Do you feel lonely even though you’re in a relationship? As well, do you and your partner live in the same house but feel like roommates instead of lovers? Are you craving deeper connection, emotional intimacy, and a return to playful passion? You’re not alone. At Wisdom Within Counseling in Niantic, Connecticut, we specialize in helping couples just like you—couples who love each other but feel emotionally disconnected, shut down, or stuck in frustrating fights that go in circles. Katie Ziskind, East Lyme, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, teaches couples how to break generational pattern cycles.
As well, Katie Ziskind specializes in emotionally focused therapy, sex addiction recovery, couples counseling, and supports your inner child wounds. She helps couples stop conflicts, negative cycles, and painful communication styles. Through marriage therapy in East Lyme, Connecticut couples learn to rebuild connection, identify and heal resentment, and talk about sex and pleasure.
Start with Katie Ziskind, Niantic, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, to rebuild closeness, security, playfulness, and co-create a satisfying sex life.
Couples often fight about sex because it’s not just about the physical act—it’s about feeling seen, safe, playful, desired, and emotionally connected.
When sex starts to feel like a chore or obligation, instead of a joyful expression of intimacy, frustration and resentment can build quickly. You might find yourself feeling pressured, misunderstood, or disconnected from your partner’s needs and desires. This creates a cycle where neither of you feels truly satisfied or safe to share what you really want.
As a certified sex therapy informed professional, Katie Ziskind helps couples break free from these cycles by guiding you back to playfulness, curiosity, and emotional safety.
She teaches you how to have fun together, tease each other, and explore what brings you pleasure without pressure or expectation. This approach rewires your relationship to focus on desire as a shared adventure—not a task.
With Katie Ziskind’s expertise and compassionate support, you’ll learn how to communicate openly about what turns you on, rediscover the joy of sexual connection, and build a sex life that feels exciting, consensual, and deeply fulfilling for both of you.
Is your relationship stuck in the same painful arguments, emotional distance, or cycles of disconnect?
At Wisdom Within Counseling in East Lyme, Connecticut, we specialize in helping couples rebuild trust, emotional safety, and lasting connection.
Whether you’re facing communication breakdowns, infidelity, intimacy struggles, or you’re simply feeling like roommates instead of romantic partners, couples therapy can help you reconnect and grow stronger—together.
Using a trauma-informed, attachment-based approach, Katie Ziskind, licensed marriage and family therapist, somatic yoga therapist, RYT500, and certified sex therapy informed professional, helps couples understand the deeper emotional needs beneath the fights.
If one partner has an anxious attachment style—always seeking closeness and fearing abandonment—while the other has an avoidant style—needing space and shutting down—Katie Ziskind gently helps you co-create a secure, balanced dynamic.
Through emotionally focused therapy, you’ll learn how to communicate vulnerably, regulate your nervous systems, and bring emotional and sexual intimacy back into your relationship in a safe, supported way.
What Emotional Disconnection Feels Like in a Relationship
Emotional disconnection often shows up quietly. Slowly, you feel resentment. Parts of you feel devalued and put down. You might notice that the two of you barely talk anymore unless it’s about logistics. Perhaps, you can’t stand how your partner talks to you – or avoids you all together. It hurts your feelings. Sex might feel lifeless, rushed, disconnected, or totally absent.
You might feel emotionally starved and start questioning whether you’re even lovable—or if your partner really cares. These feelings can lead to withdrawal, arguments, or one partner chasing while the other shuts down. At Wisdom Within Counseling near Old Lyme, Connecticut, Katie Ziskind specializes with couples who are stuck in negative fight cycles.
Couples often come to us saying, “We feel like we’re speaking different languages.” If that’s you, you’re not broken—and your relationship isn’t beyond repair. Wisdom Within Counseling specializes in emotionally focused therapy, sex addiction recovery, couples counseling, and support for your inner child wounds.
You’re Not “Too Sensitive”—You’re in a Negative Cycle of Conflict That Katie Ziskind Specializes In Transforming Into Validation, Playfulness, and Security
What you’re going through is a painful, hurtful relational pattern, not a personality flaw.
One of you might have an anxious attachment style—you crave closeness and reassurance, but feel rejected when your partner pulls away.
The other might be avoidant—you feel overwhelmed when emotions run high, and shut down to protect yourself. This cycle can become painful, leading to more fights, less sex, and more distance.
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) helps you step out of this toxic loop and into safety, vulnerability, and connection again.
Anxious attachment style develops when your early caregivers were inconsistent—sometimes loving, sometimes distant.
As a child, you learned that love could be unpredictable, so now as an adult, you may feel a deep fear of abandonment or rejection in your relationships.
You might constantly seek reassurance, feel easily triggered by silence or distance, or become overwhelmed with worry if your partner pulls away, even slightly. This creates a pattern where you chase closeness, often feeling “too much,” while your nervous system stays on high alert for disconnection.
In couples therapy in Southeastern Connecticut with Katie Ziskind, you can begin to understand your anxious attachment style with compassion instead of shame.
You’ll learn how to self-soothe, express your needs without over-functioning, and build emotional safety in your relationship. Your anxious parts don’t have to drive the bus anymore. With the support of emotionally focused therapy and inner child healing, you can start feeling secure, grounded, and truly lovable—just as you are.
Avoidant attachment style often forms when caregivers were emotionally unavailable, dismissive, or overwhelmed by your needs as a child.
You may have learned that expressing emotions led to disappointment or rejection, so you adapted by becoming self-reliant and emotionally distant.
As an adult, this can look like shutting down during conflict, feeling uncomfortable with vulnerability, or pulling away when your partner gets too close. You don’t like to talk it out. Rather, you pretend nothing is wrong, and sit in silence. Often, you don’t know what to do when your spouse get anxious, yells, or cries. Intimacy might feel threatening—even if you deeply crave connection underneath.
In couples therapy with Katie Ziskind, you’ll gently explore the protective strategies your avoidant parts have used to stay safe in childhood experiences.
Through emotionally focused therapy in Niantic, Connecticut, you’ll learn how to share feelings without fear, receive care without guilt, and move toward your partner instead of away. With patience and support, avoidant attachment can soften—creating space for real intimacy, mutual respect, and emotional safety in your relationship.
When one spouse has an anxious attachment style and the other is avoidantly attached, it creates a painful push-pull dynamic that keeps you both stuck.
The anxious partner seeks closeness, often fearing abandonment and needing constant reassurance. On the other hand, the avoidant partner feels overwhelmed by emotional intensity and withdraws to self-protect.
To add, the more one chases, the more the other distances. Katie Ziskind, East Lyme, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, helps couples understand these painful patterns. An anxious-avoidant attachment style pattern creates a cycle of emotional disconnection. It leaves both partners feeling misunderstood, rejected, and alone.
In couples therapy with Katie Ziskind, you’ll learn how to recognize this anxious-avoidant loop and gently interrupt it.
Through emotionally focused therapy and trauma-informed tools, Katie Ziskind helps each of you understand the childhood wounds beneath your reactions.
In couples counseling near Old Lyme, Connecticut, she teaches you how to meet in the middle. The anxious partner feels safer slowing down and trusting from couples therapy techniques.
