Grow Up Walking On Eggshells? How Anxiety Impacts Your Marriage Conflicts – Specialized Marriage Counseling For Highly Anxious People, People Pleasing and Perfectionism Traits, Breaking Cycles of Sexual Avoidance

Are you feeling overwhelmed, chronically anxious, not sure how to stop obsessive thoughts, and always feel pulled in a thousand directions? In the middle of the night, do you wake up and can’t sleep due to anxious thoughts? Do you remember learning to walk on eggshells growing up, taking care of your highly anxious mother’s anxiety? Ever wondered how anxiety impacts your marriage fights? Was you dad explosive at times, have rage issues, and did you always try to keep him happy? Did you always have to keep the peace when you were a child, never being too outspoken, or your father would get very angry? At Wisdom Within Counseling, our therapists offer specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people, perfectionists, and OCD. We help couples break cycles of sexual avoidance.

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Were you given adult responsibilities as a child, and parentified?

In your childhood, did you have to perform and be perfect all the time, to keep your parents happy? As a child, did you have to excel in school or in sports to get praise and good attention from your parents?

When you carry high levels of anxiety into your relationship, it can quietly sabotage the intimacy and emotional safety you long for.

You and your spouse may be feeling hopeless after fights.

Do you and your spouse end up talking in circles, never feeling heard, understood, or closer?

Needing professional help saving your marriage, with a specialist who is an expert in couples counseling?

At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind specializes in helping distant couples build meaningful connection. You might find yourself stuck in cycles of sexual avoidance—not because you don’t love your partner, but because the idea of closeness feels overwhelming, pressured, or unsafe.

If you’ve learned to be a people pleaser growing up—always anticipating others’ needs, avoiding conflict, and doing what’s expected—it can be incredibly hard to express your own feelings, needs, or desires in your marriage. Over time, this creates distance, frustration, and deep emotional disconnection between you and your partner.

Being highly anxious often means you’re trying to be perfect, never rock the boat, and keep everything under control.

But in an intimate relationship, emotional messiness is necessary for real closeness.

If you hold in your anxiety, resentment, or fears of rejection, they don’t go away—they build up. You may start arguments about chores or timing, but what’s really underneath are hidden emotions: rejection, hurt, anger, abandonment, neglect, or powerlessness. These feelings never get named, so they never get resolved. Instead, couples get stuck in a cycle—one partner withdraws, the other gets louder, and no one feels seen.

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Couples counseling helps you break these exhausting cycles of disconnection.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind creates a calm, compassionate space where both of you can slow down, understand your emotional patterns, and learn to respond to each other with empathy instead of reactivity. Therapy helps you both learn to talk about the deeper emotions underneath your arguments. Instead of saying, “You never want sex,” you begin to share, “I feel unwanted and alone.” Instead of, “You’re always nagging,” you say, “I feel scared I’m not good enough for you.” These moments build emotional safety, one conversation at a time.

For highly anxious partners, therapy in Southeastern Connecticut teaches how to stop holding everything in. You don’t have to keep trying to be perfect.

You get to be real. In marriage counseling for anxiety, you learn how to share your anxiety with your partner instead of managing it all alone. You begin to say things like, “I’m afraid if I’m not perfect, you’ll leave,” or “I’ve been so busy trying to please you, I forgot how to listen to myself.” These are the kind of raw, vulnerable truths that melt walls and build connection.

Being a people pleaser often means you’ve lost touch with your own needs. Wisdom Within Counseling offers specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people.

You may have been taught to be quiet, agreeable, or invisible in childhood, and now you struggle to assert yourself in your relationship. Individual counseling and marriage therapy in Southeastern Connecticut helps you reclaim your voice.

Couples counseling with Katie Ziskind uses trauma-informed methods like Imago Therapy, the Gottman Method, and somatic healing to help you reconnect with your body, your emotions, and your partner in ways that feel empowering rather than overwhelming.

Also, couples therapy also helps you repair the trust and intimacy that may have eroded over years of emotional distance. If you’ve both been feeling lonely, unheard, or sexually disconnected, it’s not too late. Learning to talk about your anxiety, fears, and hidden pain brings you back into emotional closeness. You learn to soothe each other’s anxiety, rather than letting it push you apart.

When both partners feel emotionally safe, sexual intimacy naturally begins to return. When anxiety is met with empathy instead of criticism, the body starts to feel safe enough to open up again.

Sexual avoidance in your marriage, often fueled by anxiety, trauma, or emotional disconnection, starts to shift.

You begin to understand each other’s needs with compassion, rather than assumptions or frustration.

Instead of repeating the same arguments over and over again, couples counseling helps you both pause, reflect, and communicate with kindness and clarity.

You learn to stop reacting and start responding. You learn to ask questions like, “What are you really feeling right now?” or “What did you need from me that you didn’t get?” These questions build emotional intimacy and strengthen your bond.

Ultimately, couples therapy gives you the tools to love each other more fully and authentically.

It’s not about fixing one person—it’s about healing the space between you. With the right guidance, you learn how to stop walking on eggshells, stop striving for perfection, and start creating a relationship where you both feel seen, safe, and deeply connected.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind offers a compassionate, expert-led approach for anxious couples, people pleasers, and those stuck in emotional avoidance.

You can build a new way of relating—one rooted in truth, vulnerability, emotional safety, and love. Couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut is the doorway to the closeness you’ve always wanted.

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How to Know if You’re a People Pleaser or Grew Up Walking on Eggshells

Do you struggle to say “no” without guilt?

If you often say “yes” to things you don’t want to do just to avoid upsetting someone or to keep the peace, you may have learned early on that your needs weren’t as important as others’. You might worry that saying “no” makes you selfish or unkind, and this belief keeps you overcommitted, burnt out, and resentful. These patterns can lead to marriage arguments and frustrating conflicts.

This is a major sign of people-pleasing behavior that often begins in childhood, especially if saying “no” wasn’t emotionally safe.

Individual therapy and couples counseling supports you when relationship issues are stemming from childhood trauma. At Wisdom Within Counseling, you can learn how anxiety and trauma impacts your romantic relationship and cycles of conflict.

You constantly seek approval and validation.

If you grew up in a home where love felt conditional—only given when you achieved something, stayed quiet, or took care of others—you may have learned to chase approval in order to feel safe or valued. You might now find yourself overthinking how others perceive you, replaying conversations, and tying your self-worth to whether or not others are happy with you. At Wisdom Within Counseling, our therapists specialize in marriage therapy and couples counseling for anxious partners.

You’re hypersensitive to tone, mood, or body language.

If you feel anxious when someone’s mood shifts, even slightly, and you try to fix it—even if it has nothing to do with you—you probably walked on emotional eggshells as a child. You likely developed a heightened sense of emotional radar to anticipate and avoid conflict.

This survival skill helped you feel safer growing up but can now cause chronic anxiety in your relationships. Individual therapy and marriage counseling gives you tools for healing chronic anxiety. At Wisdom Within Counseling, our marriage therapists specialize in couples therapy for people pleasers in relationships.

You apologize even when you didn’t do anything wrong.

Do you find yourself saying “I’m sorry” just to smooth things over or because you’re afraid someone might be upset? Apologizing out of fear—rather than genuine remorse—is often a trauma response rooted in growing up in an environment where emotions were unpredictable or explosive, and where taking the blame felt safer than rocking the boat.

Over apologizing is a trait of people pleaser and perfectionists. At Wisdom Within Counseling, our couples therapists specialize in treating the root, core issues of perfectionism and intimacy issues.

You fear conflict and avoid hard conversations.

If you avoid expressing your true feelings, keep the peace at all costs, or freeze when someone is upset with you, this could be a sign that conflict felt dangerous in your home growing up.

You might have learned to bottle things up or become overly agreeable because any disagreement led to punishment, shame, or withdrawal of love.

You don’t know what you really want.

When you’ve spent your life focusing on pleasing others, you may lose connection with your own needs and desires. You might find yourself deferring decisions, asking others what they want first, or even feeling anxiety when someone asks you your opinion—because you’re used to suppressing your own preferences to avoid conflict or disapproval.

