Healing a Sexless Relationship: Rebuilding Trust and Emotional Intimacy with Katie Ziskind

Episode 107:
Healing a Sexless Relationship: Rebuilding Trust and Emotional Intimacy with Katie Ziskind

In this episode of the Relationship Diversity Podcast, I talk with holistic marriage and family therapist Katie Ziskind about the challenges and solutions for couples facing sexual avoidance and emotional disconnection. Katie, an expert in addressing high-conflict cycles and intimacy issues, shares insights into understanding attachment styles, the importance of emotional intimacy, and the role of inner child work in healing relationships. Through her experience, Katie provides couples hope and practical steps to rebuild trust and intimacy, even in cases of long-term sexual avoidance cycles, infidelity and emotional turmoil.

This was an amazing conversation and I learned so much from Katie’s wisdom.

Connect with Katie:

Website | Podcast “All Things Love and Intimacy on Spotify | Podcast “All Things Love and Intimacy on Apple Podcasts

00:00 Understanding Relationship Cycles

01:57 Meet Katie Ziskind: Holistic Marriage and Family Therapist

03:58 Exploring Sexual Avoidance in Long-Term Relationships

06:10 The Importance of Emotional Intimacy

08:30 Re-Education About Pleasure and Intimacy

22:13 Addressing Infidelity and Rebuilding Trust

29:41 Inner Child Work in Relationships

39:03 Katie Ziskind's Relationship Coaching

43:07 Conclusion and Resources

This is Relationships Reimagined.

Join the conversation as we dive into a new paradigm of conscious, intentional and diverse relationships.

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Podcast Music by Zachariah Hickman

Transcript

Katie Ziskind: 0:00

I work with couples that it's six months, some couples it's over a decade they haven't had sex. There's always a positive dance and a negative dance. Every couple has a positive cycle where they help each other feel, loved, praised, appreciated. Every couple also has a cycle where they feel lonely, unimportant, dismissed, invalidated, hurt, sad. So they're usually stuck in that cycle and typically when I work with couples there's one person who avoids and withdraws Some of it's because they're afraid they're going to say the wrong thing or that avoidance is I feel like I'm never going to be good enough. And so we look at what's going on beneath the avoidance and the withdrawal cycle, and a lot of times they're with someone that's anxious and craves a sense of closeness and touch and affection, and when that need isn't met, that person's panic and anxiety response increases. And so we get into this cycle and it's like the back of two magnets repelling each other.

Carrie Jeroslow: 0:58

Welcome to the Relationship Diversity Podcast, where we celebrate, question and explore all aspects of relationship structure diversity, from soloramory to monogamy to polyamory and everything in between, because every relationship is as unique as you are. We'll bust through societal programming to break open and dissect everything we thought we knew about relationships, to ask the challenging but transformational questions who am I and what do I really want in my relationships? I'm your guide, Keri Jaroslow. Bestselling author, speaker, intuitive and coach. Join me as we reimagine all that our most intimate relationships can become. Today's episode is part of our conversation series. I'm just one voice in this relationship diversity movement and it's important to bring more unique perspectives into the conversation.

Carrie Jeroslow: 1:57

Today I'm talking with Katie Ziskind, a holistic marriage and family therapist and relationship coach, specializing in breaking the cycle of sexual avoidance in long-term relationships. Katie is so wise and brought me many aha moments as we talked about moving towards more emotional intimacy while healing our inner child and so much more. But first a little about her. Katie Ziskind is a licensed marriage and family therapist, sex and intimacy specialist, holistic relationship coach and the owner of Wisdom Within Counseling and Coaching. She specializes with disconnected couples in counseling who want to stay together and want to work together after high conflict, fights, anger issues, affairs, sexual avoidance and sexual rejection to develop a foundation of emotional connection, trust and love. She supports couples who struggle with infidelity and need an affair recovery specialist who takes them through specific steps to attune to each other. She helps couples grow together through life transitions and stressors like infertility, becoming new parents, having a child with special needs, loss and grief, dealing with chronic pain, alcoholism, becoming empty nesters, and does so while reducing criticism, hurt and conflict. She helps couples feel safe and excited emotionally and build a strong bond while they grow together. She also helps couples gain sex positive skills to have more regular sexual experiences, understand foreplay, increase sexual pleasure, rebuild sexual desire, connect to their sexual, erotic, playful sides together.