And, the avoidant partner feels safer leaning in and opening up from marriage therapy skills.
Katie Ziskind, Old Lyme, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, helps couples who feel rejected, hurt, confused, but deeply want to team up again.
Why is looking at childhood dynamics a part of Gottman couples therapy? How do childhood experiences with a highly critical parent, or absent parent play a role in your conflicts now? Well, unintentionally, we repeat generational patterns, often painful ones. In couples therapy, you learn to identify your inner child wounds, unmet love needs, and painful core memories. Then, you learn how these are preventing you from giving and receiving the love your partner needs most. Your spouse’s inner child wounds get triggered, leading to intense, painful fights.
When you heal your inner child wounds in therapy with Katie Ziskind, Mystic, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, you begin to reclaim parts of yourself that may have felt lost, silenced, or rejected. This healing allows you to show up in your romantic relationship with greater vulnerability, confidence, and authenticity. You start to trust that your partner can hold your feelings without judgment. This process of Imago couples therapy dissolves the old fears of abandonment or rejection that once felt overwhelming. From Gottman marriage therapy and Imago therapy, you co-create a sense of safety. Calmness, closeness, and intimacy become the heartbeat of your marriage.
From working with Katie Ziskind, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, your love shifts from tense, hurtful, and transactional, to steady, comforting, and deeply reassuring.
In understanding your anxious-avoidant attachment style patterns together, you no longer feel trapped in a cycle of chasing, avoidance, anxiety, and withdrawing. Instead, you learn to slow down and meet each other with patience and empathy.
The anxious partner’s longing is met with gentle presence. And, the avoidant partner’s need for space is respected without shutting down the emotional dialogue. This creates a tender dance of closeness and freedom, where both of you feel honored and cared for in exactly the ways you need.
Katie Ziskind, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, is passionate about helping high conflict couples rebuild emotional connection and then physical intimacy.
This transformation from couples counseling doesn’t just change your conversations—it rewires your entire relationship experience.
Playfulness, laughter, and warmth naturally flow when anxiety, doubt, fear and mistrust begin to fade.
You find yourselves laughing more, touching more freely, and exploring your sexual connection with renewed curiosity and delight.
What once felt heavy and strained becomes light and joyful. The love you build through this work is not just passionate—it’s profoundly safe, lasting, and deeply satisfying on every level. Start with Katie Ziskind, Old Lyme, Connecticut marriage specialist. At Wisdom Within Counseling, you can team up, learn validation tools, and build emotional security. From working with Katie Ziskind, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, you gain healthy relationship skills you never learned in childhood from your parents.
Start with Katie Ziskind, Niantic, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, to rebuild closeness, security, playfulness, and co-create a satisfying sex life.
In marriage counseling with Katie Ziskind, you’ll co-create a secure connection rooted in mutual compassion, emotional presence, and deep respect.
How Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy in Niantic, CT Can Help You Reconnect
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we use Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy to help you both feel seen, heard, and validated.
In sessions, we guide you toward understanding the emotions underneath the fight. Rather than pointing fingers, we help each of you say things like:
“I feel hurt and rejected when you turn away.”
“Or, I need to know you still want me.”
“I shut down because I don’t know how to say I’m scared.”
When couples begin speaking this way, emotional safety grows. From safety comes trust. And from trust comes intimacy.
We help you slow down, breathe, and say what’s really going on—so you can stop reacting and start connecting again. Katie Ziskind, East Lyme, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, helps couples rebuild emotional intimacy and security. Emotional connection then paves the way for sexual pleasure, sexual curiosity, playfulness, and orgasms.
Rebuilding Trust In Marriage Therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling After Betrayal, Infidelity, or Pornography Addiction
If emotional disconnection has led to infidelity, compulsive masturbation, or pornography addiction, you may feel shattered. The betrayed partner often feels like their entire reality has been pulled out from under them, while the partner who acted out may feel ashamed, guilty, or emotionally lost.
Our infidelity counseling and sex addiction therapy in Niantic and East Lyme, CT is shame-reducing, emotionally honest, and sex-positive.
With our couples therapists, you process betrayal trauma, understand the root cause of these behaviors (often unmet emotional needs or early attachment trauma). And, in marriage therapy near Old Lyme, Connecticut, you can rebuild communication and trust brick by brick.
You deserve a relationship where both partners feel emotionally safe and sexually desired. Katie Ziskind, Gottman marriage therapist in Southeastern Connecticut, is the host of the All Things Love and Intimacy podcast. Her podcast is on Spotify and Apple podcasts. Katie Ziskind, East Lyme, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist specializes with the most difficult, painful conflict dynamics emotionally and sexually.
Start with Katie Ziskind, East Lyme, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, to rebuild emotional closeness and sexual intimacy.
Why Working with a Certified Sex Therapy-Informed Couples Specialist in East Lyme, Connecticut Matters
Not all couples therapists are trained to address emotional disconnection and sexual disconnection together. As a certified sex therapy-informed professional, I understand how lack of emotional safety in your relationship leads to problems with sexual intimacy—and how sexual disconnection deepens emotional distance.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we are LGBTQIA+ affirming, trauma-informed, and culturally sensitive. We welcome all kinds of couples—married, partnered, polyamorous, newly dating, or recovering from a breakup—and specialize in high-conflict couples, sexless marriages, and relationship repair after cheating.
Whether you need support with rebuilding sexual passion or simply learning how to talk about your feelings without shutting down or blowing up, we’re here to help.
We Also Support Highly Sensitive Children, Families, and Individuals
Many couples come to therapy also navigating stress at home with children.
We offer child counseling and play therapy in Niantic and East Lyme, Connecticut for highly sensitive kids struggling with transitions like divorce, bullying, or a new baby in the family.
Our family therapists are trained to help your child feel safe, regulate big emotions, and thrive—even when life at home is rocky.
When your child is supported, your relationship as co-parents strengthens, too. In person child therapy incorporates musical instruments, art, crafts, and creative therapies. As well, nature therapy and walk and talk therapy is available.
Fighting and emotional avoidance negatively impact your children.
When you’re stuck in constant fighting or emotional avoidance with your partner, your children feel it—even if they can’t fully explain what they’re sensing.
The energy of tension, silence, raised voices, slammed doors, or cold shoulders doesn’t just affect your relationship—it seeps into the emotional environment your children are growing up in.
Kids are incredibly intuitive. They notice when there’s distance, disconnection, or unspoken pain between their caregivers, and often internalize it as their fault, even if nothing is said directly to them.
Over time, children living in high-conflict or emotionally avoidant households may start to feel anxious, insecure, or overly responsible for keeping the peace.
Some may become quiet and withdrawn, others may act out to get attention—both are ways of coping with emotional instability at home. Your kids may grow up believing that love equals yelling, rejection, or walking on eggshells. This can shape how they form relationships in their own adult lives, often repeating painful patterns they witnessed, even if they swore they never would.
Couples therapy in East Lyme, Connecticut with Katie Ziskind helps you stop these generational patterns and build a new kind of emotional legacy.
Katie Ziskind, Niantic, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, guides you and your partner in healing your own attachment wounds so you can model emotional safety.
From couples counseling, you learn to model emotional connection, and repair in front of your children.