Do you feel responsible for other people’s emotions and having to fix it?

If someone is angry, hurt, or disappointed, and you immediately feel it’s your fault or job to fix it, that’s a strong indicator you grew up in an emotionally volatile or emotionally immature household.

You were likely taught—either directly or subtly—that other people’s feelings were your responsibility, and now you carry that emotional burden into adult relationships.

Growing up with a highly anxious parent, you avoid expressing your needs or desires.

If you feel selfish, guilty, or afraid when asking for something you want, it’s likely you were conditioned to believe your needs didn’t matter or would lead to rejection. This often stems from being ignored, shut down, or punished for having emotions or desires as a child. You may now silence yourself to protect the fragile balance of your relationships. At Wisdom Within Counseling in Southeastern Connecticut, we offer specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people.

With parents who are very anxious, you feel like your value depends on what you do for others.

When your worth feels tied to how much you help, support, or serve those around you, you may be stuck in a people-pleasing loop. This behavior often comes from needing to earn love or avoid abandonment by being useful, needed, or irreplaceable. You might even fear that if you stop pleasing others, you’ll lose connection altogether.

People pleasing and high levels of chronic anxiety also show up in your sex life. For instance, faking orgasms is a form of people pleasing. Or, being too focused on outcome, or sex being a perfect experience, rather than just letting it unfold, is a sign of people pleasing and perfectionism.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, individual therapy and marriage therapy supports you both in building true intimacy. Emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy are interwoven. Couples therapy for emotional intimacy supports building a healthy sex life.

You feel emotionally drained in relationships.

When you’re constantly managing others’ emotions, avoiding conflict, suppressing your needs, and staying hyper-attuned to everyone but yourself, it’s exhausting.

You might feel resentful, disconnected, or even unsure of who you are. Healing starts by acknowledging how these patterns protected you growing up—but now, you deserve safe relationships where you can be authentic, set boundaries, and be loved for who you are, not what you do for others.

If you recognize yourself in several of these patterns, know that you’re not broken—you adapted to survive. But now, you get to choose to live differently.

Shifting from anxiety, people pleasing, and perfectionism, and into relaxation, playfulness, and enjoying your marriage are parts of couples therapy.

At Wisdom Within Counseling with Katie Ziskind, you can rebuild emotional connection in your marriage.

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Why am I struggling with symptoms of extreme anxiety in adulthood and what does my chronic anxiety have to do with my childhood?

Many adults with chronic, daily anxiety were parentified as children. Being parentified means you had to become the adult to your parents before you were ready. Instead of being nurtured, supported, and protected by your caregivers, you were the one doing the nurturing, protecting, and emotional caretaking.

Maybe you had a mother who was overwhelmed with anxiety or depression, or a father who was angry, absent, or struggling with addiction.

You learned quickly that your own needs had to be set aside. This way, you could keep the peace, take care of siblings, or soothe a parent’s emotional storms. At Wisdom Within Counseling in Waterford, Connecticut, specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people creates a stronger bond.

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You didn’t get to be a child because you became the fixer, the helper, the one who held it all together.

Emotionally, this leaves a deep imprint. You may carry around an invisible weight, a sense that the world is on your shoulders, even today. And, you might feel responsible for everyone else’s emotions. This includes your partner’s mood, your friend’s disappointment, your parent’s guilt.

This chronic sense of responsibility often leads to high anxiety, perfectionism, and a deeply ingrained belief that your worth comes from what you do for others rather than who you are.

You may feel guilty for resting, saying no, or asking for your needs to be met. And even when you’re surrounded by people, you might feel profoundly lonely, because no one truly sees or nurtures you.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, our couples therapists offer individual therapy as well and marriage therapy. Emotionally focused couples counseling helps your partner or spouse better understand your anxiety roots. From there, you both can openly talk about anxiety, guilt, overwhelm, and shame, without needing to fix or change it. Katie Ziskind guides you through this process to build a loving, secure marriage bond.

Parentified children grow into adults who struggle with vulnerability.

You may appear incredibly strong, reliable, and “together,” but underneath, you often feel unseen and emotionally unsupported. You might have a partner now, but still feel emotionally alone in your relationship.

As well, you may automatically take on the caregiver or rescuer role—because that’s what you know. It’s how you feel safe. But over time, this imbalance leads to burnout, resentment, and disconnection. Couples therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling helps you notice how these survival patterns show up in your relationship—and begin to heal them.

At Wisdom Within Counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut, Katie Ziskind specializes in trauma-informed couples therapy.

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With Katie Ziskind, a trauma-informed, Imago and Gottman couples therapist, you’ll explore how the roles you took on in childhood are still silently shaping your marriage today.

Were you the peacemaker?

The emotional sponge?

And, the one who knew how to “read the room” at age seven? These patterns don’t just disappear. They show up in how you communicate, how you handle conflict, and whether you feel safe being emotionally intimate with your partner.

Therapy helps you bring these unconscious patterns into the light—so you can finally stop living on autopilot. In your marriage, you may be getting into conflicts because you are still in survival mode and living on autopilot. You can stop cycles of avoidance of emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy that are causing frustrating fights. At Wisdom Within Counseling, you and your partner can talk openly about emotions, needs, desires, and values.

Katie Ziskind specializes in helping couples learn how to how to feel emotionally safe with each other.

In couples therapy, you’ll learn how to set boundaries without guilt, and how to identify your needs—sometimes for the first time.

When you were parentified, your needs were often ignored or even punished. You learned to keep them buried. But now, in your adult relationship, that suppression causes distance and frustration. Katie helps you and your partner create a relationship where both of you are allowed to have needs, make mistakes, and be vulnerable without fear of rejection.

Somatic trauma therapy is a key part of the healing process.

Parentified children often live in a state of chronic tension—your body never truly feels relaxed or safe.

You may struggle with sleep, digestive issues, or feel constantly “on edge.”

Somatic work helps regulate your nervous system so that you can experience peace in your body and in your relationship. You’ll learn to recognize when you’re over-functioning or shutting down, and begin practicing new ways of being—ones rooted in emotional safety rather than survival.

Parentification also damages your sense of play, joy, and spontaneity.

You may struggle to connect emotionally or sexually with your partner, because deep down, intimacy feels unsafe or unfamiliar. In therapy with Katie Ziskind, you’ll begin to reconnect with the part of you that longs to be loved, nurtured, and cared for—not just needed. You’ll practice showing up as your true self, without the mask of perfection, and you’ll learn to trust that you’re lovable just as you are.

You might not have had anyone to comfort you when you were scared, sad, or overwhelmed as a child.

Now, when your partner tries to get close, you might push them away, freeze, or shut down. It’s not that you don’t want love—it’s that your nervous system was trained to handle life alone. Couples therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling helps rewire that training. With patience and compassion, Katie helps you and your partner build a new pattern of connection—one where you’re allowed to lean in, ask for comfort, and be emotionally held.

Healing from parentification is not about blaming your parents—it’s about acknowledging how your childhood shaped your sense of self and your capacity for connection. It’s about grieving the childhood you didn’t get, and choosing to create something new in your adult relationship. You don’t have to carry it all anymore -ou don’t have to fix everyone else. Also, you get to be a partner, not a parent.

You get to be loved, supported, and emotionally seen. That’s what healing looks like—and that’s what Wisdom Within Counseling in Southeastern Connecticut helps you reclaim.

In therapy with Katie Ziskind, you’ll finally be given permission to put down the heavy weight you’ve carried for so long.

You’ll learn that emotional closeness isn’t something to fear—it’s something to trust. Together, you and your partner can learn to meet each other in a new way: not from a place of old wounds and childhood roles, but from authenticity, tenderness, and connection.

You are not too much. And you are allowed to receive the love you’ve always had to give.

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If you grew up with an explosive father and a highly anxious mother, you may have learned early on that being perfect was the safest way to survive.