Carrie Jeroslow: 3:49

Katie has a podcast available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify called All Things, love and Intimacy. Let's get into the conversation. Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Relationship Diversity Podcast. And welcome to this episode of Relationship Diversity Podcast. I've got another amazing guest with a topic that I think is really needed to pull out of the dark into the light. Release shame, because I think this happens more than we really know. We are going to talk today about cycles of sexual avoidance and moving towards more intimate connection, and I have the amazing Katie Ziskind here, who is a holistic marital and family therapist practicing in Florida and Connecticut. I'm so excited to have you here, katie. Thank you for being on the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here, katie. Thank you for being on the podcast.

Katie Ziskind: 4:46

I'm so excited to be here too as well, Keri.

Carrie Jeroslow: 4:50

Yay, well, okay. So this is a pretty big topic that I think people don't talk about. I think people have a lot of shame around it. I talk a lot about long-term relationships and that there are ebbs and flows to long-term relationships and what we see is this online, instagram, facebook here's what my relationship looks like and all the highlights, and we don't always talk or hear or see the ebbs of relationships, one of those ebbs being sexual avoidance and moving away from sexual intimacy for all different kinds of reasons. So I'm excited to have you here as an expert on this topic to help people who maybe are in all the corners of the world. Saying this sounds like me. I've been in this long-term relationship and I'm not having sex. I don't even have any emotional intimacy anymore and I'm not exactly sure how I got here, but I want to get back to more emotional intimacy. So, before we get into that important topic, katie, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what inspired you to focus on this area of relationships?

Katie Ziskind: 6:10

Yeah, I love working with couples. I'm really passionate about working with all different types of couples, regardless of relationship structure. Monogamous, non-monogamous. Couples are at a really vulnerable place when they're in conflict and a lot of times couples don't get the expertise and the support that they deserve. A lot of times they'll go to a therapist and that therapist will say oh, break up, you're not meant to be together, you're incompatible, and that's the worst advice they could possibly receive. And so I specialize with couples that might have an avoidance cycle or a high conflict cycle and face sexual rejection and unwantedness and loneliness and these huge core emotions, and I help them shift into connection, trust, love and really a secure emotional bond that supports a healthy sex life. And it's amazing because at the beginning of a session people will have their backs towards each other and feel very disconnected and then by the end of a session they'll be, you know, have guided them into holding hands or turning towards each other, which is a Gottman method, but really being able to embody that sense of closeness.

Katie Ziskind: 7:18

And a lot of times we don't get education on this. We learn about math and science and algebra, but we never learn about how to have a healthy, secure, emotional relationship. We also don't learn terms like the couple bubble. The couple bubble is an entity that two people at a minimum are creating, and we never learn how to nourish and maintain a healthy couple bubble, and so we're always growing in a marriage or in a long-term relationship. We're growing a garden together. We have soil, we have water, we have fertilizer, we have baby plants, and if we are giving our time, energy and attention to other things parenting, running a business, building a career, paying bills, our own health issues, stress with in-laws, whatever it may be that garden those plants die in the garden. So we do need to maintain intimacy and we end up losing touch with each other, and so I give couples a safe space to gain sex positive education and understand the female pleasure system and reconnect with those erotic sides, but also understand that emotional vulnerability and emotional intimacy is the foundation for feeling safe sexually.

Carrie Jeroslow: 8:30

So, Katie, I want to ask you how common do you think it is to lose emotional intimacy over time? I know that that's your specialty and that's probably why people come to you, but do you have any statistics? Is there any research about how common it is in relationships for the intimacy to get affected for one reason or another?

Katie Ziskind: 8:54

I think it's really common. It's not something that we normalize. I think a lot of times couples, like you said, look on Facebook or Instagram and think that they should be living up to what they see. We also have a sense of competition or unrealistic standards when it comes to pornography. We think that we have to live up to what we see in pornography and we also think what we see in a Hollywood movie or a romance movie is what we have to live up to, and so we're being fed a lot of misinformation.

Katie Ziskind: 9:23

And if we're raised in a strict conservative religious upbringing, that's also misinformation that we feel like we have to abide by, and we have shame and guilt. So we're not really set up for success. So we never have support to say, hey, how are you feeling? Or I know you said you're fine, but you don't look fine, and so tuning into that emotional piece is something we're never taught. So a lot of times couples will come because they feel disconnected and that's a good indicator that you want a closer relationship. Or if you're getting into intense high conflict fights. We only fight with someone that we care about. The only reason we're fighting is because we deeply love the person and we want to feel secure with them and we want reassurance. So if you're fighting, that's actually a good thing. It's even worse when both people are avoiding each other.

