About Connected & Known
We believe the deepest problems in life are rarely caused by a lack of success. More often, they're caused by a loss of connection.
Many men have done everything they were taught to do. They built careers, provided for their families, achieved meaningful goals, and became dependable people others could count on. Yet somewhere along the way, many begin to feel disconnected from themselves, the people they love, and the life they've worked so hard to build.
At Connected & Known, we believe lasting change doesn't come from trying harder or becoming someone new. It comes from reconnecting to what has always mattered most... your values, your relationships, your purpose, and the parts of yourself that may have been buried beneath years of responsibility, performance, and expectation. Our work exists to help you rediscover clarity, strengthen the relationships that matter most, and build a life that feels deeply aligned with who you truly are.
Meet Dr. Max Ziegenhagen
I'm a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, executive advisor, speaker, and the founder of Connected & Known.
For more than a decade, I've had the privilege of sitting with people during some of the most significant moments of their lives.
I've worked with executives, entrepreneurs, professional athletes, couples in crisis, trauma survivors, and families navigating seasons of profound change. Across those experiences, one pattern has become impossible to ignore: beneath the presenting problem is often a quieter reality - disconnection.
Whether it shows up as burnout, loneliness, conflict, anxiety, emotional numbness, or uncertainty about what comes next, I've found that people rarely need another strategy. They need the space to become honest with themselves, understand what has shaped them, and intentionally reconnect with the life they actually want to live.
Connected & Known was created to provide that space. It brings together my background in trauma treatment, attachment science, relationship dynamics, and leadership development with a simple belief: when people become more connected to themselves, they become more present with the people and purpose that matter most.
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What Makes This Different
Connected & Known wasn't created because I found an interesting niche.
It was created because, after years of sitting with executives, couples, trauma survivors, fathers, young adults, and families, I began to see the same pattern appearing beneath countless different struggles: disconnection.
It showed up in the executive who had achieved every professional goal but no longer recognized himself outside of work. It showed up in the husband who desperately loved his family but couldn't explain why he continued to withdraw. It showed up in relationships where communication wasn't the real problem, but where both people had quietly lost access to one another. Again and again, I found that what looked like anxiety, conflict, burnout, or loneliness was often something deeper... a gradual separation from ourselves, from one another, and from what gives life meaning.
My own life has given me a front-row seat to many of these questions as well.
Growing up in Sonoma County, California, I was surrounded by achievement, ambition, and high expectations. Like many people, I've spent seasons trying to understand who I was beneath performance, expectations, relationships, faith, success, and failure. Those experiences don't replace professional training, but they do shape the empathy and curiosity I bring into every conversation. I don't approach this work from a distance. I understand what it feels like to search for clarity while carrying responsibility, and I know that lasting change requires more than advice.
Professionally, I've devoted my career to understanding why people become disconnected and how they find their way back. I'm a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with advanced training in trauma treatment, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, attachment theory, and relational neuroscience. I've completed doctoral work focused on psychology and men's development, and I've had the privilege of working with professional athletes, executive leaders, entrepreneurs, couples, adolescents, and families navigating some of life's most significant transitions.
What makes Connected & Known different isn't simply the combination of therapy and coaching. It's the lens through which we understand the problem. I believe you cannot effectively help someone reconnect unless you understand why they became disconnected in the first place.
That requires looking beyond symptoms to the larger story. It means understanding trauma and nervous systems. It means understanding attachment and relationships. It means understanding family systems, culture, masculinity, identity, achievement, belonging, and the environments that quietly shape us over time.
In other words, this isn't just personal opinion or motivational coaching.
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It's work grounded in clinical training, informed by research, refined through years of practice, and shaped by real life.
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My goal isn't to tell you how to live.
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It's to help you understand yourself well enough that you can begin living with greater clarity, deeper relationships, and a stronger connection to what matters most.