You might not have had the freedom to express your true feelings, make mistakes, or just be a child. Instead, you likely became the responsible one, the peacemaker, the one who kept everything together while chaos swirled around you.

That survival skill of striving for perfection probably followed you into adulthood—and now, in your intimate relationship, it may feel impossible to let your guard down, to be messy, to not have all the answers.

Couples therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling with Katie Ziskind helps you gently unravel those old survival patterns and create space for vulnerability, connection, and softness. At Wisdom Within Counseling, you can learn how to reconnect with your partner emotionally. Katie Ziskind specializes in couples therapy for intimacy issues.

Being perfect all the time might sound like being organized or helpful—but inside, it feels like you’re suffocating.

You probably carry a constant, low-level panic that if you don’t do everything right—say the perfect thing, look a certain way, never show weakness—someone will explode or leave you. That fear might not make logical sense anymore, but it still lives in your nervous system.

When your childhood taught you that love was conditional, and safety was uncertain, perfection became your armor. But in your relationship now, that armor can create distance. At Wisdom Within Counseling, couples therapy allows you to explore these deeper wounds, so you can begin to trust love that doesn’t demand performance.

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Sexual avoidance and sex problems in a marriage often misunderstood. It’s not about a lack of love or attraction—it’s about how close is too close.

If perfection was your way of controlling the chaos growing up, then sex—where you’re emotionally and physically exposed—might feel terrifying. You may avoid it, shut down, or go through the motions without being truly present. It’s a way to stay safe, to stay in control.

In couples therapy with Katie Ziskind, you’ll learn how to work through this fear slowly and gently. Using trauma-informed, somatic tools, she helps you reconnect with your body, your emotions, and your partner—so that intimacy feels grounding instead of overwhelming.

Being the fixer or the caregiver in your relationship might feel like second nature to you.

You know how to comfort, soothe, and take care of everyone else—but struggle to let anyone take care of you. Also, you’ve likely built your identity around being strong and self-sufficient.

Now, that is because what your childhood demanded. But deep inside, you’re probably tired.

You might even feel invisible or emotionally alone in your relationship. Couples therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling creates a space where you no longer have to carry it all. Katie Ziskind guides both you and your partner in rebalancing the emotional labor in your relationship, helping you feel safe enough to let go and receive love.

You might feel deeply uncomfortable when it’s time to talk about your own needs.

To add, you may fear that expressing hurt or asking for support will make you a burden, or that you’ll be met with anger or withdrawal—just like you were growing up. So instead, you stay quiet. You minimize your pain.

As well, you focus on your partner’s needs while ignoring your own. Over time, this builds resentment and disconnection.

In Old Lyme, Connecticut, marriage therapy with Katie Ziskind, you’ll practice finding your voice again. Not the version of you that keeps the peace, but the version of you that’s real, honest, and deserving of love without having to earn it.

When your childhood home was emotionally unsafe, your body learned to brace for impact. As a child of an explosive father, you might have spent years in hypervigilance, waiting for the next blow-up. Maybe, in college, you were also date raped, or experienced sexual trauma or sexual abuse.

With an anxious mother, you may have felt the weight of her fear and the responsibility to soothe her.

Now, even in a loving relationship, your nervous system may still be on high alert. You might struggle to relax, even in moments of closeness. Emotional trauma and sexual trauma does this to you.

Katie Ziskind, a somatic trauma therapist, brings nervous system healing into couples work—so you and your partner can begin to build not just emotional intimacy, but physiological safety in your relationship.

Perfectionism also robs you of joy. You may feel like you always have to be productive, always have to be useful, and that resting or receiving love makes you lazy or selfish.

This can leave your relationship feeling more like a performance than a partnership. It’s hard to play, to flirt, to connect, when your inner critic is always whispering that you’re not doing enough. In couples therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind helps you loosen those inner voices and bring play, spontaneity, and emotional authenticity back into your relationship.

You may also struggle with resentment that you don’t fully understand. You give and give—emotionally, sexually, physically—but no matter how much you do, you still don’t feel deeply fulfilled.

That’s because perfectionism prevents real connection. If you’re always wearing a mask, your partner can’t truly connect with you.

Marriage therapy in Old Lyme, Connecticut helps you uncover the softer, more vulnerable parts of yourself that are craving to be seen and held. Katie Ziskind creates a compassionate, non-judgmental space for you to explore these parts and learn how to let your partner in without fear of punishment or rejection.

Often, perfectionism from childhood trauma comes with shame.

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You might look like you have it all together on the outside, but on the inside, you feel like you’re never enough.

This internal battle—between the person you show the world and the part of you that feels inadequate—can cause anxiety, emotional distance, and self-sabotage in your relationship. Katie Ziskind uses both Imago Therapy and Gottman Method techniques to help you and your partner name these inner experiences. In couples counseling, you gain skills to increase emotional safety, and learn how to love each other more deeply through honesty and attunement. At Wisdom Within Counseling, we offer specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people and people pleasers.

You don’t have to be perfect to be loved. In fact, the more you try to be perfect, the more you disconnect from your partner—and from yourself. Healing starts when you recognize that your perfectionism was a brilliant adaptation to survive childhood chaos, but it doesn’t have to run your life anymore.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, couples therapy gives you and your partner the tools to break these old patterns, rewrite your story, and build a secure, emotionally connected relationship where you can be fully yourself—and fully loved.

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Growing up, did you experience massive levels of anxiety because you were told, “Don’t cry,” “Stop being lazy,” or “Toughen up?”

Negative messages like “Don’t cry,” “Stop being lazy,” or “Toughen up” may seem small in the moment, but they leave deep emotional scars—especially when they come from the people you looked to for love, safety, and validation. When you were told not to cry, you learned that your feelings were too much.

And, when you were called lazy for needing rest, you learned that your worth was tied to what you did, not who you were. As well, when you were told to toughen up, you learned to silence your sensitivity, to hide your fear, and to shove down your pain so that you wouldn’t be seen as weak.

Would you bite your lip and tear up, holding in your real emotions in childhood?

If you grew up hearing these kinds of messages again and again, you likely internalized them as truth. You may now push yourself to exhaustion, fearing that resting means you’re failing. And, you may still hear that inner critic snapping at you when you feel overwhelmed: “Why can’t you just handle it?” You might struggle to cry or express vulnerability with your partner—not because you don’t want to be close, but because somewhere along the line, closeness felt dangerous.

Showing feelings meant rejection when you had narcissistic parents, a highly anxious mother, and an angry, explosive father. Being vulnerable meant judgment.

And asking for comfort? That was never an option.

These messages don’t disappear when you grow up.

They show up in your adult relationships as emotional distance, over-functioning, people-pleasing, perfectionism, or sexual shutdown.

You might avoid talking about how you really feel. And, you might dismiss your own emotional pain or shame yourself for needing help. Or you might carry such intense anxiety about being “too much” or “not enough” that you feel like you’re constantly performing—even in your most intimate relationship.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, couples therapy with Katie Ziskind helps you unlearn those old survival strategies. With her trauma-informed, compassionate approach—blending Imago Therapy, Gottman Method, and somatic work—you get to start rewriting those messages.

In a safe space, you begin to hear a new truth: that your feelings are not weakness—they’re messengers. That you’re not lazy for needing rest—you’re human. And that toughening up was never the answer—softening is where the real courage lies.

Together in therapy, you and your partner can begin to make sense of how these ingrained beliefs show up in your relationship. Maybe one of you shuts down during conflict, afraid of being too emotional. Or, the other overfunctions, terrified of being seen as lazy or not doing enough. These patterns aren’t random—they’re echoes of childhood.

If you are wondering how anxiety affects your marriage, start working with the marriage therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling. There is a link between childhood trauma, people pleasing, anxiety symptoms, and emotional disconnection in your marriage.

Couples therapy helps you see the emotional armor you each carry, and it offers tools to take it off—slowly, safely, and with support.

You’ll practice sharing your feelings and needs without fear of being shut down or judged. You’ll learn how to respond to each other with empathy, rather than criticism.