Carrie Jeroslow: 10:14

Well, that's a reframe for me. So I grew up with thinking everything was okay in my house until I saw fighting and that led to my parents' divorce and so I never looked at fighting as a good thing. So that's a big reframe for me and in fact it's affected my relationships, because anytime I think that there's fighting, I think something is really wrong. So I appreciate that, and it doesn't mean that everything's right, but it means that I care.

Katie Ziskind: 10:42

That's what you're saying yeah, it means that you both care and also, if you're fighting, it's yes, we're going to have fights and we can work on how to fight, but the recovery and the repair is the most important part.

Carrie Jeroslow: 10:53

Right, I think, that I found with sex is that people think that there should be a certain amount of sex in a marriage or in a long-term relationship or in any relationship, and if that sex or amount or quantity goes away, then there's something wrong. But what you're saying, I think, is that there is something underneath it and by looking at where the emotional disconnect is, then the sexual intimacy follows that. But you can't just say well, we're supposed to have sex three times a week, or once a week or once a month, but we just need to get in the bed and do it or get on the counter and do it which is really hard when there is been emotional disconnect and I'm sure that there's lots of different reasons.

Carrie Jeroslow: 11:45

There could be infidelity that's a big one, but there also could be. We've just been so busy and we haven't spent the time to be together in the same room. So when you look at emotional intimacy, how do you start? Because you told me before that you've worked with couples who haven't had sex or any kind of intimate connection in a decade, right, yeah, yep, I work with couples that maybe at six months, some couples it's over a decade.

Katie Ziskind: 12:11

They haven't had sex.

Carrie Jeroslow: 12:12

So for a couple that hasn't had sex in over a decade, how do you even begin to start peeling away what this is about? To bring back connection?

Katie Ziskind: 12:23

Well, the first step is understanding the cycle. So there's always a positive dance and a negative dance. Every couple has a positive cycle where they help each other, feel loved, praised, appreciated, you feel special, you feel important, you feel inspired, aroused, relaxed. But every couple has a cycle where they feel lonely, unimportant, cast aside, disposable, dismissed, invalidated, hurt, sad. So they're usually stuck in that cycle and so typically when I work with couples, there's one person that has an avoidant attachment style or who avoids and withdraws. And sometimes people avoid or withdraw because they are afraid they're gonna say the wrong thing or they feel like inadequate, like deep down underneath that avoidance is, I feel like I'm never gonna be good enough or I'm just gonna continually disappoint my partner, and so they're avoiding. But there's really this core emotion not being discussed. And so we look at what's going on beneath the avoidance and the withdrawal cycle. And a lot of times too, they're with someone that's anxious or has an anxious attachment style and craves a sense of closeness and a sense of intimacy and a sense of togetherness and touch and affection, and when that need isn't met, that person's panic and anxiety response increases. And so we get into this cycle and it's like the back of two magnets repelling each other. And so we start to talk about emotional needs, needs for reassurance. We all want to matter to our partners. We all want to be seen as special. We want to know that hey, if I reach out and try to hold your hand, that you're going to hold my hand back, versus what's currently happening, which is I don't want to hold your hand. Let's not have sex. Let's not have sex. Let's not have sex for a month. I don't want to have sex for the next six months. It's painful for the partner. That craves connection.

Katie Ziskind: 14:17

And when I say sex, I'm not just talking about penis and vagina sex. Sex could be making out Sex could be caressing someone's back or their belly, or giving a full body massage Could be oral sex could be manual stimulation, could be just playing. You don't have to have an orgasm or ejaculation. For some people it is. But we're talking about sexual pleasure in the same way. Maybe you enjoy a piece of chocolate, and that's pleasurable. Or maybe you enjoy dancing, and that's pleasurable. And we're also talking about sex as a recreational hobby and a form of pleasure.

Katie Ziskind: 14:49

And a lot of times people get really insecure. We have sexual performance anxiety. We're worried. For some women too, it's very much worries about body shape, body weight. Oh, I have to lose weight. I have to gain weight. I have to change something about myself in order to be desirable. And it's like no right now, in this moment all the listeners on the podcast. You are attractive, you are healthy, you are able to experience sexual pleasure just the way you are.

Katie Ziskind: 15:16

And our culture does a disservice to women too. If you walk down the supermarket and the grocery store, there are all these products to make your vagina and your vulva smell like strawberries, and those things are so toxic for you you don't need any of that. If you're practicing good hygiene and showering, you're fine. But a lot of people are self-conscious about giving and receiving oral sex. So when there's anxiety associated with performance or someone says, oh, if my partner hugging me has to lead to penetrative sex, my anxiety spikes. So we take that obligation off of it having to lead to sex. So touch can be caring, touch can be sexual, touch can be arousing. You don't have to have a future end goal in mind.

