Getting to Zero

Have you ever wondered why even your closest relationships can swing from deep connection to painful disconnection in a heartbeat? In Getting to Zero: How to Work Through Conflict in Your High-Stakes Relationships, therapist and relationship coach Jayson Gaddis argues that the quality of our most important relationships isn’t determined by how little we fight, but by how well we repair after conflict. He contends that learning to navigate disconnection—the arguments, misunderstandings, and emotional ruptures that accompany intimacy—is the gateway to deeper connection and personal growth.

Gaddis redefines what we think conflict means. Instead of seeing it as something destructive or shameful to avoid, he views conflict as unavoidable—and even crucial—for the evolution of any meaningful relationship. Through what he calls the Conflict Repair Cycle, he introduces a new way to measure intimacy: not by harmony but by how quickly and skillfully you can move from disconnection back to what he calls Zero, that sweet spot of mutual connection, understanding, and peace.

Reframing Conflict as Connection

The central idea of Gaddis’s work is that conflict is not a sign of relational failure—it’s actually the fuel for relational maturity. Drawing on neuroscience, Buddhist psychology, and attachment theory (not unlike works by Dan Siegel and Stan Tatkin), Gaddis reminds us that our nervous systems are wired both to protect and to connect. When we feel threatened, our instinct is to defend or withdraw. But doing so cuts off communication and emotional safety, which he calls the realm of the “Scared Animal”—the reactive self that hijacks understanding and fuels distance.

To navigate this tension, the author urges readers to replace avoidance with awareness. He illustrates this through his personal story: a gifted athlete turned conflict avoider, whose early experiences taught him that fighting was bad. Only after a painful breakup did he realize the truth—he was the common denominator in his failed relationships. From that point, he committed to learning how to face conflict rather than run from it. This journey led him to develop the Getting to Zero method, which blends therapeutic and communication tools for anyone willing to confront their pain honestly.

The Road to “Zero”

“Zero,” in Gaddis’s language, isn’t about perfection or perpetual calm; it’s the moment after repair—when both people feel safe, seen, and soothed. Using a scale from 0 to 10, he suggests measuring your level of disconnection: 10 means emotional chaos, and 0 means peaceful attunement. The goal isn’t to avoid reaching a 10, but to shorten the time it takes to return to zero. You’ll keep cycling through these ruptures for as long as you’re human, but getting back to zero faster ensures relationships will deepen instead of deteriorating.

Through this process, Gaddis reminds you that high-stakes relationships—partners, family, close friends—always carry more emotional volatility because they touch our most vulnerable selves. You fear being rejected or abandoned, so you adapt by hiding your truth, pleasing others, or withdrawing. Ironically, these strategies create even more conflict. The author’s prescription is to stop playing the victim and become what he calls a Relational Leader—someone who takes radical responsibility for their reactions and who learns to face, not flee, discomfort.

A Structured Path to Repair

Across thirty chapters, Gaddis maps a comprehensive process for getting to zero, divided into three stages: Before Conflict (understanding your blueprint and triggers), During Conflict (practical communication and emotional regulation tools), and After Conflict (repair, forgiveness, and reconnection). He integrates tools like LUFU—“Listen Until They Feel Understood”—and SHORE—“Speak Honestly with Ownership to Repair Empathetically.” Each supports the same principle: that empathy and responsibility dissolve tension faster than defense or blame.

Throughout, he offers vivid stories: Monika and her avoidant husband, Sarah choosing “Choice C” by embracing conflict rather than avoiding it, and Jared, an extreme athlete who could face death on a mountain but not a disagreement at home. These illustrate how our avoidance mechanisms—what Gaddis calls the Four Disconnectors (posture, collapse, seek, avoid)—block intimacy until we confront them. Personality meets biology in every fight, but by slowing down and seeing the threat for what it is (a perceived danger, not an actual one), you reclaim your adult self from your scared animal.

Conflict as a Mirror for Self-Understanding

Conflict, in Gaddis’s vision, is a mirror showing what still needs integrating within you. It exposes your relational blueprint—patterns inherited from childhood—and invites you to rewrite it. You learn to move from victimhood (blame) to authorship (empowered choice). This transformation is not a quick fix; it’s an ongoing movement from reaction to reflection. You practice taking ownership, pausing when triggered, and shifting from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What am I learning about me?” Each confrontation becomes an opportunity for both parties to grow, not a threat to survival.