From marriage counseling, you’ll begin to see your sensitivity as a strength—not a flaw. And most importantly, you’ll build a foundation where emotional expression is welcomed, not punished. That’s how healing begins: not with perfection, but with permission. Permission to be real, to be soft, and to be fully seen.

For those of you who were taught to “toughen up,” therapy helps you realize that tenderness is not weakness. It’s what brings you closer. It’s what opens the door to emotional and sexual intimacy. When you start allowing your real self—tears, fears, flaws, and all—to show up in your relationship, you stop performing and start connecting. And when your partner does the same, you both start to feel the safety you never had growing up.

Katie Ziskind’s work helps you turn inward, gently confronting the stories you’ve carried for years—stories that said your emotions were too loud, your rest was laziness, or your softness was something to be ashamed of.

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Through her integrative approach, you’ll learn to trust that who you are without the mask is more than enough.

You’ll see that healing doesn’t mean never needing support—it means finally knowing you deserve it.

When you stop believing the lie that you have to be tough to survive, you start creating space for joy, love, and mutual care. You give yourself permission to be human. Couples therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling is about remembering what you were never told: that your needs matter, that your feelings are welcome, and that you deserve a relationship where you’re not just surviving—but truly, deeply, thriving.

Did you learn to to keep the peace, int order to keep your angry father from getting upset?

Hearing messages like “What Dad doesn’t know won’t hurt him” from your highly anxious mother may have felt confusing, even if you didn’t realize it at the time.

You were being taught—subtly and repeatedly—that honesty might cause conflict, and that withholding the truth was a way to keep the peace.

If your mom was walking on eggshells around your father, trying not to upset him, you learned to do the same.

You learned that expressing your truth might lead to blow-ups or silence. Aslo, you learned that hiding things wasn’t betrayal—it was survival.

These moments taught you to ignore your own inner compass. You might now struggle to trust your gut. This is because you were trained to prioritize other people’s emotional reactions over your own needs or values.

As well, you likely became hyper-attuned to keeping everyone calm, managing moods, and staying quiet so no one would get upset.

You may have even started to feel that telling the truth would hurt people—or make you responsible for someone else’s reaction. That’s not a light burden for a child to carry.

Now, as an adult, you might still find yourself avoiding conflict, censoring what you say, or second-guessing whether your truth is “too much.”

As well, you may feel anxious when your partner is upset or angry—even if it has nothing to do with you—because your nervous system associates emotional intensity with danger. You may feel like you’re constantly scanning for what’s safe to say or do.

And even though part of you wants to be deeply known and emotionally close, another part of you might shut down or hide important parts of yourself out of fear of causing a fight or being abandoned.

These patterns are not your fault. They’re the protective strategies you learned in childhood to stay emotionally safe.

But they do affect your adult relationships and your cycle of anger, conflict, and anxiety in your marriage – even your sex life.

You might struggle to be emotionally honest with your partner, especially when something’s bothering you. You might over-explain or under-share. Or you might feel like you’re always the peacekeeper, carrying the weight of the relationship’s emotional stability on your own shoulders. That’s exhausting, and deeply lonely.

Couples therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut with Katie Ziskind can help you begin to break free from this cycle.

As an Imago therapist, Gottman Level Two clinician, and trauma-informed specialist, Katie Ziskind creates a space where you can gently explore how these childhood dynamics still shape your emotional responses and communication today. You’ll begin to understand why you feel anxious expressing your needs—and you’ll be guided through new ways to speak up without fear.

You’ll learn how to share your truth in ways that foster connection rather than conflict.

Therapy helps you stop defaulting to silence or secrecy and instead step into emotional authenticity with your partner.

This might feel scary at first, but over time, you’ll begin to experience what safety feels like in a relationship where both people can be honest and loved. No more hiding. No more guessing. Just you—fully seen, and safe.

Katie Ziskind marriage counseling’s work also focuses on healing the anxious inner child within you—the part of you that still believes speaking up might cause pain.

You’ll explore somatic tools to calm your nervous system, learn how to tolerate the discomfort of conflict without shutting down, and slowly reclaim your right to be heard. You’ll begin to trust that you can handle emotional intensity without having to go numb, stay quiet, or shrink yourself.

If you’ve spent your life saying what others wanted to hear to avoid upsetting them, couples therapy helps you find your own voice again.

It helps you reconnect with your truth—and teaches you how to share that truth in a way that builds intimacy rather than fear. You get to experience emotional closeness that doesn’t come at the cost of your authenticity.

And most importantly, you’ll begin to break the generational cycle. You’ll stop carrying the emotional burden of keeping the peace at your own expense. You’ll build a new kind of love—one based on openness, shared responsibility, and mutual emotional care.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, healing begins when you stop hiding and start choosing the courageous path of truth. If you are looking for an Imago relationship therapist, Gottman marriage therapist, and somatic trauma couples therapist, look no father. Katie Ziskind is a Gottman method couples therapist Connecticut, Florida, and New Jersey.

She integrates yoga therapy, meditation, and holistic mindfulness somatic marriage therapy in Connecticut.

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Your chronically high levels of anxiety, overthinking, trouble sleeping, and OCD behaviors are not random.

They are deeply rooted in your early experiences—especially if you grew up constantly trying to be perfect, people-please, and avoid upsetting others.

When you were a child, if love and safety felt conditional—if you were only praised when you performed well, stayed quiet, or kept the peace—you learned that you had to earn connection by being good enough. You learned that love had to be maintained through vigilance. So your nervous system adapted by staying constantly alert.

That overthinking you do? It likely began as a survival skill.

You had to anticipate what others needed before they even asked. You had to scan the room for signs of tension, predict someone’s mood, and figure out the “right” thing to say to avoid conflict.

Over time, this constant hyper-vigilance turned inward. Your thoughts began to spiral, not because you’re broken, but because your mind was trained to keep you safe. Your brain became wired to believe that if you could just think hard enough, you might prevent something bad from happening.

Trouble sleeping is another sign that your body has learned to stay in a state of alert, even when you’re supposed to be resting.

If you grew up walking on eggshells, your body never got to fully relax. Bedtime may have been the only quiet time you had, so your mind filled the silence with racing thoughts, analyzing the day, preparing for tomorrow, wondering if you did or said anything wrong. Even now, your body might not trust that it’s safe enough to fully let go.

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And those OCD behaviors—compulsive checking, mental rituals, needing things to feel just right—they’re often misunderstood as quirks or personality traits.

But for many people like you, they’re actually a response to deep emotional anxiety. OCD can develop when your nervous system is overwhelmed by uncertainty.

If unpredictability in your home growing up meant emotional danger, it makes sense that your mind would try to create control in other areas. Perfectionism, rituals, and routines become a way to calm the storm inside.

People-pleasing is also a form of self-protection. You likely learned early on that making others happy was the only way to avoid punishment or rejection. You may have been praised for being “mature,” “easy,” or “helpful.”

But, what others saw as good behavior was actually a child burying their own feelings to manage the emotions of the adults around them. That habit didn’t go away. It just turned into saying yes when you meant no, avoiding conflict, and constantly worrying if others are upset with you.

You were taught that it wasn’t safe to have needs. That your worth came from how well you could perform, behave, or keep the peace. So now, when you try to relax, or ask for help, or speak your truth—it feels deeply uncomfortable. Maybe even wrong. But it’s not wrong. You were just never given permission to feel safe being fully, messily, beautifully human.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, couples therapy with Katie Ziskind can help you begin to untangle these threads of anxiety and build a stronger marriage.

You’ll start to understand how these childhood dynamics live on in your adult relationship—how they affect your anxiety, your sex life, your emotional connection, and your ability to feel safe with your partner. You’ll learn how to stop micromanaging your world just to feel okay, and instead build internal safety, even in the face of emotional discomfort.

In marriage counseling, Katie Ziskind, couples therapist in East Lyme, Connecticut, helps you feel safe together.

Through somatic trauma therapy, Imago couples counseling relationship work, and the Gottman Method, you’ll be guided gently back into your body.