Katie Ziskind: 15:59

We also have issues where foreplay is not adequate. So the female pleasure system a vulva owner does need about 45 to 90 minutes of foreplay and this is before even penetrative sex is considered Whereas the male body or a penis owner really only needs about four to eight minutes of stimulation before they're ready or before they're reaching ejaculation or orgasming, and so we immediately have a desire discrepancy. So a lot of it is education on how to lengthen foreplay, how to build desire, how to build anticipation, how to build excitement, because, especially for a female or a vulva owner, relaxation is a precursor to desire. So if a female is thinking about the laundry, the to-do list, who's packing lunches for tomorrow, who's paying this bill, the brain is already at max capacity, like the mental load is already in full drive, and so relaxing is going to be the step one, relaxing together and then shifting into arousal, and so we talk about what to do for those 45 to 90 minutes of foreplay, and foreplay is both emotional foreplay and sexual foreplay. So that's what helps to build that emotional safety.

Carrie Jeroslow: 17:13

There's so much that you said. That is really bringing a lot of aha moments to me, and I think what it boils down to is a re-education about pleasure, because I think that so many people think sex is penetration, sex is orgasm. That's what.

Katie Ziskind: 17:37

I grew up learning.

Carrie Jeroslow: 17:38

So to redefine sex and redefine pleasure is huge right there because there is so much pressure especially if someone hasn't engaged in any kind of intimacy for a decade to have to get the D done right how many times do we hear that Get the D done.

Carrie Jeroslow: 18:00

What even does that mean? But if you can take all of those expectations off and just say, maybe today I just want to hold your hand and look into your eyes, that is like, oh, that's something I feel like I can do and I can be present with. I tend to get overwhelmed and overstimulated in emotions because I'm an empath and I feel a lot and my emotions sometimes overwhelm me. But to just sit and hold my partner's hand, look in his eyes and say I'm here with you feels very intimate, feels more intimate to me than penetration. At times Penetration can be very intimate of sexual avoidance. That little bit can really create a stronger foundation which may or may not lead to penetrative sex or may or may not lead to oral sex or something like that.

Carrie Jeroslow: 19:00

So I love how you broke that down. That was really huge for me and I think one of your missions that you talk about is this re-education, and I grew up in the 70s and 80s and I also had three older brothers and what I was shown by their friends and rom-coms of the 80s of what sex is is even damaging right now to me and something that I'm needing to heal. So I really appreciate all of that that you just said yeah.

Katie Ziskind: 19:30

Yeah, we are very much influenced by our culture. If we grew up in a strict conservative upbringing, for one, that makes us think sex is taboo or we should only do it for procreation. And also, too, there is a huge overemphasis on penetrative sex right For many women or vulva owners, they orgasm more from nipple stimulation or from clitoral stimulation, or penetration may not even need to occur for them to have multiple orgasms, and I think a lot of men or penis owners in particular, do need that. Give my partner a back massage or talk with them or caress their hair or shower with them. There is a form of safety within that connection that does support sexual satisfaction and sexual fulfillment. And a lot of times, too, it's being able to shift from parenting mode or business mode into that sexual, erotic, playful self. Because I think sex is really a play space. It's like a playground. It's a place for two people at a minimum. You can always add more in.

Katie Ziskind: 20:36

But to be primal, to be authentic, it's your most authentic self. The sounds you make. You want to be reassured that your partner is going to love. The sounds you make. You want to feel comfortable, being yourself, having a voice, asking for something. Hey, I need lube. You want to feel comfortable, being yourself, having a voice asking for something hey, I need lube.

Katie Ziskind: 20:51

You want to feel safe and authentic in advance knowing, hey, I need to ask for this, I want to use a sex toy, I need to change a position, my hip is hurting, I need some water, whatever it is, and also have a safe container, because they're going to be bloopers. You might fart, you might burp, you might laugh, you might cry. That's the human sexual experience. Intimacy is into me, you see, into me, you see. So you're letting someone in, you're sharing yourself with them and you're also allowing sexual experiences to be a space for both of you to let go of everything you're struggling with outside of that moment so maybe you're dealing with having a child with special needs, or infertility, or chronic pain or something going on and so that beautiful experience of sexual connection together can be a safe space for both of you to enjoy each other and truly be present. And emotional intimacy creates fuel for sexual intimacy, and vice versa creates fuel for sexual intimacy and vice versa, definitely.

