now I don’t feel safe with you either.” Katie Ziskind’s approach uncovers and heals those emotional wounds.
She understands that your adult fights are often reenactments of your early relationships—and she helps you break those cycles with compassion and skill.
Working with a marriage counseling specialist like Katie Ziskind means you’ll receive:
- Emotionally attuned, structured sessions that restore safety
- Katie Ziskind teaches you how to be vulnerable emotionally rather than criticize or avoid conflict
- Tools to regulate your nervous systems and avoid blowups
- A clear understanding of your conflict pattern and how to stop it
- Sex-positive, shame-free support for rebuilding erotic, sexual connection
- Healing conversations that bring the inner child into the light, instead of letting it silently sabotage your marriage
- Use language from emotionally focused couples therapy (EFT), Imago therapy, and Gottman therapy
- Understand the term “bids for connection,” and gain skills to accept them rather than reject them
If you’re contemplating divorce, this is the moment to seek expert support—not just to avoid separation, but to build a relationship that’s better, safer, and more fulfilling than it’s ever been.
Katie Ziskind offers a unique blend of Emotionally Focused Therapy, Imago Therapy, and trauma-informed inner child work to help you and your partner not just stay together, but thrive together.
Start In Emotionally Focused Marriage Therapy For Couples on the Brink of Divorce In Connecticut
You don’t have to keep living in survival mode, or walking on eggshells around your spouse.
Book your marriage therapy session with Katie Ziskind and start rewriting your love story—one emotionally safe conversation at a time.
When your spouse criticizes you, raises their voice, or seems constantly disappointed in you, it’s easy to spiral into feeling not good enough and self-doubt.
You might feel like no matter how hard you try—whether it’s cleaning more, staying calm, or giving space—you’re never enough. In emotionally focused couples therapy, Katie Ziskind helps your spouse understand their impact on you.
These hurtful attachment style patterns can leave you feeling exhausted, confused, and deeply alone in your relationship.
If you feel like you’re constantly walking on eggshells, start in therapy for couples contemplating divorce. Working with a specialist is unlike any other couples therapy experience.
Now, if you are trying to do everything right and still falling short, it’s time to get support from a trained anxious attachment style and avoidant attachment style couples therapist like Katie Ziskind.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind specializes in working with high-conflict couples who are stuck in painful attachment cycles.
Often, one of you feels anxious—craving closeness and reassurance—while the other withdraws to protect themselves from emotional overwhelm. This creates a heartbreaking dynamic where you chase connection while your spouse pulls away, or vice versa. With Katie’s guidance, you and your spouse can begin to understand these patterns and create a new foundation of emotional safety, understanding, and love.
If you’re the partner with anxious attachment, you may feel desperate to be seen, heard, and valued by your spouse. You may find yourself over-explaining, overdoing, or over-apologizing—hoping that if you just try harder, things will finally feel calm and connected.
But, when your spouse still seems distant or irritated, you may start to believe the painful lie that you’re the problem. You may feel inadequate like you aren’t good enough.
Katie Ziskind helps you unlearn these toxic patterns and teaches you how to express your needs without fear or shame.
If your spouse has an avoidant attachment style, they may shut down when emotions rise.
Criticism may be their misguided way of asking for connection or control. They might feel unsafe sharing feelings, or struggle to express vulnerability. Katie Ziskind helps avoidantly attached partners soften and feel safer in emotional moments. Instead of ignoring conflict, the avoidantly attached partner can learn to soothe their anxious partner’s emotions. Katie Ziskind specializes in emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce. She teaches couples these skills and tool right in session.
And, from marriage counseling, couples learn to express love in ways that truly meet each other’s needs. Together from emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce, you’ll learn what emotional safety looks like.
Emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce becomes a safe space where both of you feel heard and valued.
When conflict flares, it often isn’t about who left dishes in the sink—it’s about the deeper unmet emotional needs underneath.
Katie Ziskind helps you and your spouse recognize the inner child wounds that drive criticism, defensiveness, or avoidant attachment style.
These wounds are often rooted in your childhood, where love may have felt conditional, unpredictable, or unsafe.