You’ll learn how to regulate your nervous system, speak your truth, and stop holding yourself to impossible standards. You’ll discover that being loved doesn’t have to mean being perfect—and that peace isn’t something you earn by over-functioning. It’s something you deserve, just by being you.

You don’t have to live in constant anxiety, leading to marriage fights and avoidance cycles. As well, you don’t have to spend every day overthinking, questioning yourself, or trying to hold everything together.

Therapy in Old Lyme, Connecticut is the place where you can finally put the burden down. And, you can begin healing the parts of you that were taught to carry so much, for so long. You are not too much – you’re just ready to come home to yourself.

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How to Know if You’re Carrying High Levels of Anxiety Into Your Marriage and Needing Marriage Counseling with Katie Ziskind

If you live with high anxiety, you probably feel like your mind never shuts off.

You’re constantly thinking, second-guessing, and mentally rehearsing every possible outcome just to feel prepared.

You might even replay conversations in your head, wondering if you said the wrong thing or made someone upset. This kind of overthinking is exhausting—and it often leaves you feeling disconnected from yourself and your partner.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, couples therapy gives you a safe place to slow down your thoughts, get out of your head, and start feeling more present and connected in your relationship.

Perfectionism can feel like both a shield and a prison. You might try to do everything “right” in your relationship—say the right things, keep the house perfect, make sure your partner is always okay—because deep down, you’re terrified that making a mistake means you’ll be rejected or unloved.

That pressure to be perfect can keep you emotionally distant from your partner, because you’re always performing rather than just being. In therapy with Katie Ziskind, you’ll start to soften those impossible standards and learn how to let your partner see the real, imperfect, lovable you.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, we offer specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people and people pleasers.

If you’re stuck in a cycle of sexual avoidance in your marriage and need counseling, it’s often not about sex at all.

High anxiety can create emotional distance, and that can lead to shutting down sexually. You might feel touched out, overwhelmed, or just numb.

Or you might be terrified that sex will make you feel too vulnerable, especially if you’re used to pushing your own needs aside. At Wisdom Within Counseling, couples therapy helps you explore what’s beneath the avoidance—so you can start to feel safe in your body again, emotionally close, and more connected to your partner.

Sometimes, emotional numbing becomes your coping strategy for anxiety.

Maybe you’ve turned to alcohol to unwind, or to shut off your mind at the end of the day. Maybe you bury yourself in work, food, porn, or scrolling—anything to avoid the intensity of your feelings. You’re not weak for doing this. You’re human. These patterns often start as a way to survive overwhelming emotions that you were never taught how to manage.

In therapy, you’ll learn new tools to regulate your anxiety and reconnect with your emotions in a safe, supportive way.

People-pleasing often starts when love feels conditional—when you learned that being agreeable, helpful, or “easy” earned you approval. You might say “yes” when you mean “no,” or push your own needs down just to avoid rocking the boat.

As well, you might smile when you’re hurting, and tell your partner what they want to hear just to keep the peace. But deep down, you probably feel unseen and misunderstood.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, individual therapy and couples therapy helps you reconnect with your truth and learn that being honest doesn’t make you difficult—it makes you real.

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High anxiety can leave you feeling like you’re constantly walking on a tightrope.

You fear being too much or not enough. As well, you might feel like your emotions are too intense or that if you express what you really feel, your partner will leave. This fear can lead to emotional shutdown, isolation, or lashing out when you’re overwhelmed.

Couples therapy helps you identify these patterns and create new ways of communicating that feel safe, honest, and emotionally intimate. You’ll finally be able to speak from the heart without fearing the fallout.

One of the most painful parts of high anxiety is the loneliness that comes with it. You might be in a relationship, but still feel emotionally alone. It can feel like you’re constantly trying to make everything okay for everyone else, while silently suffering inside.

Therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling offers you a place to finally be held, seen, and supported. Katie Ziskind helps couples uncover the emotional walls that anxiety builds and teaches you how to let your partner in without losing yourself. At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind is an anxiety and trauma couples therapist.

When seeking anxiety counseling, you might find that even in moments of calm, you can’t fully relax.

There’s a part of you that’s always bracing for the next fight, the next disappointment, the next moment where everything falls apart. That hypervigilance often comes from growing up in a chaotic or emotionally unsafe environment.

In Southeastern Connecticut marriage therapy, you’ll explore how your past is showing up in your present—and begin to heal those early wounds so you can feel safe in your current relationship without having to constantly guard your heart.

It’s also possible that anxiety makes you crave reassurance—yet you struggle to believe it when your partner offers it.

You might ask if they love you, if they’re upset, or if they’re going to leave… but even when they say everything is okay, your mind doesn’t settle.

This cycle can be painful for both of you. In couples therapy, you’ll learn how to soothe your inner fears from the inside out, rather than relying on external reassurance alone. Katie helps you and your partner co-create emotional safety through connection, vulnerability, and compassion.

From couples therapy, you can feel emotionally safe, speak your truth, and to be loved for who you really are.

You deserve a relationship where you don’t have to earn love through perfection, performance, or people-pleasing.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, therapy isn’t about blaming anyone—it’s about understanding where your patterns come from and creating a new way forward together.

Couples therapy with Katie Ziskind can help you and your partner move from disconnection and anxiety to healing, emotional closeness, and the kind of love that feels grounding, secure, and deeply fulfilling.

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Individual therapy and couples therapy, self-compassion, and boundary work can help you reconnect with your voice, your worth, and your emotional freedom.

If you’re someone who constantly feels anxious in your relationship—like you’re tiptoeing around your partner, trying to keep the peace, and terrified of upsetting them—it’s not because you’re weak or broken.

You likely learned this from childhood, especially if you had a highly anxious parent. Maybe your parent withheld love when you spoke up, gave you the silent treatment, or punished you emotionally for having your own thoughts and feelings. If you are looking for a couples therapist for anxiety and trauma in Connecticut, look no father.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, in couples therapy with Katie Ziskind, you’ll begin to uncover how these early experiences are still shaping the way you show up in your adult relationship today.

If you grew up walking on eggshells, you probably learned early on to put other people’s comfort above your own.

You became hyperaware of moods, tone changes, and shifts in body language. And, you may have believed that being “too much” or voicing your needs would cost you connection.

In couples therapy with Katie Ziskind, you’ll gently explore how these patterns are not your fault. You didn’t choose to be a people pleaser—you adapted to survive. In individual and couples therapy, you’ll learn how to honor your own needs without feeling guilty, and that your voice has value in your relationship.

When you’ve spent your whole life trying to avoid conflict, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when emotions come up between you and your partner.

You might shut down, freeze, or over-apologize, even when you didn’t do anything wrong. These responses are often trauma-based and connected to the fear of emotional backlash from childhood. In therapy, you’ll be guided to notice these reactions without shame. Katie will help you slow down, regulate your emotions, and begin to feel safe enough to be honest and vulnerable with your partner.

Many people in high-conflict relationships don’t realize that the arguing, withdrawing, or walking on eggshells is actually a reenactment of childhood dynamics.

You might be reacting to your partner as if they’re your emotionally unpredictable parent. Through couples counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut, Katie Ziskind will help you and your partner understand each other’s emotional blueprints. When you can see that your partner isn’t trying to hurt you, but is also reacting from a place of fear or wounding, it creates compassion—and that’s where true healing begins.

People pleasing may feel like second nature to you.

You might say “yes” when you mean “no,” apologize for having needs, or put your partner’s emotions before your own until you’re emotionally depleted. At Wisdom Within Counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut, therapy creates space for you to unlearn these habits by helping you reconnect with your truth.

Katie Ziskind helps couples build a safe container where both people are allowed to have needs, emotions, boundaries, and vulnerability—without fear of punishment or abandonment.

If you had a parent who was anxious or emotionally unavailable, you may have developed a deep fear of rejection.

You might feel like you have to perform, be perfect, or over-give to be loved. This can lead to cycles of resentment, burnout, or explosive conflict in your relationship. Couples therapy with Katie Ziskind focuses on rewiring these beliefs so you can stop performing and start connecting. You’ll learn to trust that you are lovable for who you are—not for what you do to keep the peace.