Carrie Jeroslow: 21:55

And so I get those circumstances where it's kids and job, and I know all about that and how sometimes in the very beginning of parenthood, we're just trying to keep the kids alive, I'm trying to keep the kids fed, I'm trying to keep the kids from not tripping on something sharp. Oh, I forgot to childproof that. So I understand those. And then jobs and careers and businesses, and I wanna move towards something that feels a little bit heavier, which is something like infidelity. So one partner has an experience that is outside of their agreement and it is affecting the emotional security that the other partner feels. How do you start to unpack that?

Katie Ziskind: 22:34

So I do work a lot with couples with infidelity. We can have emotional cheating where a sexual act hasn't taken place. We can also have emotional cheating with a virtual sexual activity. That could be like sexting, where maybe there was no actual in-person sex but there was still virtual sex. And then we also have infidelity where there is a sexual in-person encounter and there can be multiple affair partners. There could be one long-term affair partner.

Katie Ziskind: 23:01

It can look different for each couple, but what it really is is a betrayal wound. It's a severe type of trauma and it does create PTSD in the person who was cheated on. It basically feels like the carpet's been pulled out from under them and infidelity is painful. It's heartbreaking, it's shocking, it's devastating. But it is an opportunity for marriage number two. So you have marriage number two to the same person and you're rebuilding walls of commitment. You're reaffirming your commitment on a daily basis. You're rebuilding trust and when we rebuild trust, infidelity is like taking a piggy bank and breaking the whole thing. But rebuilding trust is each of you putting one cent into that piggy bank and then slowly you get $1,000. So that's how we rebuild trust is slowly, over time and through consistent acts, reassuring acts, helping each person feel like they matter.

Katie Ziskind: 23:58

Also, infidelity is an opportunity to look at secret keeping. Secret keeping is oftentimes normalized in our childhood. We grew up in childhoods where we haven't had our love needs met. We've had emotional abuse or dismissive parents or parents that taught us how to lie. And it doesn't have to be direct. It could just be oh, don't show me your tears. Go to your room when you cry. Don't show us your tears. Look perfect, look happy. That is actually teaching a child to lie. That child can't be their authentic self. So we inherently develop these behaviors. So in a marriage, a lot of times after infidelity we look at how secret keeping was normalized. We also look at a need for external validation.

Katie Ziskind: 24:41

Someone who cheats often is craving something. Who could that person be with their affair partners that they couldn't be in their marriage? Were they getting compliments? Were they feeling important? What was going on? And more often than not I would say with 85% of the couples that I work with there are multiple secrets that come out. So let's say, one person has been cheating five years earlier, 10 years earlier, 15 years earlier. The other person has cheated but just kept it a secret for that extensive period of time. So there's usually a compound piece to infidelity counseling, which is amazing because we're literally putting it all out on the table and we have to look at what were the stressors.

Katie Ziskind: 25:24

Infidelity is a symptom of a larger marital issue. Infidelity is a sign that your marriage had cracks in the foundation for six months, even up to five to 10 years into the past. There were a number of stressors that were placed on the marriage and on the couple bubble that were not dealt with in a way that supported togetherness, unity or meaningful connection, and so all of those things piled up and then now we have infidelity. The person who cheated does need to take ownership, does need to accept that they hurt their partner, they do need to apologize. They really need to understand how hurtful it was.

Katie Ziskind: 26:04

But if we look at it from a holistic perspective, usually there are a number of different challenges that the couple turned away from each other about or dealt with hyper independently, or missed bids for affection, missed bids for connection, and we start to look at all of those and start to look at okay, how did this recipe happen, how did the recipe for this affair take place and what can we both do to start to rebuild that sense of comfort and reassurance and it's a beautiful, worthwhile process, but it also does mean talking about uncomfortable things and expressing emotions.

Katie Ziskind: 26:40

A lot of times before an affair, both people are not expressing emotions. We're not having bonding conversations, we're going to bed at different times, we're two ships passing in different times, we're two ships passing in the night, we're on different planets, and all of that creates a recipe for emotional disconnection. An affair is a symptom of that. But in healing from an affair we do have to not be engaging in the affair in order for couples therapy to be successful. But a lot of times couples get to look at cycles of avoidance and cycles of withdrawing deep, unmet love needs and those core memories from childhood that we need to talk about to rebuild a good bond.

Carrie Jeroslow: 27:18

Again. There's so much that you said I want to talk to. So the first thing is that the person being cheated on has PTSD.

Katie Ziskind: 27:29

Yes, post-traumatic stress disorder. Yeah, high levels of anxiety. Suspicion yeah, they're having a somatic body reaction.