Through compassionate, trauma-informed marriage therapy, Katie Ziskind helps both of you tend to those wounds and learn to meet each other with empathy instead of judgment.
When you’re stuck in this anxious-avoidant cycle, it can feel hopeless—like you’re both speaking different emotional languages. You might be saying, “Please love me,” while your spouse hears, “You’re not good enough.” Your spouse might be saying, “I need space to think,” while you hear, “You’re too much.” Katie teaches you both how to translate these messages into love, tenderness, and mutual support.
Katie Ziskind is not a general therapist offering surface-level solutions—she is a trauma-informed, emotionally focused marriage specialist with expertise in anxious attachment style and avoidant attachment style couples therapy.
She helps couples rebuild emotional and sexual connection by understanding the nervous system responses driving their behaviors.
Instead of pushing each other away, you’ll learn how to turn toward one another, with compassion and curiosity. Emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce is specialized. You don’t just get general, run-of-the-mill therapy.
In your sessions with Katie Ziskind, you’ll explore how to express love in each other’s language. Katie Ziskind specializes in emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce. She has extensive training other, more general therapists do not have.
You’ll learn the importance of repair after conflict right in emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce.
As well, you gain skills to learn how to calm anxiety without controlling your spouse. And, you get to learn how to offer space without triggering fears of abandonment. You’ll discover how to stop reacting from your wounds and start responding from your heart.
These skills are the foundation of a secure attachment style.
Katie Ziskind specializes in emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce. You get skills and tools to build a marriage that feels emotionally safe, deeply connected, and full of mutual respect.
Start In Emotionally Focused Marriage Therapy For Couples on the Brink of Divorce In Connecticut
You and your spouse don’t have to stay stuck in a cycle of criticism, distance, and disappointment.
With Katie Ziskind’s help, you can understand each other’s emotional needs, build secure attachment patterns, and reconnect in ways that feel genuine and healing. You deserve a relationship where you feel like you’re enough—exactly as you are—and where love feels safe again.
Start working with Katie Ziskind, an experienced anxious attachment style and avoidant attachment style trained couples therapist, and begin the journey to a healthier, more connected marriage.
Whether you’re feeling hopeless, on the verge of giving up, or just lost in miscommunication, help is here. You can learn to feel loved, seen, and emotionally secure—with each other. Let’s begin.
When your relationship starts to feel more painful than peaceful, it’s a sign that something needs to change. You may be feeling emotionally raw, walking around with a heavy heart, feeling unwanted, like you avoid each other, and wondering how much longer you can keep going like this.
If you’re feeling rejected, unwanted, or like your partner doesn’t really see you anymore, it might be time to reach out for marriage counseling. Couples therapy can offer you both a safe, guided space to reconnect, repair, and begin to feel valued again.
One of the clearest signs that you may need couples therapy is if you feel angry all the time—like resentment is building inside of you, and you’re constantly snapping, withdrawing, or boiling over.
That anger is often protecting deeper emotions: sadness, disappointment, or a quiet longing to feel close to your spouse again. When anger becomes a frequent guest in your relationship, it’s not something to ignore—it’s a signal that you’re craving emotional connection and healing.
Another sign is frequent crying—especially when it feels like you’re crying alone.
You might cry in the shower, in the car, or late at night when your spouse is asleep. When your tears feel invisible or when your partner doesn’t seem to notice your pain, the loneliness can feel unbearable. If your emotions feel too big to carry by yourself, therapy offers a space to be held, supported, and truly heard.
Trouble sleeping is another common symptom couples experience when their relationship is struggling.
If you’re lying awake at night, rehashing arguments, wondering if your partner really loves you, or feeling scared about the future of your marriage, you’re not alone. Chronic emotional stress in a relationship often shows up in the body—in restless nights, tight chests, and anxious mornings. Therapy helps both of you regulate your nervous systems and feel safe again.
If you’ve started to feel invisible—like your efforts go unnoticed, your needs don’t matter, or you’re just going through the motions with your partner—that’s a red flag.
Feeling unseen, unappreciated, or like a ghost in your own relationship can be incredibly painful.
This is not how love is meant to feel. You deserve to be acknowledged, appreciated, and emotionally connected in your relationship.
