Getting to Zero

Sharing my learnings from the book, Getting to Zero by Jayson Gaddis

Getting to Zero by Jayson Gaddis

Jayson Gaddis is a personal trainer for relationships and one of the world’s leading authorities on interpersonal conflict. For almost two decades, Gaddis has helped individuals, couples, and teams get to the bottom of their deepest conflicts. He helps people see the wisdom in conflict and how to get to zero—which means we have successfully worked through our conflict and have nothing in the way of a good connection.

In Getting to Zero, Gaddis shows the reader how to stop running away from uncomfortable conversations and instead learn how to work through them. Through funny personal stories, uncomfortable examples, and effective tools and skills, he shows the reader how to move from disconnection to connection, acceptance, and understanding. This method upgrades the old tired and static conflict resolution approaches and offers a fresh, street-level, user-friendly road map on exactly how to work through conflict with the people you care most about.

• People often try to get by without resolving conflict in their interpersonal relationships. But there are times when conflict can be just what you need. In this book, we’ll learn how to “get back to zero” after a conflict – that is, get to the point where the conflict is resolved and we have the level of connection we desire.
• generally, conflict occurs when you feel threatened. That can mean a physical or emotional threat, or one that relates to your identity, property, safety, health, morals, or the people you love. 
• When it comes to relationships, threatened feelings usually arise as a result of one of two things: too much closeness or too much distance.
  • Too much closeness can occur when someone moves toward you in a confrontational way or raises his voice.
  • Too much distance can make you feel that the other person doesn’t care about you or is even about to leave you
• It’s normal to feel triggered by either closeness or distance. But staying triggered can have long-term effects on both your physical and mental health. Start by identifying your coping mechanisms, or disconnectors.
  • The first is posturing, which involves attacking or blaming the other person to protect yourself from harm
  • The second is collapsing, the opposite of posturing. Here, you implode or shut down and feel that the situation is all your fault
  • With seeking, the third coping mechanism, you feel insecure and seek out the other person to try to reinitiate connection; this, however, can end up driving that person farther away.
  • the fourth coping mechanism, avoiding, is when you move away and create distance between you.
• Identifying how you disconnect allows you not only to recognize when you’re doing so and take action accordingly, but also to forewarn people close to you so they can help you during conflict.
• Do you have an unresolved issue with anyone in your life? If you’re like most people, you probably do – and chances are, leaving things unresolved with that person is a needless drag on your emotional energy. If so, it’s time to get to zero – by thinking inside the box. 
  • Start by making a conflict box, draw a box and separate it into nine rows.
  • In the top row, write the name of the person with whom you have an unresolved issue.
  • Then, in the next row, write up to five words that describe what that person did or didn’t do.
  • In the third row, describe how you feel when you think about the person – pissed off, annoyed, or anxious, for example.
  • In row four, score those feelings on a scale from one to ten, with zero your baseline and ten the feeling at its most extreme.
  • On the fifth line, add how long the conflict has been going on.
  • Then label each row with a brief description of what it’s about, if that helps you keep track of things.
  • Once you’ve completed these rows, think carefully about the person, the situation, and everything you’ve just written. Then ask yourself: Do you want to resolve the conflict? Have you tried everything you can to do so? If not, maybe you just can’t face the prospect of confrontation with that person. If that’s the case, maybe it’s better to work on getting to zero with someone else first. Or, if the truth is that you just see that person as a lost cause, be honest about that and pick someone you really care about and want to get to zero with. When you have the right person, you can add the sixth row to your conflict box. Take some responsibility for the conflict by describing the part you’ve played in it. What was your behavior? What did you do or not do? You shouldn’t feel that you did something wrong or that you’re the victim here. You’re merely taking some ownership.
  • in row seven, express your contribution to the conflict and its impact to the other person with empathic statements such as “I see how angry you are.”
  • In row eight, write down what you fear the other person will do if you tell the truth – for instance, blame you, cut you off, or leave.
  • in row nine, write down how you’ll feel if these fears come to pass. Use “I” statements if you can – for example, “I’ll feel hurt.”