Instead of showing them conflict, avoidance, or coldness, you begin to show them what healthy love looks like—honest communication, respectful disagreement, and emotional closeness.
You learn how to listen, validate, and reconnect, not just for your marriage, but for the emotional wellbeing of your entire family. The most powerful gift you can give your children is two parents who know how to love each other well.
Start with Katie Ziskind, East Lyme, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, to create a calm, loving home environment for your children.
Take the First Step Toward Reconnection Today By Starting In Couples Counseling in East Lyme, Connecticut
Ready to feel close again?
Here’s how to get started with us at Wisdom Within Counseling near Old Lyme, Connecticut:
- Book a marriage therapy session time. Telehealth video therapy and in person marriage therapy are both options for you.
- We’ll send you a phone screening questionnaire and two other documents.
- After filling them out, text us at 860-451-9364 to let us know you’re ready.
- We’ll review your responses and officially reserve your time.
You deserve a romantic relationship that feels emotionally nourishing and sexually fulfilling. Let us help you find your way back to each other.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind, East Lyme, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, teaches couples how to rebuild emotional and sexual intimacy
Many couples come into therapy thinking, “We just can’t agree on anything—we fight about the smallest things.”
But the truth is, those small things aren’t really small. Arguing about where to go for dinner may really be about whether one partner feels considered or invisible.
Debates about spending money may represent a fear of chaos or control, while parenting disagreements often stem from a deeper longing to feel respected, competent, or like a united front.
Overall, Katie Ziskind helps you untangle these layered emotions so that instead of fighting on the surface, you get to the root—and heal it.
Katie Ziskind, East Lyme, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, teaches couples how to pause in the heat of an argument.
And, you learn to ask, “What’s really going on here emotionally?” When you can name that you’re feeling scared, anxious, or not prioritized, the argument starts to shift from an attack to a bid for connection. That’s the power of emotionally focused therapy—Katie helps each partner drop the armor, identify the emotional longing underneath the reactivity, and express it in a way that creates closeness rather than defensiveness.
Most couples aren’t fighting because they don’t love each other. They’re fighting because they don’t feel emotionally safe. If you learned in childhood that you had to be perfect to receive love—or that your needs were a burden—you may now be overly accommodating or resentful in your marriage. If your voice was ignored or mocked growing up, you may shut down to protect yourself.
These unconscious patterns are deeply human—and Katie Ziskind gently brings them to the surface so you can see each other with compassion, not contempt.
When partners begin to realize that their repeated arguments stem from childhood protection strategies—like perfectionism, people-pleasing, anger, or avoidance—they can make space for softness.
In session, Katie Ziskind helps couples slow everything down so they can stop blaming and start getting curious: Why do we keep fighting about this? What am I afraid of? And, what am I really needing from you?
That kind of emotional presence changes everything.
Start with Katie Ziskind, Niantic, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, to rebuild closeness, security, playfulness, and co-create a satisfying sex life.
Katie Ziskind, marriage therapist in Southeastern Connecticut, also helps couples repair trust after ruptures using Gottman Therapy.
Maybe one partner stormed out in anger, or another shut down completely. In therapy, Katie Ziskind, East Lyme, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, guides both people in expressing what was happening beneath the surface.
For instance, the fear, the hurt, the pain, the powerlessness, the rejection, and the shame. These vulnerable moments rewire your connection—you go from adversaries to allies. Instead of trying to win the fight, you both begin to win each other back.
In addition to emotionally focused therapy, Katie Ziskind uses somatic tools to help you track what’s happening in your body.
Conflict isn’t just emotional—it’s physiological. Your chest tightens, your heart races, your stomach knots.
By bringing awareness to your body cues, you can learn how to regulate your nervous system before things escalate. Katie Ziskind teaches you how to breathe, ground, and self-soothe, which allows for more meaningful conversations instead of shutdowns or explosions.
So when you’re arguing about dinner plans and it feels like World War III, you’ll start to notice: This isn’t just about food. This is about me feeling like I don’t matter. And instead of demanding or withdrawing, you’ll learn to say: I want to feel like a priority to you. That shift alone opens the door to closeness.
With Katie Ziskind’s support in marriage counseling in Southeastern Connecticut, couples begin to develop a shared language of emotional safety.
You learn how to say, “This is my inner child speaking,” or “I know I’m getting defensive, but I really want to connect with you.” These micro-moments of attunement begin to add up, and they create a whole new relationship culture—one where both partners feel safe, seen, and deeply valued.
Eventually, the small fights dissolve. Not because you agree on everything, but because you’ve learned how to hold space for your differences with love. You may still disagree about dinner, money, or parenting—but now those conversations are filled with curiosity and care instead of criticism and chaos.
This is what emotionally focused couples therapy with Katie Ziskind near Groton, Connecticut is all about.
It’s not about fixing your partner—it’s about understanding them. It’s not about getting rid of conflict—it’s about using it as a doorway to deeper connection. And when that shift happens, everything changes—from how you argue to how you make love to how you repair and reconnect.
How Does Katie Ziskind Use Gottman Therapy For Couples?
Katie Ziskind, LMFT, RYT500, founder of Wisdom Within Counseling and host of the All Things Love and Intimacy podcast, uses Gottman Method Couples Therapy as a foundational approach to help couples heal emotional and sexual disconnection, stop destructive conflict cycles, and rebuild trust, intimacy, and friendship in their relationship.
Here’s how Katie Ziskind uses Gottman therapy in her work with couples:
Assessment-Based Approach to Understand Your Relationship Dynamics
Katie Ziskind begins by assessing your unique couple dynamics using tools informed by Drs. John and Julie Gottman’s research on what makes relationships succeed or fail. This may include:
- Exploring your conflict style (escalating, anxiously attached, avoidant, etc.)
- Identifying the Four Horsemen (criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, contempt)
- Pinpointing strengths (shared rituals, emotional attunement, friendship)
She uses this foundation to tailor your therapy journey to the specific needs of your relationship, not a one-size-fits-all plan. Katie Ziskind, East Lyme, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, specializes with couples in distress, needing a unique approach.
🧡 Are you ready to transform your relationship from disconnected to deeply connected?
Book your couples therapy session with Katie Ziskind, certified sex therapy informed professional in East Lyme, Connecticut.
Together, you’ll learn how to break painful cycles, heal childhood wounds, and build a secure, joyful relationship that lasts.
In Couples Counseling, You Gain Gottman-Inspired Communication Tools to Stop Escalating Fights
In sessions, Katie Ziskind teaches you how to:
- Use soft startups instead of blaming or criticizing
- Replace defensiveness with personal responsibility
- Learn to repair in the middle of a fight rather than letting it spiral
- Self-soothe when you’re overwhelmed (especially important for avoidant partners)
- Turn toward each other instead of turning away
These practical tools help couples stop looping in painful patterns and start building emotional safety.
Gottman’s Love Maps and Bids for Connection
Katie Ziskind uses the concept of Love Maps—the inner world of your partner’s hopes, dreams, fears, and daily stressors—to help you rediscover emotional intimacy.
She also helps you notice and respond to “bids for connection”—the small everyday ways your partner is reaching out to you (a touch, a question, a sigh). Turning toward these bids builds emotional trust and prevents resentment from building.