Do you find yourself repeating the same argument over and over again?
Or avoiding certain topics altogether because they always end in a blowout?
This is often a sign that your relationship has fallen into an unhealthy communication pattern. In emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce, you and your spouse will learn how to break these toxic cycles. Snapping, criticism, yelling, and avoidance are not healthy. If you keep doing these, your children will sadly carry them into their own adult life. So, couples therapy helps you teach your children conflict resolution skills. And, from marriage counseling, you can learn to speak to each other with kindness, compassion, understanding, and clarity.
If you’ve started fantasizing about what it would be like to live separately, or find yourself emotionally checking out during conversations with your partner, it may be time to get support before the disconnection becomes too deep to repair.
Emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce is not a sign of failure.
It’s a commitment to healing, to growth, and to loving each other better.
Even if your issues aren’t explosive, but rather a quiet, aching distance—where the spark is gone and everything feels flat—that is just as important to address. Emotional numbness in a relationship is often a protective response to hurt, fear, or unmet needs. From emotionally focused couples therapy, both can learn to create a relationship that feels alive, intimate, and warm—not just functional.
You don’t have to figure this all out on your own. Katie Ziskind and the team at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in helping high conflict couples who feel stuck, hurt, or ready to give up.
With compassionate, skilled guidance, you and your spouse can begin to repair your bond, understand each other’s emotional needs, and build a stronger, safer relationship together.
If you recognize yourself in these words, it’s time to take the next step by starting in emotionally focused couples therapy.
Click the Book Now button to choose a time in Katie Ziskind’s schedule that works for you.
All sessions are telehealth video appointments, so you and your partner can connect from the comfort of your own home.
Your relationship is worth it. Healing starts now.
When you and your partner find yourselves stuck in patterns of yelling, snapping, or pretending like everything’s fine when it’s not, it’s usually not because you want to hurt each other.
It’s because deep down, you’re both hurting—and no one ever showed you a healthy way to express that pain. You might raise your voice out of desperation to be heard. Your partner might shut down or walk away because conflict feels overwhelming or unsafe. These reactions often come from childhood wounds, not from a lack of love.
If you grew up in a home where your emotions weren’t welcomed—maybe where you were told to stop crying, toughen up, or stay quiet—you may have never learned how to express what you really feel in a calm, safe way.
As a child, you might have had to bury your needs, stay small, or act perfect just to survive emotionally. As an adult in your marriage, you may still be carrying those old habits, even though they leave you and your partner feeling distant, hurt, and misunderstood.
Snapping or yelling in conflict is often a sign that you feel powerless. When you’re triggered, your nervous system goes into survival mode. You might yell because you’re scared of being abandoned.
To add, you might avoid conflict because deep down, you’re afraid that being honest will lead to rejection, rage, or silence. These are protective responses that once kept you emotionally safe in a dysfunctional childhood environment—but now, they block closeness and love with your partner.
The truth is, no one taught you how to feel safe in emotional vulnerability. If you grew up with emotionally neglectful or abusive parents, you may have been punished or ignored when you tried to express yourself. You may have learned to hide your true feelings, to numb out, or to pretend everything was okay just to avoid chaos. And now, in your adult relationship, those same survival strategies show up—except now, they’re causing pain in your marriage.
Start In Emotionally Focused Marriage Therapy For Couples on the Brink of Divorce In Connecticut
This is where emotionally focused couples therapy with Katie Ziskind can help you and your partner begin to break free from these inherited patterns.
Katie Ziskind helps couples understand that behind the anger, the shutdowns, and the conflict avoidance are two scared inner children who never learned how to feel safe in emotional connection. She creates a non-judgmental, compassionate marriage therapy space where you can explore your emotions and needs with curiosity instead of shame.
Together, you and your spouse will learn how to speak from the heart rather than from your defenses. Instead of yelling, you’ll learn to say, “I’m afraid of losing you.” Instead of withdrawing, you’ll practice saying, “I feel overwhelmed and I don’t know how to talk about this, but I want to try.”
These are the kinds of vulnerable truths that lead to deeper love and understanding—and they’re skills Katie Ziskind will help you develop together. Katie Ziskind specializes in emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce.