Sometimes, people don’t even realize how much unresolved childhood trauma is playing out in their marriage. You might think the arguments are about chores, money, or sex—but underneath, you’re fighting about deeper needs: safety, worth, love, and acceptance.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind guides you through emotionally focused therapy techniques to help you speak to your partner from a place of emotional truth, not just anger or shutdown. This creates repair, empathy, and emotional closeness. At Wisdom Within Counseling, holistic marriage therapy supports emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy.

When you’ve spent your life walking on eggshells, you may fear intimacy as much as you crave it.

You want to be seen and loved, but you also fear being too much, not enough, or a burden. In couples therapy, you’ll learn how to express these fears safely and receive reassurance, rather than shame. Katie Ziskind creates a nonjudgmental, trauma-informed space where you can practice emotional risk-taking and see how intimacy grows when both partners are emotionally present and grounded.

If conflict in your relationship feels like a never-ending loop—one person pursues, the other shuts down, and no one feels heard—therapy helps break that cycle.

Katie Ziskind teaches couples how to attune to each other’s emotional needs and communicate in ways that don’t trigger old wounds. You’ll learn to stay connected even during hard conversations, and to view conflict not as a threat, but as an opportunity for deeper connection and understanding.

Most importantly, at Wisdom Within Counseling, you’ll realize that healing is possible.

The anxious parts of you—the ones that were shaped by an unpredictable, emotionally intense home—can find new ways of relating. You’ll learn how to co-create safety, emotional intimacy, and healthy communication with your partner. And you’ll walk away with tools, language, and awareness that empower you to be your authentic self in love—not the peacekeeper, not the fixer, but a whole, worthy, emotionally vibrant human being.

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How does anxiety manifests as cycles of avoidance of intimacy both sexually and emotionally that lead to feelings of rejection, hurt, anger, loneliness, abandonment, neglect, powerlessness?

Anxiety doesn’t always show up as panic or fear on the outside. Often, it quietly lives in your body and your relationship through avoidance—especially avoidance of emotional and sexual intimacy.

When you’ve experienced childhood trauma, perfectionism, or had to people-please to feel safe, your nervous system learns to protect you by disconnecting from closeness.

You may love your partner deeply. But, when things feel emotionally overwhelming, your body instinctively pulls back. You shut down, go numb, or focus on tasks and responsibilities instead of connection. To add, you avoid vulnerability without even realizing you’re doing it. At Wisdom Within Counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut, our marriage therapists specialize in anxiety and trauma recovery.

This avoidance might look like not wanting to talk about hard things, brushing off feelings, or becoming overly focused on the kids, your job, or managing the home.

You purposely don’t want time alone together as a couple. In the bedroom, it can look like a lack of desire, feeling emotionally or physically shut down, or saying you’re too tired night after night.

You’re not cold or uncaring—you’re overwhelmed. Deep down, your anxiety is whispering that closeness isn’t safe, that being truly seen might lead to judgment or abandonment, just like it did when you were younger.

But when you avoid emotional or sexual intimacy, your partner starts to feel it—deeply.

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They might not know it’s anxiety driving your distance, but they feel the absence.

Your spouse may begin to feel rejected, unwanted, and unloved.

That emotional wall, even if it’s meant to protect you, starts to hurt them. They may feel neglected or abandoned.

The warmth they once felt with you turns into confusion, loneliness, or resentment. And because they feel shut out, they may become angry, critical, or distant too, creating a painful cycle of disconnection.

This cycle can make you feel even more anxious and misunderstood. You might think:

Why are they mad at me?

Can’t they see I’m trying my best?

At Wisdom Within Counseling in Stonington, Connecticut, specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious improves communication skills.

But underneath the surface, you both feel powerless and disconnected in your marriage right now.

You may feel like you can’t do anything right, and they may feel like they can’t reach you. The love is there—but it’s buried under layers of self-protection, fear, and pain that have never been named or healed.

These patterns are not your fault. They are the result of how you learned to survive emotionally in your childhood home.

If vulnerability was met with anger, dismissal, or withdrawal back then, of course your body still tenses at the thought of being open now.

Or, if affection or connection was unpredictable or conditional, your nervous system learned to stay guarded. And while those strategies helped you survive back then, they are now getting in the way of the intimacy and closeness you long for in your marriage.

If you are looking for a holistic marriage counselor in Waterford, Connecticut, start at Wisdom Within Counseling. Katie Ziskind offers specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, couples therapy with Katie Ziskind can help you and your partner gently understand these patterns and build a closer marriage bond.

You’ll learn how your anxiety has shaped your responses—not because you’re broken, but because your body is trying to keep you safe. You’ll explore how to stop avoiding hard conversations, and instead learn to speak openly, vulnerably, and safely—even when it feels scary. Therapy gives you tools to stay connected, even in moments of tension or hurt.

Katie Ziskind uses trauma-informed approaches, including Imago couples therapy, the Gottman Method, and somatic healing to help you regulate your nervous system, process the emotional weight you’ve been carrying, and show up differently in your marriage.

You’ll begin to understand each other’s childhood wounds and adult triggers—not to blame, but to heal. You’ll realize that behind the distance is pain, behind the silence is fear, and behind the conflict is a longing to feel loved and seen again.

When you stop avoiding intimacy and begin turning toward each other, something beautiful happens: the emotional walls start to come down.

The fear of being vulnerable lessens, and trust begins to grow. You can start sharing your true feelings—your sadness, your fear, your longing—without shame. And in that space, love feels safer.

Sexual desire can return.

Closeness becomes less threatening and more comforting.

Couples counseling is the space where you learn that emotional safety creates sexual safety. That being close doesn’t mean losing yourself, and that you can be fully known without being rejected.

If you’re stuck in cycles of avoidance, rejection, and emotional distance, therapy can guide you home—to your partner, and to yourself. You don’t have to live behind a wall.

Healing your anxiety and your marriage bond is possible through specialized couples counseling.

When you feel distant from your partner, like you’re speaking different emotional languages or stuck in cycles of hurt, trauma-informed couples therapy can be a turning point.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind blends powerful, evidence-based approaches—Imago couples therapy, the Gottman Method, and somatic healing—to help you and your partner break through the barriers of disconnection and create a secure, lasting emotional bond like never before.

These methods aren’t about blaming, fixing, or forcing closeness—they’re about helping you feel seen, heard, and safe in your relationship again.

In Imago couples therapy, you and your partner begin to understand how your childhood experiences shape your adult reactions.

If you grew up walking on eggshells or had to be the emotional caregiver in your family, it makes sense why you might now shut down or overextend yourself in your relationship.

Katie Ziskind teaches you the Imago Dialogue, a structured way of talking that slows everything down.

You mirror each other’s words, validate each other’s emotions, and build empathy—not just talk at each other or defend. As well, you finally feel what it’s like to be heard without interruption and to speak from a place of vulnerability instead of reactivity.

Through the Gottman Method, Katie Ziskind helps you strengthen the friendship at the core of your relationship—the emotional glue that keeps you connected in tough times.

You’ll learn how to turn toward each other instead of away, how to rebuild trust after betrayal or distance, and how to repair fights before they spiral out of control. You and your partner explore your love maps (your inner world), identify your emotional bids for connection, and practice rituals of connection that bring affection, laughter, and warmth back into your bond.

This method offers clear tools you can use every day—tools that make love feel safe again. At Wisdom Within Counseling in East Lyme, Connecticut, you can gain positive connection skills right in session.

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Somatic couples therapy healing brings the body into therapy, which is essential when trauma and anxiety live in your nervous system.

If you feel flooded during conflict, if your body goes numb during sex or shuts down in arguments, Katie Ziskind helps you understand that these are trauma responses—not character flaws.

Using grounding techniques, breathwork, and gentle body awareness, she teaches you how to calm your system during emotional overwhelm, so you can stay present with your partner instead of retreating or lashing out. You’ll learn how to recognize when your body is in “fight, flight, or freeze” mode and how to gently return to safety.