Rebuilding Trust Using Gottman’s Atone, Attune, Attach Framework
For couples healing after betrayal, pornography addiction, infidelity, or emotional affairs, Katie incorporates Gottman’s “Atone, Attune, Attach” model:
- Atone: The hurt partner is validated; the partner who betrayed takes accountability without defensiveness.
- Attune: The couple learns to emotionally co-regulate and communicate in safer, softer ways.
- Attach: Rebuilding of emotional and sexual closeness through vulnerability, empathy, and sexual healing.
Katie Ziskind integrates this with her sex therapy-informed lens. In marriage counseling in Niantic, Connecticut, she specializes in helping couples talk openly about sex, pleasure, desire, and how emotional safety is the gateway to great sex.
Gottman-Informed Rituals of Connection and Daily Maintenance
To help couples maintain emotional closeness beyond therapy, Katie Ziskind guides partners in developing:
- Daily check-ins about emotions, not just tasks
- Weekly date nights with emotional intimacy, not just dinner
- Rituals of parting and reunions (how you say goodbye and reconnect each day)
These small habits, rooted in Gottman’s work, help couples build resilience and closeness even when life is busy or stressful. In emotionally focused couples counseling in East Lyme, Connecticut, Katie Ziskind helps couples stop negative cycles. Niantic, Connecticut couples therapy helps even the most tense, angry couples learn to connect and love more deeply than ever before.
Start with Katie Ziskind, Niantic, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, to rebuild emotional connection after high conflict fights.
A Blend of Gottman with Emotionally Focused and Somatic Therapy For Couples
While Gottman therapy provides the structure, Katie Ziskind also blends it with Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) to address attachment wounds, and somatic/mind-body tools to help partners stay grounded during emotional conversations. Her unique blend supports both logical, practical skills and deep emotional healing.
Marriage therapy with Katie Ziskind using Imago Therapy and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) helps you and your partner break toxic cycles of fighting by getting underneath the surface arguments.
And, from specialized help for your emotionally disconnected marriage, you can get into the real emotional needs and childhood wounds driving the pain in your relationship. Katie Ziskind specializes in intimacy counseling for couples in Southeastern Connecticut.
Here’s exactly how these methods work together to stop fights, reduce blame, and rebuild connection:
🔁 See the Fight as a Repetition of Old Wounds – Not Just “This Moment”
In Imago therapy, Katie Ziskind helps you understand that the conflict you’re having today isn’t just about forgetting the dishes or being late again—it’s about early emotional injuries that got activated.
Maybe, you felt unheard as a child, so being ignored by your partner feels like rejection. Maybe you were criticized harshly, so even gentle feedback feels like an attack.
👉 With Imago Marriage Therapy, Katie Ziskind teaches you to ask: “What is this fight really about?”
This helps both partners stop reacting from pain and start listening with empathy.
💬 Slow Down & Mirror – So You Can Really Hear Each Other
When fights escalate, no one is really listening. You both interrupt, defend, or shut down. Katie uses Imago’s intentional dialogue process, where one person talks, and the other:
- Mirrors back exactly what they heard (“What I heard you say is…”)
- Validates the partner’s experience (“That makes sense because…”)
- Expresses empathy (“I imagine that might feel…”)
👉 This process slows down the cycle, reduces miscommunication, and creates emotional safety.
💔 Identify the Cycle – EFT’s Magic Formula
Emotionally Focused Therapy helps you name your pursue-withdraw or attack-defend cycle. Katie helps you map out:
- What triggers each of you
- How you protect yourselves (yelling, shutting down, blaming, walking out)
- How those protections accidentally hurt your partner
You learn to say, “When you pull away, I panic and get louder. But that just makes you shut down more.”
👉 This new awareness helps you both see the cycle as the enemy—not each other.
🧠 Shift from Blame to Vulnerability
Instead of saying, “You never listen,” you’ll learn to say,
➡️ “When you turn away, I feel invisible. I just want to know I matter to you.”
Instead of, “You’re too needy,” you’ll learn to say,
➡️ “When you get upset, I feel like I’m failing you—and I don’t know how to fix it, so I shut down.”
These moments of honesty soften your interactions and make fights feel safer. Katie helps you practice these new patterns in session, so you’re ready to use them at home.
🔄 Break the Loop by Creating New Emotional Experiences Together
Through guided exercises, Katie helps you:
- Repair fights before they escalate
- Understand what your partner needs in moments of stress
- Offer comfort, reassurance, and co-regulation
- Replace patterns of disconnection with moments of bonding
👉 You stop recycling the past and start creating new, healing experiences together.
❤️ Bring Back Emotional and Sexual Closeness From Marriage Therapy in East Lyme, Connecticut
Many couples fight because they feel emotionally or sexually rejected. Katie integrates trauma-informed, sex-positive healing—so that as you repair emotionally, you can also rebuild:
- Physical affection
- Trust after sexual avoidance or betrayal
- Open conversations about pleasure, foreplay, and sexual needs
The safer your emotional bond, the better your sex life—and vice versa.
🛠️ Practice Tools In Couples Counseling in Mystic, Connecticut You Can Use in Real Life
Katie gives you simple, practical tools to:
- De-escalate tension in real time
- Check in emotionally before conflict boils over
- Use “repair attempts” (a Gottman concept) to interrupt a fight with humor, honesty, or care
- Build emotional intimacy with rituals of connection
👉 These aren’t just couples therapy insights. They’re real skills you’ll use for the rest of your relationship. Katie Ziskind is a Niantic, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, who is passionate about helping couples break high conflict cycles.
💬 One Couple’s Example:
“We used to scream at each other about chores. Now I understand he’s overwhelmed and shuts down when he feels like a failure. That insight changed everything.”
Katie Ziskind, LMFT, RYT500, founder of Wisdom Within Counseling, helps couples understand and heal from inner child wounds caused by critical or narcissistic parents.
When you grow up with a highly critical or narcissistic parent, or you were labeled the “problem child,” it plants seeds of shame, unworthiness, and self-doubt deep inside your nervous system. As a child, you may have learned to suppress your emotions to avoid punishment, or you may have tried to become perfect to earn love and approval that always seemed just out of reach. These are not small wounds.
Childhood traumas become your emotional blueprint—and they follow you into your adult relationships.
These early experiences often create powerful inner child wounds that get activated during conflict in marriage.
If your parent constantly criticized you, you may have learned that love is conditional.
So now, when your partner offers feedback or brings up a concern, you may feel attacked, rejected, or deeply unsafe—even if they’re being gentle. Your nervous system doesn’t respond to this moment—it responds to the old wound.
Many people who were emotionally neglected or scapegoated in childhood unconsciously attract emotionally unavailable, unpredictable, or even critical partners.
Your inner child is still trying to rewrite the story, to finally feel chosen or good enough. But when fights erupt, you may find yourself overreacting, shutting down, or lashing out—not because you don’t love your partner. This is because a younger part of you is terrified of being abandoned, unimportant, abused, blamed, or unseen again.
In emotionally focused couples therapy with Katie Ziskind, we slow down the conflict to uncover what’s really happening underneath the surface.