From emotionally focused couples therapy for high conflict couples, you’ll begin to understand your own emotional triggers—and your partner’s.
You’ll see how your body reacts when you feel emotionally unsafe, and you’ll learn how to self-soothe and co-regulate with your partner in ways that build trust. Katie Ziskind will help you both rewrite the emotional blueprint you inherited from childhood. From emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce, you can create a relationship that’s based on security, not survival.
In your emotionally focused marriage therapy sessions, you’ll explore how unresolved childhood pain still impacts your fight dynamic.
And, you get to see how emotional neglect has shaped the way you respond to conflict to this day.
You’ll learn that your reactions aren’t flaws—they’re trauma adaptations. And, once you understand them, you can shift them. With Katie Ziskind’s trauma-informed, emotionally focused approach, you and your spouse will begin to replace old reactive patterns with intentional, loving connection. From emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce, you can break negative, dysfunctional generational patterns.
You don’t have to keep repeating your parents’ emotional patterns. From emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce, you don’t have to stay stuck in cycles of yelling, shutting down, or pretending everything’s fine. You and your partner can learn how to be soft with each other from couples therapy. Overall, you can learn how to feel safe, seen, and emotionally supported—even when life feels overwhelming.
If you’re ready to break generational cycles of emotional neglect and create a more loving, emotionally intimate marriage, schedule your telehealth session with Katie Ziskind at Wisdom Within Counseling.
Use the Book Now button to reserve a time that works for you and your partner. Healing starts when you both choose to do it differently.
In Connecticut, telehealth video therapy is available. Our therapists offer in person in Niantic, CT.
Andover, Ansonia, Ashford, Avon, Barkhamsted, Beacon Falls, Berlin, Bethany, Bethel, Bethlehem, Bloomfield, Bolton, Bozrah, Branford, Bridgeport, Bridgewater, Bristol, Brookfield, Brooklyn, Burlington, Canaan, Canterbury, Canton.
Chaplin, Cheshire, Chester, Clinton, Colchester, Colebrook, Columbia, Cornwall, Coventry, Cromwell, Danbury, Darien, Deep River, Derby, Durham, Eastford, East Granby, East Haddam, East Hampton, East Hartford, East Haven, East Lyme, Easton, East Windsor, Ellington, Enfield, Essex, Fairfield, Farmington, Franklin, Glastonbury, Goshen, Granby, Greenwich, Griswold, Groton, Guilford, Haddam, Hamden, Hampton, Hartford, Hartland, Harwinton, Hebron, Kent, Killingly, Killingworth, Lebanon, Ledyard, Lisbon, Litchfield, Lyme, Madison, Manchester, Mansfield, Marlborough, Meriden, Middlebury, Middlefield, Middletown, Milford.
Start In Emotionally Focused Marriage Therapy For Couples on the Brink of Divorce In Connecticut
Monroe, Montville, Morris, Naugatuck, New Britain, New Canaan, New Fairfield, New Hartford, New Haven, Newington, New London, New Milford, Newtown, Norfolk, North Branford, North Canaan, North Haven, North Stonington, Norwalk, Norwich, Old Lyme, Old Saybrook, Orange, Oxford, Plainfield, Plainville, Plymouth, Pomfret, Portland, Preston, Prospect, Putnam, Redding, Ridgefield, Rocky Hill, Roxbury, Salem, Salisbury, Scotland, Seymour, Sharon, Shelton, Sherman, Simsbury, Somers, Southbury, Southington, South Windsor, Sprague, Stafford.
Stamford, Sterling, Stonington, Stratford, Suffield, Thomaston, Thompson, Tolland, Torrington, Trumbull, Union, Vernon, Voluntown, Wallingford, Warren, Washington, Waterbury, Waterford, Watertown, Westbrook, West Hartford, West Haven, Weston, Westport, Wethersfield, Willington, Wilton, Winchester, Windham, Windsor, Windsor Locks, Wolcott, Woodbridge, Woodbury, Woodstock
At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind specializes in emotionally focused marriage therapy for couples on the brink of divorce.