Why This Matters Now

In an age of disconnection—digital relationships, ghosting, political divisions—Getting to Zero offers a relational antidote. Gaddis builds on decades of psychological research (including Dan Siegel’s studies on attachment and Gabor Maté’s insights on emotional suppression) to show that unresolved conflict undermines not only relationships but health, longevity, and joy. Emotional distance, he warns, is as lethal as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. The capacity to repair is therefore not just emotional intelligence—it’s survival skill.

Ultimately, Gaddis’s message is both humbling and hopeful: great relationships are earned through the practice of repair. You can't avoid conflict, but you can learn to dance with it—using curiosity, vulnerability, and courage as your partners. In doing so, you don’t just mend your relationships; you heal the scared animal within, one conversation at a time.

One of Gaddis’s most memorable metaphors is that of the scared animal—the primal part of you that reacts to perceived threats in relationships. When someone raises their voice or withholds affection, your scared animal can’t tell the difference between emotional danger and physical danger. It fights, flees, freezes, or shuts down. Understanding this nervous system response is the key to staying connected under pressure.

Too Much Closeness and Too Much Distance

Conflict arises primarily from two types of perceived threats: too much closeness or too much distance. Too much closeness feels like invasion—a partner’s anger, a boss’s micromanagement, or a friend’s criticism. Too much distance feels like abandonment—silence, withdrawal, or a lack of response. Both trigger your nervous system into high alert. Recognizing these patterns helps you stop taking others’ behaviors personally and instead see them as survival responses.

The Four Disconnectors

Gaddis categorizes reactions into four types, or disconnectors:

• Posture: puffing up and blaming—defensive, attacking, trying to appear strong.
• Collapse: shrinking inward, feeling shame and helplessness.
• Seek: pursuing reassurance to ease anxiety, sometimes overwhelming others.
• Avoid: withdrawing or ghosting to escape conflict and discomfort.

Recognizing your dominant disconnector allows you to self-regulate and eventually re-engage in healthy communication. For example, if you tend to avoid, your growth edge is learning to stay in the conversation. If you posture, your evolution might mean admitting vulnerability.

From Trigger to Transformation

Each trigger represents not just something to fix but an invitation to grow. Gaddis encourages readers to pause when reaction starts—a technique he teaches through the NESTR meditation (Number, Emotion, Sensation, Thought, Resource). By rating your emotional intensity, naming sensations, and grounding into internal resources, you re-engage your rational brain, calming your scared animal.

He connects this method to neuroscience (Stephen Porges’s Polyvagal Theory) and mindfulness principles. Your body and mind learn that feeling strong emotions is not life-threatening. Over time, your emotional discomfort threshold increases; you can stay present with fear or anger without collapsing or attacking. This shift, though simple, rewires the brain toward connection over protection.

By learning to befriend your scared animal rather than suppress it, you cultivate compassion for yourself and others. You stop seeing conflict as something wrong and begin to see it as the nervous system’s way of saying, “I need safety.” The point isn’t to tame the animal—it’s to build trust with it, so it learns that intimacy isn’t a threat, it’s home.

Conflict often activates our inner victim—the part that feels powerless and wronged. Gaddis calls this the valley of victimhood. When you blame others, you surrender the ability to change. Escaping this valley requires claiming authorship of your life. You move from “They did this to me” to “Here’s what I can learn or transform.”

The Victim Triangle

Drawing from family systems theory and Murray Bowen’s triads, Gaddis outlines the dysfunctional triangle of three roles: the victim, the villain, and the rescuer. Victims blame villains for their pain and seek rescuers (friends, therapists, or sympathetic listeners) who validate their story but don’t help resolve it. This dynamic stabilizes the system dysfunctionally—it relieves tension temporarily but traps everyone in powerlessness.

Monika’s marriage provides a vivid example. Fearing abandonment, she avoided speaking truth to her emotionally distant husband. Each time she felt lonely, she vented to her friend, creating a victim triangle. When she shifted to self-responsibility—“What if I change myself instead of waiting for him to?”—she began climbing toward authorship.

Climbing to the Mountaintop of Authorship

Authorship is the forward movement from blame to empowerment. Gaddis depicts this climb as hiking from a narrow valley to a wide mountaintop where perspective returns. The author sees multiple possibilities, acts consciously, and makes meaning out of challenges. “You can be right,” Gaddis reminds readers, “or you can be in a relationship.”