Katie Ziskind, Gottman marriage therapist in Southeastern Connecticut, gently helps each partner trace their triggers back to childhood.
When you felt invisible, punished for expressing feelings, or had to be the adult in the family.
She teaches you to notice when your partner’s reactions are really a younger version of themselves trying to protect a raw, vulnerable place.
Instead of seeing your partner as mean, needy, cold, or overreacting, Katie Ziskind, Gottman marriage therapist in Southeastern Connecticut, helps you see the wounded child inside them—just trying to get their unmet love needs heard. This is a radical shift.
You start to see each other with compassion, not criticism. You realize that the fight is not really about the dishwasher or being five minutes late—it’s about longing to feel safe, understood, and valued.
Start with Katie Ziskind, Niantic, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, to rebuild closeness, security, playfulness, and co-create a satisfying sex life.
Many high-conflict couples find that their arguments mirror the emotional chaos of their childhood homes.
With Katie’s trauma-informed and attachment-based approach, couples begin to name these patterns: “When you yell, I freeze like I used to with my dad,” or “When you shut down, I feel abandoned like I did when my mom ignored me.” Naming the wound is the first step in healing it.
Through a blend of Emotionally Focused Therapy and Imago Therapy, Katie Ziskind teaches couples to move from reactive blaming to intentional emotional vulnerability.
You learn how to say things like, “When we fight, I feel like that little girl who was always told she was too much,” or “When you leave the room, I feel like I don’t matter—just like I felt growing up.” These are breakthrough moments of connection.
Instead of repeating the old pain, couples begin creating new emotional experiences together—ones rooted in safety, softness, and attunement.
Katie Ziskind, Gottman marriage therapist in Southeastern Connecticut, teaches you to speak from your inner child and listen to your partner’s inner child.
Over time, this rewires your relationship. You go from high-conflict and chaos to mutual regulation and understanding. You become each other’s safe place.
Katie Ziskind, Gottman marriage therapist in Southeastern Connecticut, also offers somatic and body-based techniques. Somatic couples therapy helps to calm your nervous system in real time, helping you stay present during hard conversations instead of dissociating, yelling, or shutting down. These tools are essential when early trauma is stored in the body. Healing from trauma is not just cognitive—it’s emotional, physical, and relational.
At Wisdom Within Counseling in Niantic, Connecticut, you’re not just learning communication skills—you’re learning how to love and be loved from a deeper, truer place.
By healing your inner child with compassion, you finally stop needing to fight for love.
Instead, with Katie Ziskind, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, you begin building a relationship where love feels safe. Couples counseling teaches you how to co-create love that is consistent, and unconditional. You can break negative generational patterns of dysfunction, emotional neglect, and pain from the awareness you gain in marriage therapy.
Start with Katie Ziskind, Niantic, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, to rebuild closeness, security, playfulness, and co-create a satisfying sex life.
Are you looking for emotionally focused therapy, sex addiction recovery, couples counseling, or support for your inner child wounds?
Many people reach a point in their relationship where old childhood pain, disconnection in the bedroom, and high-conflict communication patterns become too overwhelming to manage without help.
At Wisdom Within Counseling in East Lyme, Connecticut, you’ll find trauma-informed care designed to help you rebuild emotional and sexual intimacy—starting from the inside out.
As a certified sex therapy informed professional in East Lyme, Connecticut, Katie Ziskind blends emotionally focused couples therapy with sex-positive education, inner child healing, and mind-body tools.
Whether you’re struggling with pornography addiction, masturbation addiction, infidelity, or the aftermath of betrayal trauma, Katie Ziskind offers a compassionate, non-shaming space to understand what’s beneath the surface of the behavior—because addiction is never really about sex. It’s about loneliness, shame, and disconnection from your partner and yourself.
Emotionally focused therapy helps couples break the patterns that keep you stuck in painful loops—like shutting down, stonewalling, or criticizing each other when emotions get too intense. When you work with Katie Ziskind, you’ll learn how to share your feelings in a safe, open way and build a secure emotional bond that supports trust, passion, and real intimacy.
If you grew up in a home where love felt conditional, where you were told you were too sensitive, too much, or never enough, you might be carrying unresolved inner child wounds into your relationship.
These childhood emotional injuries often show up in the form of anxiety, people-pleasing, sexual avoidance, or the fear of being rejected.
As a certified sex therapy informed professional in East Lyme, Connecticut, Katie Ziskind specializes in helping you explore these deeper wounds and make sense of how they play out in your current relationship.
Sex addiction is often a symptom of emotional suppression. If you or your partner use pornography, masturbation, or casual sex to avoid closeness or self-soothe in secret, Katie can help you understand the emotional and relational roots of the behavior. Recovery isn’t just about stopping the habit—it’s about learning how to turn toward your partner for comfort, validation, and pleasure. Katie Ziskind, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, understands anxious and avoidant attachment styles. Right in each therapy session, she teaches you how to build a secure attachment style. You become each other’s safe space.
In couples counseling, Katie Ziskind helps you and your partner reconnect on an emotional level first—because without emotional intimacy, sexual intimacy often feels forced, robotic, or nonexistent.
She helps you create a safe space to express vulnerable feelings, talk about unmet needs, and learn how to repair ruptures quickly so resentments don’t build. This kind of therapy is deeply transformative—and completely changes the way you relate to each other.
One of the key benefits of working with a certified sex therapy informed professional in East Lyme, Connecticut is the permission to talk openly about desire, boundaries, and pleasure without shame. So many couples have never learned how to have these conversations. Katie Ziskind guides you in learning how to talk about what you need—not just sexually, but emotionally—so you both feel seen and valued.
When your nervous system is dysregulated from unresolved trauma or chronic stress, it’s almost impossible to have a satisfying sex life.
Katie Ziskind weaves in somatic and mindfulness-based techniques to help you calm your body, ground yourself, and stay connected during emotional or sexual moments. These skills help you build a foundation of trust that lasts.
Start with Katie Ziskind, Niantic, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, to rebuild closeness, security, playfulness, and co-create a satisfying sex life.
Couples therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling is designed for real people—people who want more than surface-level fixes.
It’s for couples who are ready to dig deep, to create emotional safety, to rebuild sexual connection, and to grow as individuals and as partners. Whether you’ve been together for six months or sixteen years, you can change your dynamic and feel close again.
If you’re ready to rebuild trust, feel more emotionally connected, or heal from sex addiction or betrayal, working with a certified sex therapy informed professional in East Lyme, Connecticut could be the exact support you need.
Start in East Lyme, Connecticut couples therapy with Gottman specialist and attachment specialist, Katie Ziskind, today.
If you and your partner keep arguing about where to go to dinner, how much money to spend, or how to parent the kids, the issue isn’t really the dinner, the dollars, or the discipline. These daily conflicts are often surface-level representations of something much deeper—something emotional, vulnerable, and rooted in your attachment patterns and childhood stories.
At Wisdom Within Counseling near Old Lyme, Connecticut, Katie Ziskind helps you and your partner gently bring those unconscious patterns to the surface. So, you can stop repeating the same fight and start actually understanding each other.
You might think, Why does it always turn into a fight when we’re just trying to pick a restaurant?