Carrie Jeroslow: 27:37

Right, which I've not heard it said in that way, and that makes total sense. And this whole conversation really leads me back to my parents, because that is what happened. My father had an affair and we were with my mom, me and my brothers and I would see her just in tears all the time and I never, of course, at 12, really understood. I knew that it was a lot and she felt betrayed and all of that. But now looking back makes me see, oh yeah, she was experiencing a form of PTSD and then being pushed into a life that she wasn't expecting having to find a job after being a full time parent and all of that kind of stuff. And the other thing that makes me think about it is what you were saying about that. Probably 10 years before, five years before, there was a big disconnect between them that was never talked about because there were four children in the house. We were a traditional family in that my father worked, my mother stayed home with the kids and the only thing I saw was their door locked on Tuesdays.

Carrie Jeroslow: 28:44

I thought I knew what was going on. I don't know, but who really knows? Right, but I would not be surprised if that was part of their story. Is that real emotional disconnection? And to me, no fault to anyone, because I, being now a parent with businesses and jobs, see how that can happen without really focused attention. And I heard this one person say at one point that they started therapy with their husband before they were married.

Carrie Jeroslow: 29:14

And that seems so smart to me because then you're always paying attention to the relationship and it's very easy for it to get disconnected and then lead to infidelity. I can see how that can happen because, like my husband and I were so busy, it's easy to not talk about. I'm not getting this need met, we're just trying to survive, and so having a real focus and attention on that is really important. And then the other. The last thing I'll say is you talked about the inner child and I know you do inner child work. I've done so much healing work, but I'm still sure my 12 year old comes up during relationship arguments, who still is sad and probably has a form of PTSD that I'm wanting to work and release out of my body and all of that. So can you talk a little bit more about the inner child work and how that really helps to understand the dynamics that go on in relationships?

Katie Ziskind: 30:13

So a lot of couples work is working with the inner child and I like the way you say that we can talk about the inner child like younger years. So when you're three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine this is the age that we're talking about here and we have core memories. We may have had generally a great childhood or we may have had, like parents that provided a good home and we can have good relationships with our parents to this day. But when we're looking therapeutically, we look at these core memories. So when you were crying and when you were upset, how was that handled?

Katie Ziskind: 30:45

For a lot of people, especially men, women too, but and all genders of people, we're often told go deal with that by yourself. Crying is not welcome. Stop crying right now. Don't be weak. Bite your lip. Work. Hard Work is going to help you get somewhere in life, so don't waste your tears.

Katie Ziskind: 31:04

And so that invalidates a child's emotional experience. We have some people who are forced to cry by themselves sitting by the basement stairs. There's no coddling, there's emotional experience. We have some people who are forced to cry by themselves sitting by the basement stairs. Right, there's no coddling, there's no nurturing, there's no emotional support from an adult or parent or caregiver that's a trusted figure in this child's life. And ideally, when our therapeutic work with our adult selves, we go in and we hug our inner child and we give our inner child that love and nurturing. But in that moment a child develops a narrative or a belief or a story I am only lovable when I'm working, or I am only lovable when I'm happy. My parents only give me love when I get a good grade, or I am not good enough. Or there's emotional neglect that occurs In more severe cases. We have physical abuse, we have sexual abuse and these core memories they are wounds. So they're wounds that get re-triggered in current marital conflicts. Let's say a child has parents that are emotionally neglectful. At times they develop this narrative that my needs don't matter, my needs are dismissed unless I'm performing, unless I'm perfect, unless I'm achieving something. And then this child watches the parents have an affair and let's say the mom in the affair starts unloading on the child and this child sees the mom get through all of this tough stuff and that child says I'm never going to go through that pain in my marriage. I'm never going to go through that. I'm determined to never go through this pain again and there's this vicious narrative that develops and the pain and betrayal I'm never going to go through. And then that child's now an adult in marriage and their partner cheats on them and all of these wounds come up. I deeply trusted my partner to be a secure person to me. They betrayed me. I said I would never go through this pain again. And now here I am, going through it.

Katie Ziskind: 32:52

It's like our whole world revolves a lot around these inner child experiences. Let's say, someone that was emotionally dismissed or wasn't allowed to cry. They often develop a cycle of avoidance. They avoid intimacy because as a child, closeness wasn't consistent. Intimacy was paired with emotional chaos, with disappointment, with hurt, with anxiety. It wasn't safe to trust an adult because that adult was only there sometimes. So now we have this avoidance cycle in adulthood and so when one partner wants closeness in an adult relationship, this partner pulls away because why try? It's only going to lead to disappointment. I really can't trust you anyway. And so we have this narrative come up and a lot of times avoidant people end up being hyper independent, and both anxious attachment styles and avoidant attachment styles are complex trauma symptoms. So experiencing trauma in childhood does create anxious attachment style or an avoidant attachment style, and we can shift into a secure attachment style. We can shift into that emotional security. It's totally possible.