Climbing out of victimhood involves four sequential steps: admit you’re stuck, take personal responsibility, learn and grow, and embrace conflict instead of resisting it. Each step transforms your relationships from reactive survival into creative collaboration. The presence of discomfort becomes proof of development, similar to what philosopher Marcus Aurelius meant when he said, “What stands in the way becomes the way.”

By choosing authorship again and again, you evolve beyond resentment. You stop fighting circumstances and start writing your own relational story. In Gaddis’s terms, this is relational leadership—the maturity to lead your reactions so connection remains possible even when disagreement burns.

Once you choose authorship, you step into what Gaddis calls relational leadership. A relational leader isn’t someone who avoids conflict but who faces it with respect, curiosity, and care. Leadership here doesn’t mean dominance—it means responsibility. You lead by example, showing others how to repair instead of retreat.

Four Practices of Relational Leaders

• Admit you’re stuck: Drop the façade of competence and acknowledge your limits. This humility opens learning (similar to Carol Dweck’s concept of a growth mindset).
• Take responsibility: Instead of asking others to change first, you examine your role and impact in creating or sustaining conflict.
• Learn and develop: Treat every disagreement as a personal growth seminar. Pain is the tuition.
• Embrace and engage conflict: Approach tension as necessary training for intimacy. Avoidance equals stagnation.

The Power of Vulnerability and Ownership

In his coaching and marriage, Gaddis learned that the quickest way out of any fight is to own your part. Vulnerability softens defenses. Instead of “You’re being unfair,” try “My part is raising my voice or shutting down.” That small shift turns enemies into collaborators.

Relational leadership also means using every conflict as a practice arena for emotional agility. Drawing inspiration from Nelson Mandela, who endured decades of imprisonment yet practiced steadfast reconciliation, Gaddis shows how embracing adversity shapes character. The relational leader’s life line always angles upward—not because it’s smooth but because each challenge deepens resilience.

In short, becoming a relational leader means mastering the paradox of connection: you learn to be whole through relationships, not despite them.

Gaddis emphasizes that how you do conflict as an adult was modeled long before you had words for it. Your childhood experiences form a relational blueprint—internal expectations about connection, disconnection, and repair. This blueprint can lead to secure or insecure attachments, shaping how you seek safety and belonging.

Secure vs. Insecure Attachment

If caregivers consistently provided emotional safety, you learned that relationships are reliable and repairable. You felt safe, seen, soothed, and supported—the four relational needs that build trust. But if they were inconsistent, dismissive, or punitive, you internalized insecurity. Too much emotional distance or invasion taught you to adapt through avoidance, control, or people-pleasing—strategies that later morph into disconnection patterns in adulthood.

Inspired by attachment science (Dan Siegel, Ed Tronick), Gaddis reminds us that disconnections are normal; lack of repair is the true damage. In the “Still Face” experiment (Tronick), parents temporarily withdrew emotional attunement, and babies showed distress—but once repair occurred, equilibrium returned. The lesson: relationships thrive not on perfection but on reconnection.

Breaking the Cycle

Understanding your relational blueprint insulates you from repeating it blindly. Gaddis encourages reflection: “What messages did you receive about conflict growing up?” Did you learn that love means silence, or that anger means rejection? Awareness dissolves unconscious repetition. You can then consciously rewrite your script through new experiences of safe repair.

Ultimately, he says, if you didn’t receive repair as a child, you can still master it as an adult. Secure attachments aren’t inherited; they’re earned, one repair cycle at a time.

Most people, Gaddis admits, fight conflict by not fighting at all. But avoidance creates its own war within. When you silence your truth to keep others happy, you trade authenticity for approval. This internal split between the True Self (authentic expression) and the Strategic Self (adapted persona) produces a lifetime of anxiety, resentment, and disconnection.

Two Shitty Choices and “Choice C”

In avoidance cycles, people see only two bad options: speak up and risk rejection, or stay silent and betray themselves. Gaddis calls this the dilemma of “two shitty choices.” His solution is Choice C—embracing conflict as the pathway to truth and connection. Sarah, for instance, avoided confronting her unhappy marriage for years, until she realized silence was more painful than honesty. When she finally spoke up, she didn’t lose herself—she found it.

Integrating the Split

Avoidance stems from childhood strategies meant to preserve relational safety—being helpful, quiet, or perfect. But they come with a cost: chronic inner conflict. By recognizing and expressing the suppressed True Self, you collapse the false divide. The inner peace you sought through suppression comes only through expression.

