71: High Conflict Cycles and Anxious and Avoidant Attachment Styles: Understanding Childhood Trauma in Relationship Coaching For High Conflict Couples

Do you and your partner get into high conflict fights? Does it feel like you are stuck in a vicious cycle of negative communication, hurtful conflict, and feeling on edge around each other all the time? Are you and your partner survivors of childhood abuse, emotional trauma, and narcissistic abuse? Did you grow up with an alcoholic mother, father, or caregiver who was hot and cold, up and down emotionally? Wishing you had more frequent sex and your sexual initiations were received enthusiastically? At Wisdom Within Counseling and Coaching, Katie Ziskind specializes in high conflict marriages after childhood emotional abuse. Are you looking for a specialist who understands how childhood trauma created fears of abandonment, fears of rejection, and fears of inadequacy that are getting re-triggered in your marriage conflicts? Wishing you and your spouse could de-escalate high conflict fights, more deeply share your emotions, and be vulnerable together? In high-conflict marital fights, the blame game, yelling, and criticism are too common. The silent treatment, a common but destructive behavior in marital fights, only leads to conflict avoidance. Katie Ziskind helps couples understand the roots of their fights. You both can learn skills to develop empathy for each other's perspectives, learn effective communication, and conflict resolution skills. Both of you have fears of abandonment and fears of rejection that get re-triggered in current conflicts, due to childhood abuse and neglect. When your father or mother is hard to hug, you never get the emotional nurturing you need. You have an emotionally abusive, narcissistic mother or father. Or, your mother or father was cold, heartless, cruel, and used corporal punishment. Being emotionally dismissed is emotionally damaging. In the moments when you felt the most upset as a child, you never got cuddled, your back rubbed, or care. You never had consoling, nurturing, and comforting when you needed love the most as a child. If you were sad, crying or upset, you would be sent to your room. There was no emotional guidance or emotional support growing up. When you needed love and comfort the most, you received the message that you were unwanted and dismissed. Your parents ignored you when you were sad, crying, or upset. Your father or mother told you to “figure it out on your own,” especially when you cried and when you were upset. Past emotional wounds and emotions from childhood trauma get re-triggered. You end up bringing out the worst in each other. Without realizing it, you are both re-triggering each other's fears of abandonment, neglect, being unwanted, and fears of intimacy. When these fears, trauma memories, and major pain points get re-triggered, it's very difficult to de-escalate. You can learn healthier ways to communicate and resolve disputes in high conflict marriage coaching. When your father or mother didn’t show love, you grow up feeling emotionally neglected and unseen. Katie Ziskind is a sex positive, LGBTQIA+, queer affirming relationship coach, certified sex therapy informed professional, and Gottman level two trained marriage specialist. The “All Things Love and Intimacy” podcast is intended to help you feel more comfortable talking about emotional expression, gain emotional intimacy skills, and feel confident talking about your sexual needs, sexual expectations, erotic desires, and fantasies with your partner or partners. Katie Ziskind loves helping couples break cycles of emotional distance and sexual avoidance, and develop emotional connection and rebuild sexual desire and sexual intimacy. She would love to help you in sex positive, relationship coaching sessions.  You can build an emotionally secure, loving, playful, and passionate bond and healthy sex life by working with her at WisdomWithinCt.com. This episode is no replacement for seeking professional help.