Katie Ziskind: 34:01

But yeah, the inner child work is so beautiful. It's about visualizing yourself. You can even take a photo of yourself of when you were a child, or imagine a memory of when you were a child and tell yourself really good things. I'm enough. I am whole, complete and perfect, just the way I am. I'm doing good things every day. I am okay with rejection. Rejection from other people is divine redirection. I am accepting of myself at all times. I love myself just the way I am. I love my body. I love my hips. I love my belly. I love myself. I go to bed at a good time. I'm committed to myself, no matter who's committed to me.

Katie Ziskind: 34:44

A lot of it for someone who has an anxious attachment style and healing the inner child wound is getting that validation from inside. So, rather than trying to get that validation from a partner yes, it's nice if your partner compliments you, and they probably should, but if there's an issue, that's where couples and relationship coaching comes in but getting that validation from inside, knowing that you're worthy of love and respect, no matter how someone treats you. The way someone treats you is an indication of their own limitations, not what you're worth. So if someone says something to you that doesn't seem so good, shake it off. It's just them going through something. They're being a grumpy wumpy. You deserve love and attention and give that to yourself. Be your own primary caregiver. Be the best parent. Reparent yourself.

Carrie Jeroslow: 35:30

I love that reparenting thing and I also sometimes do this work on myself where I go as myself right now and then go back to my 12 year old and say look at where you are now. You're okay, it's okay and we made it through it. We're not that 12 year old anymore, so you're looking at this through the 12 year old lens, but you're okay and I just hold myself and I love that inner child work. It can be really really healing and rewriting what my present experience is, because that PTSD stops the development.

Carrie Jeroslow: 36:10

And also the other thing that really helps is for me to tell myself the decisions that I made are really just trying to keep me safe Every decision that I make, because I get really judgmental about my own decisions and my actions and so really saying that I did that because that's the only way that I knew to feel safe and that it's okay and I hug and cuddle myself and give myself all the stuff that. I wanted when I was 12. But I think that's really powerful work.

Katie Ziskind: 36:38

And I think too, doing it in a couple's framework is very healing, because then you're being vulnerable with your partner about what you experienced in your childhood and talking about the needs your inner child has and ideally over time your partner can learn to love you and nurture you and you can learn how to trigger each other less and also your partner can help you feel comfortable talking about those inner child things and they can share about their inner child experiences.

Carrie Jeroslow: 37:04

That's been really powerful for me learning about my other partner's wounds, because I then can see, oh, that's their eight-year-old, that's their 10-year-old who is coming up right now, and something that I did, or something that a circumstance triggered that little eight-year-old coming out and saying the things that it said because it's trying to keep himself safe. So understanding what our partners are going through and their little child helps the dynamic. It's more information helps us understand how to be more conscious with each other.

Katie Ziskind: 37:41

Yes, it's beautiful and knowing too. Like you said in the beginning, it's an ebb and flow. We're always choosing to grow together, and everyone likes something different in terms of how to be loved and everyone likes something different in terms of sexual expression, and so it's just communicating about it. It's about helping each other feel safe and a lot of times, too, if we had parents that made us feel unsafe, we don't really know how to help someone feel safe. So it's about asking, hey, what can I do to help you feel safe? What can I do to help you feel like your voice matters? What can I do to help you feel reassured and comforted in this social situation? Or, if you're feeling rejected, saying, hey, I actually felt really rejected, or I'm feeling really unwanted, or I would really like to feel more special, and this is how I could feel more special. So saying that speaking up is so important versus just sweeping it under the rug and feeling like it has to be perfect or you can't speak up.

Carrie Jeroslow: 38:41

It's so true. That's why I think couple counseling is so helpful, because if you've never communicated in that way, or even if you have, but you lost some of the emotional intimacy, having someone help to facilitate those conversations can really shift your relationship and bring more of that emotional intimacy. And so, katie, I know that you work with clients, but can you only work with people in Florida and Connecticut?

Katie Ziskind: 39:09

No, I do relationship coaching all over, oh wonderful.

Carrie Jeroslow: 39:13

So can you tell us a little bit about the relationship coaching and how someone can learn more about your work?