But, underneath the disagreement, one partner may be longing to feel chosen, considered, or important, while the other may be feeling pressured, controlled, or not good enough. These hidden emotions drive the conflict—until you learn how to slow down and listen with curiosity, not defense.
Katie Ziskind uses emotionally focused therapy and trauma-informed couples counseling to help you and your partner uncover what’s beneath the argument.
When you’re fighting over spending money, it may actually be about childhood messages around scarcity, survival, or safety. One partner may have grown up in a home where money was always tight, while the other may have learned to equate spending with love or freedom. Katie creates a safe space for you both to understand those emotional blueprints and soften toward each other.
Even when couples are arguing about parenting—how to handle bedtime, screen time, or discipline—Katie Ziskind helps you see that those aren’t just logistical decisions.
They’re loaded with emotional meaning.
One partner may be reacting to how they were raised—maybe they swore they’d never be as strict or as permissive as their parents. These arguments are really about your values, fears, and the desire to feel respected as a team.
With her warm, attuned, and direct style, Katie Ziskind teaches couples how to name what’s actually happening in the moment.
Instead of saying, “You never care what I want for dinner,” a partner learns to say, “When I feel like my needs don’t matter, I feel unseen and hurt.”
This shift—speaking from the deeper emotional layer—is what begins to transform patterns of blame into connection.
Katie Ziskind guides you to notice when your nervous system is activated during conflict.
Are you going into fight mode—raising your voice or demanding answers?
Or are you shutting down and avoiding?
Through mindfulness-based, body-aware techniques, she helps each of you regulate before reacting, so you can actually hear and understand each other, instead of going in circles.
Begin with Katie Ziskind, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, who understand anxious and avoidant attachment styles.
In couples therapy, she teaches you how to build a secure attachment style.
When you bring your negative patterns into the light, you can co-create emotional intimacy and sexual connection.
Katie Ziskind, near Old Lyme, Connecticut, gently helps couples see how they may be re-creating childhood wounds in their relationship. For instance, feeling unimportant, unheard, or not good enough. And, she teaches you how to co-create new relational experiences where you feel safe, valued, and loved.
You begin to say things you’ve never said before: “I get loud because I feel afraid you’ll leave me if I don’t push for closeness,” or “I pull away because I’m scared I’ll mess everything up if I say the wrong thing.” These honest moments are what create emotional intimacy. They dissolve the power struggle and replace it with empathy.
Couples often say, “We thought we were just fighting about pizza or parenting, but we were actually fighting to feel emotionally secure with each other.” That’s the magic of emotionally focused couples therapy with Katie Ziskind—it brings clarity to the chaos. You learn how to be each other’s safe place again.
At Wisdom Within Counseling near Old Lyme, Connecticut, you don’t just learn communication techniques—you learn how to show up for each other emotionally, in ways your inner child always needed.
With Katie Ziskind’s guidance, couples move from tension to tenderness, from misunderstanding to repair, and from cycles of fighting to a shared sense of love, teamwork, and emotional safety. Katie Ziskind helps couples bring deeper emotional patterns into conscious awareness—especially when you are stuck in everyday arguments over dinner plans, spending, or parenting. At Wisdom Within Counseling near Old Lyme, Connecticut, you get to co-create emotional and sexual intimacy.
Begin the journey back to a loving, intimate partnership where both of you can thrive.
How couples fight about sex and how Katie Ziskind supports rebuilding desire through playful connection
When sex becomes a source of tension, it’s often because emotional needs beneath the surface aren’t being met. You might be longing for reassurance, affection, or a deeper sense of safety, but instead feel pressure, shame, or confusion.
These feelings create a barrier to desire because true sexual connection thrives in an environment where you feel accepted and free to express your authentic self. Katie Ziskind helps you and your partner identify these emotional blocks and gently heal the wounds that keep desire stuck or fading.
One of the most powerful shifts Katie guides couples toward is reclaiming sexual intimacy through fun and playfulness in their relationship.
Sexual connection isn’t just about intercourse—it’s about touch, laughter, flirting, and shared moments that build anticipation and joy.
When you learn to tease each other with curiosity and lightheartedness, you reset your nervous systems from stress to pleasure. This playful energy creates a safe container where desire can naturally flourish, making sex something you both look forward to, rather than dread or avoid.
Katie Ziskind also teaches couples how to slow down and savor intimacy without rushing to sexual “performance,” “ejaculation” or “completion.”
This means focusing on emotional foreplay—meaningful conversations, gentle touch, eye contact, and vulnerability—which sets the stage for a fulfilling sexual experience.
You and your partner learn to honor each other’s rhythms and boundaries, turning sex into a dance of connection rather than a checklist.
With consistent practice and compassionate guidance, your sexual relationship transforms into a source of joy, trust, and deep emotional bonding.
Ready to break free from the cycle of frustration and rediscover joyful, connected intimacy?
Reach out to Katie Ziskind at Wisdom Within Counseling in East Lyme, Connecticut. As a certified sex therapy informed professional, Katie will guide you and your partner in rebuilding desire, communication, and playful connection—so sex feels exciting, safe, and deeply satisfying again.
Start with Katie Ziskind, Niantic, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, to rebuild closeness, security, playfulness, and co-create a satisfying sex life.
Schedule your couples therapy session today and start your journey toward emotional bonding and sexual healing.
Inner child work in couples therapy with Katie Ziskind, East Lyme, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, opens the door to profound healing and transformation.
When you bring awareness to the unmet needs and wounds from your childhood, you start to understand why certain patterns—like anxious or avoidant attachment—show up in your relationship. Katie helps you both gently reconnect with those vulnerable parts inside, creating space for compassion instead of blame. This deep emotional work softens defenses and breaks the cycles that have kept you stuck in fear, distance, or frustration.
As you begin to understand the anxious-avoidant attachment style dance, something remarkable happens: closeness grows naturally.
The anxious partner feels seen and reassured, while the avoidant partner learns to stay present without feeling overwhelmed. Katie Ziskind, Old Lyme, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, guides you to develop new ways of relating that honor both your needs for connection and space.
This balance builds the warmth and emotional safety you’ve both been longing for, creating a secure foundation for your relationship to thrive.
With emotional safety restored, the playfulness and joy in your connection can fully return. Inner child healing opens your hearts to laughter, teasing, and spontaneous moments of fun—the very things that fuel desire and sexual intimacy.
As you grow more attuned to each other’s needs and rhythms, your sexual connection blossoms into an expression of trust, warmth, and genuine pleasure. Together, you build a relationship where both partners feel deeply safe, cherished, and free to be their authentic selves—finally experiencing the love and closeness you’ve been craving.
Your relationship deserves the specialized marriage therapy care and attention that will help it thrive. Don’t wait for another painful fight —take the first step now!
Begin with Katie Ziskind, Connecticut Gottman marriage therapist, who understand anxious and avoidant attachment styles.
She teaches you how to build a secure attachment style.
💬 “We thought we were just fighting about stupid things… but we were really fighting to feel loved.”
Before we started couples therapy with Katie Ziskind at Wisdom Within Counseling, we were stuck in the same exhausting cycle.