Imagine being able to sit with your partner and say things like, “I feel scared when I don’t hear from you,” or “I shut down because I’m afraid of being rejected,” and your partner really hears you—not defensively, but with tenderness.

These approaches teach you how to share your raw, real emotions without fearing disconnection. You don’t have to protect yourself with perfectionism or anger anymore. Instead, you build emotional intimacy from a place of honesty, curiosity, and compassion.

Katie Ziskind also works with you on understanding your attachment style.

If you’re anxiously attached, you may cling, overthink, or fear being abandoned. Or, if you’re avoidantly attached, you might shut down, retreat, or feel suffocated by closeness. Trauma-informed therapy helps you and your partner find secure attachment together—a place where closeness feels safe, and independence is respected.

Together, you create a couple bubble, a safe space where both of your nervous systems feel soothed and supported.

Why is strengthening your couple bubble an important part of marriage counseling?

A couple bubble is a safe, emotional space that you and your partner intentionally create and protect together. In Old Lyme, Connecticut couples counseling, you create a space where you both feel secure, seen, heard, and prioritized. It’s the idea that you are each other’s go-to person, especially when the world outside feels overwhelming.

In a healthy couple bubble, you turn toward each other instead of away. You feel like you’re on the same team. And, you repair after arguments instead of holding grudges.

In couples counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut, you learn to share emotional vulnerability, not just tasks and logistics.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, marriage therapy with Katie Ziskind helps you build this bubble from the ground up—even if you’ve been stuck in cycles of blame, criticism, distance, or withdrawal.

Katie Ziskind doesn’t just talk at you about couples therapy theory—she brings you into the experience of emotional bonding, right there in the room.

She uses experiential, somatic, trauma-informed, and evidence-based methods that invite you to feel emotionally close again. You practice the skills in real time during session: slowing down conversations, being more present with each other, listening deeply, and validating each other’s feelings.

One of the ways Katie Ziskind helps create this secure bubble is by teaching you how to have safe, structured conversations where both of you feel emotionally held.

Through tools from Imago Relationship Therapy, she guides you to take turns mirroring what the other says, without interrupting or defending. This lets your partner really feel understood—not just heard, but gotten.

Katie Ziskind teaches you to speak in vulnerable language, to express softer emotions like “I felt abandoned,” or “I was scared you didn’t care,” instead of anger, blame, or shutting down.

At Wisdom Within Counseling in Stonington, Connecticut, specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people supports emotional vulnerability.

She also integrates Gottman Method interventions to help rebuild the emotional friendship underneath your relationship.

You learn how to make and respond to each other’s bids for connection—those little moments when one of you reaches out emotionally. Katie helps you notice when you’re missing each other’s bids and teaches you how to turn toward your partner with presence, empathy, and kindness. These small shifts build trust, repair emotional injuries, and deepen closeness over time.

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If you tend to shut down or get anxious, angry, or overwhelmed during conflict (or your partner does), Katie Ziskind uses somatic tools and nervous system regulation techniques to help you both stay grounded.

She’ll guide you in learning how to notice when your body starts to go into fight, flight, or freeze mode—and how to pause, breathe, and reconnect.

This lets you stop the old reactive patterns and create a safer environment where both of you can speak your truth without fear of judgment or disconnection.

Your couple bubble becomes stronger every time you practice being emotionally available for each other. And, you learn how to do this in specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people.

Katie Ziskind helps you name your feelings, share unmet childhood needs, and build new experiences of emotional attunement.

If you grew up feeling neglected, rejected, or like you had to keep the peace, it may feel uncomfortable at first to show your partner your real emotions—but this is the doorway to healing.

You’ll also work on repairing emotional ruptures—the inevitable moments when one of you says something hurtful or withdraws. Katie Ziskind guides you through how to take ownership, offer real apologies, and repair with intention. These moments of repair are what make your couple bubble resilient. Conflict isn’t the problem; it’s how you come back together that builds strength and trust.

In marriage counseling sessions, Katie Ziskind might have you hold hands, breathe together, or look each other in the eyes while expressing something meaningful.

These aren’t just symbolic—they are embodied practices that create emotional and physiological safety. When your nervous systems begin to feel safe together, your relationship can move from survival mode into deep emotional intimacy.

Through marriage therapy with Katie Ziskind, you and your partner get the experience of what it’s like to be emotionally safe together, so you can carry that feeling back into your everyday life. You start to trust each other with your feelings, your fears, your dreams—and this is how your couple bubble grows strong.

In that secure bubble, you’re no longer fighting against each other. You’re fighting for the relationship, for connection, and for the deep, soul-level bond you’ve always longed for. And in that sacred space, everything—emotional safety, sexual closeness, joy, and peace—becomes possible again.

In marriage counseling, you’ll also explore how emotional and sexual intimacy have a deep connection.

If anxiety, shame, or old trauma have led to sexual avoidance or disconnection, Katie Ziskind creates a safe space to rebuild that part of your relationship.

You’ll talk openly about your needs, your fears, and what helps you feel safe enough to connect physically again—not out of obligation, but out of desire and trust.

Through these approaches, you and your partner learn how to repair after ruptures, soothe each other during conflict, and speak from your inner child rather than your protective armor.

The work you do in couples therapy is about creating a new pattern. A beautiful bond, where both of you feel emotionally held, respected, safe, and deeply loved.

Our team of marriage therapists specialize in Wisdom Within Counseling trauma-informed couples counseling in East Lyme, Connecticut.

We are a group of trauma specialized marriage therapists in Niantic, Connecticut.

Whether you’ve been feeling stuck, distant, frustrated, or hopeless in your relationship, trauma-informed therapy with Katie Ziskind gives you the roadmap to healing.

You don’t have to keep living in survival mode or repeating old patterns, only to create disconnection and frustration. If you are looking to learn how to stop walking on eggshells in your marriage, couples therapy helps. Our marriage therapists specialize in anxiety symptoms and building emotional intimacy for anxious spouses. As well, our marriage therapists teach you how to have safe conversations in couples therapy. With guidance, safety, and the right tools, you can feel close again.

At Wisdom Within Counseling in Waterford, Connecticut, you learn how to create emotional safety in your marriage, rather than repeat cycles of anxiety, fear, avoidance, and anger. You can become each other’s safe place—and that kind of love lasts a lifetime.

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Look no father for an anxiety specialist and trauma-informed couples therapist in Niantic, Connecticut.

If you’ve been walking on eggshells in your relationship, constantly managing emotions, overthinking every word, or feeling like you can never fully relax with your partner, couples therapy for emotional intimacy can offer you real relief.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, we help couples like you rebuild emotional connection in marriage so that you don’t feel like strangers or enemies under the same roof. You’ll learn how to turn toward each other emotionally, rather than shutting down or turning away.

Many couples come to us feeling stuck in painful cycles. One of you withdraws, the other criticizes, and no one feels heard.

If this sounds familiar, trauma-informed couples therapy near Mystic, Connecticut helps.

Whether you experienced childhood trauma, perfectionism, or anxious attachment, those wounds don’t just disappear. They show up in how you love, argue, and seek reassurance.

Emotionally focused couples counseling in Mystic, Connecticut brings healing into the room

This way, you both feel seen and validated in new, transformative ways.

You may not realize how anxiety affects your marriage until you begin naming it. High-functioning anxiety, people pleasing, and conflict avoidance are all survival strategies you may have learned as a child to stay emotionally safe. But in a marriage, they can block the very connection you crave. In our secure attachment couples therapy, we guide you in recognizing these patterns and gently replacing them with vulnerability, safety, and emotional closeness.

At Wisdom Within Counseling in Stonington, Connecticut, specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people creates a stronger couples bubble.

If you’re constantly overthinking, never sleeping well, or feeling emotionally numb, you’re not alone.

We work with couples where one or both partners are stuck in cycles of sexual avoidance or emotional disconnection. Sometimes, trauma leads to perfectionism and a fear of letting your guard down. Couples counseling for intimacy issues helps you feel safe enough to be your full, authentic self again—in and out of the bedroom.