Katie Ziskind: 39:19

So my website is wisdomwithinctcom. That's wisdomwithinctcom and for relationship coaching. You just head over to my website and click on the book button and I would send you a questionnaire you would complete that all about what's going on in your relationship and I give you a safe place to talk about everything from shame, guilt, fear, the cycle of avoidance emotionally or some couples call it the ice age or a stonewalling that happens. Call it the ice age or a stonewalling that happens. And I also give you a safe place to talk about reconnecting with your sexual self and sexual embodiment and how to talk about your sexual desires and sexual fantasies and really understanding how to be emotionally vulnerable. We often have little blockages or survival mechanisms or self-protective things that pop up from childhood that we've learned as a default response, and so I can pause you both if those are coming in and preventing intimacy, or I can redirect and guide you into being more sensitive and gentle and so that you can grow together versus those blockers coming in and preventing that closeness and preventing that togetherness, and I also help you both articulate your deeper fears.

Katie Ziskind: 40:35

So we all have fears. A lot of us fear abandonment. A lot of us fear being left for someone more attractive, someone who makes more money, someone who's younger, someone who's older, someone who's this or that. A lot of us fear that abandonment. A lot of us fear rejection as well, and so we all have these fears and we need to be able to talk about them. So I give you a safe place to talk about those concerns, and also those are often underneath anger and avoidance, so a fear of inadequacy never going to be good enough in your eyes. All I want to do is be able to bring a smile to your face and saying that is so much more effective than just walking away or not talking or getting critical and angry.

Katie Ziskind: 41:18

I use a lot of Gottman methods. I use emotionally focused methods. I'm a certified sex therapy informed professional. So we talk a lot about sex and any sexual dysfunctions, from sexual performance anxiety to pornography addiction, to how to support a female partner in feeling desire if she's having low sexual desire, and how to develop that sense of connection to our sexual, erotic, playful sides because that is a beautiful experience in a long-term relationship and how to really connect and develop a sense of satisfaction together, both emotionally and sexually. So I just give you a safe space to build a comforting, meaningful, passionate and playful relationship long-term. And if you're stuck having no sex or in a sexless relationship, I would love to support you.

Carrie Jeroslow: 42:08

That is amazing. This is really, really powerful work, and the biggest thing that I'm coming out of this, and that I'm hoping people out there will feel, is that you're giving couples hope that, even if you have not been intimate in 10 years or longer, that Katie has these incredible tools and resources to hold a sacred space for you to come back to each other, and that it's possible.

Katie Ziskind: 42:37

It is, it's definitely possible.

Carrie Jeroslow: 42:40

Yes, yes, it is possible. So, with that hope, please everyone, if you're having this experience, please connect with Katie. I will have all of her information in the show notes on how to get to her easily and quickly. Katie, thank you so much for being here. Your work is really powerful and I am grateful for all the medicine that you put in the world with your work. Thanks so much for listening to the Relationship Diversity Podcast. Thanks so much for listening to the Relationship Diversity Podcast.

Carrie Jeroslow: 43:11

Want to learn more about relationship diversity? I've got a free guide I'd love to send you. Go to wwwrelationshipdiversitypodcastcom to get yours sent right to you. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe to the podcast. You being here and participating in the conversation about relationship diversity is what helps us create a space of inclusivity and acceptance together. The more comfortable and normal it is to acknowledge the vast and varied relating we all do, the faster we'll shift to a paradigm of conscious, intentional and diverse relationships. New episodes are released every Thursday. Stay connected with me through my YouTube channel, where I'll give you even more free resources and information, all about relationship diversity. I'm super excited to go deeper into YouTube because I'll be able to connect and have conversations directly with you. You'll find the link in the show notes. Stay curious.

Carrie Jeroslow: 44:15

Every relationship is as unique as you are. Are you wondering why you never seem to find lasting fulfillment in your relationships? Or do you create the same kinds of relationship experiences over and over again? Can you never seem to find even one person who you wanna explore a relationship with? Have you just given up hope altogether? If this sounds like you, my recent book "'Why Do they Always Break Up With Me' is the perfect place to start. The foundation of any relationship, whether intimate or not, is the relationship we have with ourselves. In the book, I lead you through eight clear steps to start or continue your self-exploration journey. You'll learn about the importance of self-acceptance, gratitude, belief shifting and forgiveness, and given exercises to experience these life changing concepts. This is the process I use to shift my relationships from continual heartbreak to what they are now fulfilling, soul nourishing, compassionate and loving. It is possible for you. This book can set you on a path to get there, currently available through Amazon or through the link in the show notes.