• the conflict box is a valuable tool that contains all the pertinent information about your conflict. It will allow you to reflect on the conflict as you move forward with getting to zero
• How you grew up affects how you approach your high-stakes relationships.
  • These kinds of feelings arise from your relational blueprint – that is, imprints from past experiences with high-stakes relationships. Those are your relationships with your family, good friends, and partner, and they affect how you’ll relate to others for the rest of your life.
  • Understanding your personal relational blueprint is important if you want to be able to get to zero after conflict. Even if you didn’t have any good role models as a child, this understanding will help you empathize during conflict
  • The foundation of your relational blueprint is your attachment relationship – that is, your primary relationship.
  • Your life experience, especially how well you do with relationships, depends on how secure you felt during your childhood. And what makes for a secure childhood? A secure attachment relationship.
  • In order for an attachment relationship to be secure, it must meet your four relational needs. You must feel supported and challenged, safe, seen, and soothed. This gives a stable base for adulthood.
  • not everyone relates to that. If your caregiver was too distant or too close, you probably developed an insecure attachment. This can lead you to shut down emotionally, feel that relationships are unsafe, and even feel disconnected from life.
• unresolved issues in relationships, called disconnects, are normal. But resolving issues through a process of reconnection will eventually get you to zero – a state of connection. The way you now approach this conflict repair cycle – which goes from connection to disconnection to reconnection before returning to connection – has been influenced by how adults in your life did this when you were a child.
• By learning how to work through conflict, you can rewire your brain to understand the normal conflict repair cycle and become master of your own relational destiny.
• According to self-care expert and author Cheryl Richardson, “if you avoid conflict to keep the peace, you start a war inside yourself.”
• children feel they have two personalities. These two personalities often pull in different directions and create inner conflict, which later in life can make you feel like something isn’t right.
  • free, wild, and innocent – the true self
  • constricted in the face of perceived threats and conforms to the rules of the environment it finds itself in – the strategic self.
• Ways of resolving conflict:
  • OPTION A: dive in and be truthful
  • OPTION B: avoid the conflict & keep the peace
  • OPTION C: learning how to resolve conflict correctly.
• avoid the conflict and keep the peace might sound appealing, but if the conflict continues and you don’t express your true self, it will eventually get to be too much, and the truth will come out anyway. Then you’ll have three issues on your hands: the initial conflict itself, the inner conflict caused by your avoidance, and the brand-new conflict you just created. That’s conflict creep, and option B – that is, avoidance – just creates more and more of it.
• learning how to resolve conflict correctly allows you to be your true self and get back to the connection you want. By teaching you how to deal with conflict, option C moves you from option B to option A – that is, from avoidance to honesty.
• To resolve conflict, learn to live with your own discomforts and with how the other person experiences conflict.
• The author calls the amount of emotional discomfort you can deal with your emotional discomfort threshold, or EDT. Without training or development, your EDT will likely remain small. But it’s possible to increase your EDT by using NESTR meditation – that stands for Number, Emotion, Sensations, Thinking, and Resourced.
  • Focus on the pain or discomfort you’re feeling. Number it on a scale of zero to ten, where zero is your comfort zone and ten is hardly holding things together
  • label the Emotion you’re feeling – maybe you’re happy, sad, or enraged.
  • What physical Sensations are you feeling?
  • What are you Thinking about?
  • Then find a place in your being where you feel grounded and Resourced – think of how it feels when both your feet are firmly on the ground, for example.
  • Your NESTR meditation should take around five minutes. With continued practice, you’ll become more accustomed to your feelings, and your number will lie closer to zero more often.
• Just as important as getting used to your own feelings is learning to be comfortable with another person’s experience of conflict – understanding that will help the two of you reach resolution. Make sure that the other person feels supported and challenged, safe, seen, and soothed by you.
• The author’s tool for understanding the person you’re in conflict with is called LUFU, which stands for Listen Until they Feel Understood.
  • you’ll need presence – an awareness of your thoughts and feelings coupled with a focus on the other person.