Avoidance doesn’t just block intimacy—it blocks vitality. Choosing Conflict (Choice C) closes the gap between who you think you should be and who you are. It’s uncomfortable, yes, but it’s the price of authenticity and freedom.

Every avoided conversation is a missed chance for self-respect. Gaddis reminds us: silence feels safe short-term but poisons connection long-term. The courage to confront is the antidote to inner division.

At the heart of Gaddis’s practical toolkit are two simple but transformative communication processes: LUFU (Listen Until They Feel Understood) and SHORE (Speak Honestly with Ownership to Repair Empathetically). Together, they turn emotional chaos into connection by teaching presence, empathy, and accountability.

LUFU: Listening Until They Feel Understood

LUFU turns listening into healing. You don’t understand someone until they say they feel understood. The process involves eight steps—curiosity, reflective listening, same-page questions, active listening, empathy, validation, ownership, and completion through shared reality. Gaddis’s own marriage transformed when he adopted the rule: “I don’t understand my wife until she says I do.”

These practices demand presence—the ability to track verbal and nonverbal cues, stay curious under stress, and resist the urge to fix or defend. When done well, LUFU can melt even years of anger. It’s reminiscent of Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication methodology, but with more focus on embodied listening.

SHORE: Speaking with Ownership and Empathy

After listening, you move to SHORE: contextualize the conversation, own your part, empathize with their experience, validate their feelings, share impact, make a reasonable request, reflect on lessons, and collaborate for future agreements. For example: “I raised my voice and I imagine that scared you. That makes sense. Next time, I’ll pause before responding.”

SHORE builds responsibility and repair through practical phrasing. It honors four relational needs—safety, being seen, soothing, and support/challenge—ensuring both sides are respected.

Mastering LUFU and SHORE closes the loop of the Conflict Repair Cycle. It transforms emotional disconnection into shared understanding—the foundation of lasting trust.

Even the best relationships falter when people rely on poor strategies for repair. Gaddis identifies Ten Roadblocks to Reconnection—like blame, rushed apologies, distraction, time, compartmentalization, defensiveness, and stonewalling—that stall progress. Acknowledging and replacing these behaviors is essential for genuine resolution.

The Ten Roadblocks

• Blame keeps control with others; self-blame does the same inwardly.
• Rushed apologies skip empathy; paced ones invite reflection.
• Distraction and compartmentalization numb pain but delay growth.
• Defensiveness and stonewalling block vulnerability.
• Gaslighting represents manipulation—the antithesis of repair.

The antidote to roadblocks is clarity: replacing avoidance with agreements that define how you’ll handle conflict together.

The Twelve Agreements

Gaddis proposes twelve relational agreements, including: “I agree to make clear agreements,” “I agree to grow and develop myself,” “I agree to stay in relationship,” and “I agree to speak with care and respect.” These guardrails keep the scared animal in check during stressful exchanges. Agreements turn chaos into structure, transforming reactive habits into collaborative rituals.

If roadblocks are unconscious barriers, agreements are conscious boundaries. Together they convert survival-driven interactions into intentional partnerships built on safety, growth, and trust.

The final chapters of Getting to Zero reveal the ultimate truth: repair doesn’t always require the other person’s participation. You can get to zero alone—by taking ownership, making meaning, and finding acceptance. When others refuse to engage, Gaddis teaches how to transform pain into personal evolution.

Acceptance and the 180 Practice

Inspired by Dr. John Demartini, Gaddis uses “The 180” technique to flip perspectives on unresolved conflict. Ask: “How did this painful situation help me grow?” List benefits of the challenge and drawbacks of your fantasy that things should have been different. This reframing brings genuine acceptance—not resignation but peace.

He illustrates this through losing friendships and clients who ghosted him. Instead of remaining trapped in blame, he found gratitude for the strength and clarity the experiences gave him. Acceptance becomes authorship; suffering transforms into meaning.

Standing for Three

At the highest level of maturity, you learn to “Stand for Three”—yourself, the other, and the relationship. This stance ensures any decision honors all parties. If reconciliation fails, you part with dignity instead of destruction.

Conflict as a Path to Growth

By the end, Gaddis reframes conflict as a lifelong spiritual practice. Getting to zero isn’t a destination but a sustainable cycle: disconnection → awareness → repair → reconnection → evolution. As you master this rhythm, your relationships become sanctuaries of honesty and courage.

Ultimately, he promises, when you choose to face conflict wholeheartedly, you stop fearing human messiness. You find peace not by escaping tension but by learning to surf its waves—always returning, again and again, to zero.