One of us always wanted more closeness, more reassurance, more sex—and the other felt overwhelmed, distant, or shut down. We’d argue over little things like dinner, chores, or how to parent the kids, but deep down, we were both hurting and disconnected.
Through Katie Ziskind’s warm, trauma-informed approach, we discovered how much of our relationship stress was actually coming from childhood wounds—inner child parts of us that felt unseen, not good enough, or afraid of being left. Katie helped us bring those younger parts into the light and offer compassion, instead of criticism. It changed everything.
We began to understand our anxious and avoidant dynamics—and more importantly, how to heal them.
The fights slowed down, the blaming stopped. We started laughing again. Touching again. Wanting each other again. With Katie Ziskind’s guidance, we’ve created a relationship that finally feels emotionally safe, sexually connected, and deeply loving. This is what real marital healing feels like.
Benefits of Telehealth Video Therapy for Couples Without a Local Specialist
When you and your partner are facing relationship challenges, finding the right therapist can feel overwhelming—especially if you live in a small town, a rural area, or simply don’t have access to a specialist nearby.
That’s where telehealth video therapy for high conflict becomes a game-changer. Through secure, HIPAA-compliant platforms, couples therapy via video allows you to get the same expert support you’d receive in person—without leaving your home.
Access to a true Gottman marriage therapist and high conflict couples therapy specialist via telehealth:
Maybe your local options don’t include a certified sex therapy informed professional or someone trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) or Imago. With telehealth video therapy, you’re not limited by geography.
You can work with Katie Ziskind, a marriage and intimacy specialist in East Lyme, Connecticut, even if you live across the state—or across the country—because video therapy brings her expertise straight to your living room.
Convenience and flexibility:
No traffic, no babysitter, and no driving in bad weather. With telehealth, you can attend sessions from the comfort of your home or office, making it easier to fit therapy into your busy schedule. Many high conflict couples even find it easier to open up when they’re in a familiar environment, like their couch, with a cup of tea in hand.
Telehealth video couples therapy is ideal for emotionally intense topics:
Talking about sex, betrayal, or childhood wounds can feel vulnerable. Sometimes, being in your own space during these sessions makes it easier to stay emotionally regulated. You can move around, grab a comfort object, or take a moment if you need one—something harder to do in a traditional office setting.
Continuity and consistency:
Telehealth eliminates the stress of canceled sessions due to travel, illness, or logistical issues. When life gets busy, video therapy helps you and your partner stay on track with regular sessions, which is crucial for building momentum, especially during high-conflict or emotionally distant periods in your relationship.
Emotional safety + privacy:
For many high conflict couples, being seen in a local waiting room feels uncomfortable—especially when dealing with intimate concerns like pornography addiction, low desire, infidelity, or constant fighting. Telehealth offers a layer of privacy that gives couples the courage to finally reach out for the help they’ve been needing.
Whether you’re navigating communication breakdowns, intimacy blocks, or deep unresolved wounds, video therapy with Katie Ziskind can help you reconnect, heal, and thrive as a couple—no matter where you live.
Where in Connecticut can you work with Katie Ziskind, trained Gottman marriage therapist?
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, 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, Connecticut.
Where in Florida can you work with Katie Ziskind, trained Gottman marriage therapist?
Alachua, Altamonte Springs, Anna Maria, Apalachicola, Apopka, Arcadia, Archer, Atlantic Beach, Aventura, Avon Park, Aventura, Bal Harbour, Bartow, Bay Harbor Islands, Belle Glade, Belle Isle, Belleview, Beverly Hills, Biscayne Park, Blountstown, Boca Raton, Bonifay, Bonita Springs, Boynton Beach, Bradenton, Bradenton Beach, Brandon, Bristol, Brooksville, Bunnell, Bushnell, Callahan, Cape Canaveral, Cape Coral, Carrabelle, Casselberry, Cedar Key, Chattahoochee, Chiefland, Chipley, Clearwater, Clermont, Clewiston, Cocoa, Cocoa Beach, Coconut Creek, Coleman, Cooper City, Coral Gables, Coral Springs, Crescent City, Crestview, Cross City, Crystal River.
Experience expert Florida video therapy with Katie Ziskind, a certified sex therapy informed professional, to rebuild emotional connection, sexual intimacy, and trust from the comfort of your home.
Dade City, Dania Beach, Davenport, Davie, Daytona Beach, DeFuniak Springs, DeLand, Deerfield Beach, Destin, Dunedin, Dundee, Dunellon, Eagle Lake, Edgewater, Eglin AFB, Englewood, Estero, Eustis, Everglades City, Fernandina Beach, Flagler Beach, Florida City, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Meade.
As well, Fort Myers, Fort Myers Beach, Fort Pierce, Fort Walton Beach, Freeport, Frostproof, Gainesville, Gulf Breeze, Gulfport, Green Cove Springs, Greenacres, Groveland, Gulfport, Haines City, Hallandale Beach, Havana, Hialeah, Hialeah Gardens, High Springs, Highland Beach, Holly Hill, Florida.
Hollywood, Holmes Beach, Homestead, Hypoluxo, Indialantic, Indian Harbour Beach, Indian Rocks Beach, Indian Shores, Inverness, Islamorada, Jacksonville, Jacksonville Beach, Jasper, Jay, Jensen Beach, Jupiter, Key Biscayne, Key Colony Beach, Key Largo, Key West, Kissimmee, LaBelle, Lady Lake, Lake Alfred, Lake City, Lake Helen, Lake Mary, Lake Park, Lake Placid.
And, Lake Wales, Lake Worth Beach, Lakeland, Largo, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Lauderhill, Leesburg, Lighthouse Point, Live Oak, Longboat Key, Longwood, Lynn Haven, Macclenny, Madeira Beach, Madison, Maitland, Malabar, Marathon, Marco Island, Margate, Florida.
Working with an out-of-network Gottman marriage therapist who is a specialist—especially for couples therapy—is actually easier than you might think.
And, meeting with a specialist in marriage counseling is one of the most powerful decisions you make for your relationship.
In Florida, work Katie Ziskind, Gottman marriage therapist, in Marianna, Mary Esther, Mascotte, Melbourne, Melbourne Beach, Merritt Island, Mexico Beach, Miami, Miami Beach, Miami Gardens, Miami Lakes, Micanopy, Middleburg, Milton, Minneola, Miramar, Monticello, Mount Dora, Naples, Neptune Beach, New Port Richey, New Smyrna Beach, Niceville, North Fort Myers, North Lauderdale, North Miami, North Miami Beach.
North Palm Beach, North Port, Oakland Park, Ocala, Ocean Ridge, Ocoee, Okeechobee, Oldsmar, Opa-locka, Orange City, Orange Park, Orlando, Ormond Beach, Oviedo, Palatka, Palm Bay, Palm Beach, Palm Beach Gardens, Palm Coast, Palmetto, Panama City, Panama City Beach, Parker, Parkland, Pembroke Pines, Pensacola, Perry, Pinecrest, Pinellas Park, Plantation, Pompano Beach, Ponce Inlet, Ponte Vedra Beach, Port Charlotte.