Our approach blends the best of science and heart. As a certified Imago relationship therapist and Gottman Method couples therapist, Katie Ziskind brings structure and compassion to every session.

You’ll learn tools to reconnect with your partner emotionally and repair after fights. Through safe conversations, you begin to heal emotional wounds that may have been buried for decades. This is marriage counseling to rebuild trust in its most holistic form.

If you’ve ever felt parentified, neglected, or emotionally abandoned as a child, therapy for people pleasers in relationships can be life-changing.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, our marriage therapists in Southeastern Connecticut create a safe space for you to stop saying what others want to hear—and start speaking your truth.

When you feel emotionally safe with your partner, everything changes. You become less defensive, more open, and more connected—mentally, emotionally, and physically.

In our sessions, we use somatic marriage therapy techniques to help you calm your nervous system and stay present. That means you’ll stop going into fight-or-flight during conflict and start staying emotionally available.

Trauma lives in the body, and somatic tools support you in gently releasing old patterns. Our couples therapists want you to feel emotionally safe with your partner not just during therapy. At home, in the car, in the kitchen, being touched, and in bed.

At Wisdom Within Counseling in Ledyard, Connecticut, specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people creates a stronger couples bubble.

One of the most beautiful things we offer is the practice of building what’s known as a couple bubble. This concept, rooted in secure attachment, means creating a protective space where your relationship comes first.

Through marriage therapy, you’ll learn how to keep that bubble strong. You gain skills to co-create empathy, shared rituals, emotional honesty, and presence. You and your partner become each other’s safe haven again.

Katie Ziskind’s therapy approach is gentle, wise, and deeply human. She specializes in marriage therapy to rebuild trust after trauma, betrayal, emotional distance, or just years of growing apart.

Wisdom Within Counseling offers specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people, people pleasers, perfectionists, and couples who are stuck in sexual rejection cycles.

Lyme, East Lyme, Old Saybrook, Essex, Deep River, Chester, Westbrook, Clinton, Madison, Guilford, Killingworth, Haddam, East Haddam, Salem, Montville, Waterford, New London, Groton, Mystic, Stonington, North Stonington, Ledyard, Colchester, Hebron, Middletown, Durham, Portland, Rocky Hill, Wethersfield, Hartford, Connecticut.

As well, specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people is available in:

Ivoryton, Centerbrook, Niantic, Uncasville, Norwich, Preston, Bozrah, Lebanon, Gales Ferry, Ledyard, Marlborough, Cromwell, Glastonbury, Old Lyme Shores, Sound View, South Lyme, Hawks Nest Beach, Fenwick, Saybrook Point, Old Hamburg, and Black Hall, Connecticut. Fairfield, Southport, Norwalk, Wilton, Weston, Easton, New Canaan, Darien, Stamford, Ridgefield, Redding, Bethel, Danbury, Bridgeport, Trumbull, Shelton, Monroe, Stratford, Milford, Orange, Woodbridge, Branford, Greenwich, Cos Cob, Riverside, Old Greenwich, Glenville, Seymour, Derby, Ansonia, and New Haven.

Start in specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people below.

If you’re looking for a top couples therapist for anxiety and trauma in East Lyme, Waterford, or Niantic, Connecticut, Wisdom Within Counseling is a place where healing happens every day.

Rebuilding your relationship doesn’t require being perfect—it requires being real. Whether you’re struggling with trauma, intimacy issues, or simply feeling emotionally disconnected, there is hope.

You can learn how to feel emotionally safe with your partner again, create a secure couple bubble, and build a relationship that feels strong, supported, and loving—like never before.

Book your first session today at Wisdom Within Counseling, and let your healing journey begin.

Katie Ziskind offers specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people in Southeastern Connecticut.

Specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious individuals—like the kind offered by Katie Ziskind at Wisdom Within Counseling—can completely transform the way you experience sex and intimacy in your relationship. If you’ve always associated sex with pressure, performance anxiety, shame, or a sense of emotional disconnect, therapy gives you a safe place to explore and rewrite those internal scripts.

When you live with high anxiety, your nervous system is often on alert, constantly scanning for danger or criticism. Even the thought of emotional or physical intimacy can feel overwhelming. You might tense up, shut down, or avoid it entirely—not because you don’t love your partner, but because your body interprets closeness as a threat rather than a connection.

In specialized couples therapy, you and your partner learn how to build emotional safety first—so your body can begin to feel calm and at ease in connection.

The foundation of playful, fulfilling sex starts with feeling emotionally accepted. That means being able to say, “I’m scared,” “I feel pressure,” or “I don’t know how to let go” without being judged or rushed. When you’re highly anxious, it can feel impossible to be in the moment or even know what you want.

Sex becomes playful—not scary—when there’s no pressure to perform and no expectation that it has to look a certain way. In therapy, you’ll practice communicating about touch, connection, and consent in real time.

You’ll build comfort with using your voice, identifying what feels good, and saying no without guilt. When you’ve grown up people-pleasing or walking on eggshells, speaking up about your needs can feel terrifying.

A skilled, trauma-informed therapist like Katie Ziskind teaches you how to slow things down, get curious about your own needs, and begin to express them.

But in East Lyme, Connecticut marriage therapy sessions, you’ll begin to rebuild your confidence and learn that your desires matter just as much as your partner’s.

You’ll also explore how your early childhood experiences—like having a parent who withheld affection or responded with anger—shape the way you show up in adult intimacy.

Maybe you learned to hide parts of yourself, to stay silent to keep the peace, or to over-function and fix everything. These patterns can show up in your sex life too, creating disconnection, anxiety, and resentment.

Couples therapy in Gales Ferry, Connecticut gently untangles those old survival strategies so you can show up in your relationship as your full, authentic self—emotionally and sexually.

Many highly anxious people use overthinking, perfectionism, or emotional numbing (like shutting down, drinking, or staying busy) to avoid the vulnerability of closeness. Counseling helps you become aware of these coping tools and learn to replace them with healthier ones—like self-soothing, grounding, and emotional honesty.

You begin to realize that it’s okay to not be perfect, to be a little messy, and to bring your full self into the bedroom without shame.

At Wisdom Within Counseling, you won’t be rushed into sex-focused exercises before you’re ready. Katie Ziskind understands that healing happens through emotional connection first. You’ll work on building a “couple bubble,” a space where both partners protect each other’s emotional safety.

This bubble becomes the safe container where you can explore sensuality, playfulness, and pleasure—without anxiety stealing the moment.

Specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people teaches couples emotional communication skills.

You’ll also learn how to share your anxiety with your partner rather than holding it inside.

Saying things like “I feel pressure and I’m afraid of letting you down” becomes a bridge rather than a wall. This emotional intimacy leads to physical intimacy that’s based on connection, not fear. When both of you feel seen, accepted, and emotionally connected, sex becomes a co-created experience of joy rather than a source of stress.

Therapy will also help you navigate sexual mismatches or avoidance with compassion. Rather than labeling one person as the problem, Katie Ziskind helps you both see the underlying patterns and how they’re rooted in nervous system dysregulation, fear of rejection, or unmet emotional needs.

You learn how to co-regulate, soothe each other, and move toward closeness in small, safe ways that build trust.

Ultimately, marriage counseling for highly anxious people isn’t just about improving your sex life.

It’s about healing the parts of you that learned love required sacrifice, performance, or silence.

With the right support, sex can become a place of connection, laughter, safety, and pleasure. You’ll stop “getting it over with” and start looking forward to being with each other—emotionally and physically.

If you’re ready to experience sex as playful instead of pressured, marriage counseling at Wisdom Within Counseling with Katie Ziskind can help you create that shift. You deserve to feel relaxed, wanted, and emotionally connected with your partner—not anxious, ashamed, or distant.

Let Southeastern Connecticut marriage therapy for highly anxious people be your bridge to pleasure, intimacy, and peace.

At Wisdom Within Counseling in Stonington, Connecticut, specialized marriage counseling for highly anxious people brings you together.