  • be curious – not only about what the person is saying but also about how they’re saying it. You should be curious about what’s not being said.
  • practice reflective listening. Repeat back or reflect on what the person said to you. Use phrases like, “It sounds like . . . ”
  • confirming that you understand what the other person has said by using same-page questions like, “Am I following you so far?”
  • practice active listening. This basically means pressing “pause”; not saying anything, but just interrupting the speaker so you can digest what’s been said. You could say, “Hold on – let me just make sure I’m with you so far.” 
  • empathizing, is often the hardest. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes, and honestly consider your contribution to the conflict and its impact on that person.
  • validate what the other person has said. Three simple words can do this: “That makes sense.” You’re not saying the person is 100 percent right – just acknowledging how they see things. You do have to really get it, though.
  • owning your part, and that can be as simple as saying, “Yes, I did do that.” But don’t explain or justify your actions – keep listening. 
  • confirm you have a shared reality. Do this by asking questions like, “Do you feel understood now?” Of course, if the person says no to that last question, keep going with the LUFU!
• before you even start to speak, remember that your tone of voice, eye rolling, folding your arms, or getting distracted by your phone will all affect the person with whom you want to communicate. If you do these things, you’ll end up moving away from zero rather than toward it.
• The author uses the acronym SHORE for the speaking process, which stands for Speak Honestly with Ownership to Repair Empathetically
  • consider the context. Explain why you want to reconnect – for example, because the relationship is important to you. Remember: you’re speaking because this is going to be good for both of you. 
  • own your part. Tell the other person your part in the conflict. Don’t justify yourself or become defensive. Be vulnerable if need be.
  • empathizing with the other person
  • validating the other person
  • share the impact that the other person’s behavior is having on you. Talk about facts or observations about that person’s action or lack of action. Then about how it affected you, using “I feel” statements.
  • you can make a behavior change request. For example, if the person is habitually late, you could ask them to let you know in the future if they won’t be on time. It helps if you start by saying something that you’ll change in your behavior first. 
  • talk about the lessons you’ve learned. You can also journal these and share them with the other person.
  • collaborate on agreeing how you can move forward. Create agreements, or a conflict plan.
• Understanding the five most common conflicts helps you resolve them
  • surface fights. These are fights over superficial things. Be aware that there may be something else underlying the conflict, so identifying what you’re actually fighting about is key to resolution.
  • childhood projections. Projecting occurs when you take a negative or positive past experience and project it onto someone else in the present. When you realize this, acknowledge it to your partner by saying something like, “Sometimes I project onto you that you’re criticizing me.”
  • security fights. Typically, one or both partners feel that the other isn’t fully in the relationship. That feeling can lead to you not wanting to be intimate with your partner. Your fights will continue until you’re both 100 percent committed to the relationship.
  • value differences. You care deeply about your values – things like monogamy, parenting, and religion – but you notice that your partner doesn’t share those values. You can overcome these differences by setting up the context – why you want to reconnect – and then agreeing to confront those differences. Listen to and understand each other, and be open to change or compromise.
  • resentments can occur when you try to change someone or someone tries to change you. If you don’t change, that person resents you, and if you do, you resent that person. If you make your expectations of each other clear, you can negotiate and find a better outcome that suits both of you.
• You may encounter roadblocks to reconciliation, but you can ease conflict by making agreements
  • Attributing blame shifts the responsibility for and the solutions to the conflict to somewhere “over there.” If, on the other hand, you blame yourself, that’s a form of collapse. It results in you thinking everything is your fault and your responsibility, nobody else’s. You can counteract both of these roadblocks by taking responsibility for your part in the conflict.
  • These roadblocks can be overcome by making agreements.
• if you know when to use your apology, and it works for the other person, it can get you to zero. Often, though, it should wait until the end of a LUFU process.
• it’s essential that you both agree to own your own part in any future conflict and to be respectful of each other when communicating.