As well, Port Orange, Port St. Joe, Port St. Lucie, Punta Gorda, Quincy, Riviera Beach, Rockledge, Royal Palm Beach, St. Augustine, St. Augustine Beach, St. Cloud, St. Pete Beach, St. Petersburg, Safety Harbor, Sanford, Sanibel, Sarasota, Satellite Beach, Sebastian, Sebring, Seminole, Seaside, Shalimar, Silver Springs, Sneads, Sopchoppy, South Bay, South Miami, South Pasadena, Spring Hill, Starke, Stuart, Sunny Isles Beach, Sunrise, Surfside, Sweetwater, Tallahassee, Tamarac, Tampa, Tarpon Springs, Tavares, Temple Terrace, Tequesta, Titusville, Treasure Island, Trenton, Umatilla, Valparaiso.
Venice, Vernon, Vero Beach, Wauchula, Wellington, West Melbourne, West Miami, West Palm Beach, Weston, Westville, Wildwood, Williston, Wilton Manors, Windermere, Winter Garden, Winter Haven, Winter Park, Winter Springs, Yulee, Zephyrhills, Florida.
When you’re looking for someone with advanced marriage therapy training, like a certified sex therapy informed professional, emotionally focused couples therapist, or a couples counselor who deeply understands anxious and avoidant attachments styles and childhood trauma, they will not be in-network with insurance.
But that doesn’t mean you’re stuck paying everything out of pocket with no support.
Here’s how it works: you pay the Katie Ziskind’s session fee upfront. And, she gives you something called a superbill. A superbill is a detailed receipt that includes all the information your insurance company needs to consider reimbursing you directly.
Your superbill will show the therapist’s credentials, their tax ID, the CPT codes (billing codes for therapy services), and how much you paid. You then submit that superbill to your insurance company—usually through their member portal or by mailing it in—and your insurance may send you a reimbursement check depending on your out-of-network benefits.
To get started, call the number on the back of your insurance card and ask:
👉 “What are my out-of-network benefits for outpatient psychotherapy (CPT code 90847 & 90847-95 for couples therapy)?”
👉 “Do I need to meet a deductible first?”
👉 “What percentage will I be reimbursed once that deductible is met?”
Working with a specialist like Katie Ziskind may feel like a bigger financial investment at first.
When you’re dealing with big relationship issues—infidelity, disconnection, sexless marriage, childhood trauma wounds playing out in your fights—you want a therapist who is highly trained to help you heal.
And with a superbill, you may get a significant portion reimbursed, making expert care for your marriage more accessible than it might seem.
Why pay privately for relationship coaching to work with a specialist, and forgo using out of network insurance benefits at all?
Paying privately for relationship coaching instead of using out-of-network (OON) insurance benefits gives you access to customized, specialized support without the limitations and restrictions of insurance.
When you work with a relationship coach like Katie Ziskind—who is a certified sex therapy informed professional and couples specialist—you’re investing in faster progress.
You get deeper healing, and a level of privacy and flexibility that insurance-based therapy can’t always offer.
With private-pay coaching, you’re not limited by a diagnosis. Insurance companies require therapists to diagnose at least one partner with a mental health disorder in order to reimburse sessions—even if your issue is relational or rooted in trauma, communication breakdowns, or sexual disconnection.
This can feel pathologizing and inaccurate. You don’t have a diagnosis with marriage coaching. Private-pay marriage coaching removes that burden. Instead, you focus on growth, connection, and emotional intimacy as the goals—not treating a “disorder.”
You’re also not at the mercy of insurance red tape. No waiting for reimbursement, no surprise denials, no session duration or frequency limits, no audits. Just safe, confidential, expert Gottman marriage support when you need it most.
Paying privately is also about intention. When couples choose to invest financially, they’re often more committed, more engaged, and more motivated to do the emotional work.
You’re saying, “This relationship matters. We deserve the best care.”
Why Investing in Private Pay Relationship Coaching Is Worth It
When your relationship is in distress, you don’t need a generalist. You need a Gottman marriage specialist.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we offer private pay relationship coaching with Katie Ziskind, a certified sex therapy informed professional and marriage specialist.
Choosing to invest privately—rather than going through insurance—means you get the focused, high-quality care your marriage and relationship truly deserves.
🚫 No Diagnosis, No Red Tape, Just Real Results
When you use insurance for couples therapy, one partner must be diagnosed with a mental health disorder.
But your marriage isn’t a disorder—it’s a dynamic. It’s communication breakdowns, childhood wounds, trust issues, intimacy fears, and so much more. With private pay coaching, we skip the diagnosis and focus on what actually matters: helping both of you feel heard, seen, and emotionally safe.
❤️ You Deserve a Gottman Marriage and Relationship Specialist, Not Just a General Provider
Relationship coaching with Katie Ziskind is not cookie-cutter therapy. She brings over a decade of experience in helping couples rebuild trust after infidelity, heal anxious-avoidant dynamics, reconnect sexually, and break toxic communication patterns. You’re not getting surface-level advice—you’re getting deep, transformational support designed just for your relationship.
💡 What You Get With Gottman Marriage Coaching and Private Pay Coaching:
- Direct access to a highly trained Gottman and trauma trained relationship expert
- No insurance limitations or session caps
- Complete privacy—no diagnosis on your medical record
- Freedom to work on relational, emotional, sexual, and spiritual issues
- Flexible structure tailored to your unique goals
📈 Couples Who Invest in Gottman Marriage Coaching See Real Change
Private pay clients are all in. They’re ready to shift old patterns, learn emotional tools, and show up consistently.
When you invest your time, energy, and resources into Gottman marriage coaching, you’re signaling that your relationship matters. That intention changes everything. Investing time and attention in Gottman marriage coaching builds accountability. Gottman marriage coaching creates momentum, and stops negative patterns from repeating. It helps your love life grow emotionally and sexually again.
🧠 Coaching vs. Therapy: What’s the Difference?
Coaching is future-focused. It’s about building new patterns, learning tools, and creating forward momentum. Gottman therapy is often focused on symptom management and past trauma diagnosis.
While both are valuable, coaching offers you a more dynamic, action-oriented container for transformation—especially if you don’t want a mental health diagnosis in your medical records. Or, if you want to do intensive Gottman marriage coaching sessions to get on top of your issues.
🌎 Work with Katie Ziskind from Anywhere
We work with couples virtually all across the U.S. and internationally worldwide via secure video sessions. Whether you’re in Connecticut, Florida, or another state, you can access expert coaching without ever leaving home. It’s perfect for busy professionals, long-distance couples, or those seeking total privacy.
🕊️ This Is an Investment in Your Future
Your relationship is the foundation of your family, your emotional health, and your sense of stability. When your marriage dynamic not working, everything else suffers. Your parenting suffers. And, your home feels chaotic for your children too.
Investing in private relationship coaching with Katie Ziskind is a powerful act of love. You’re choosing healing – healing your inner child wounds. And, you’re choosing long-term reconnection skills and you’re choosing to grow—together.
👉 Ready to Start?
Step 1: Visit our website and book a couples coaching time with our Gottman and trauma specialists. We’ll run your card to confirm the session you book. All clients must have a credit, debit, or HSA card on file.
Step 2: Fill out the screening questionnaire we send.
Step 3: We’ll text you to confirm your session again.
📞 Questions? Text us at 860-451-9364
