What is the main message of Getting to Zero?

The main message of Getting to Zero is about building healthy, lasting relationships and improving communication.

How long does it take to read Getting to Zero?

The reading time for Getting to Zero varies, but it would take several hours. The Blinkist summary can be read in 15 minutes.

Who is the author of Getting to Zero?

Jayson Gaddis is the author of Getting to Zero.

Communication Skills

Getting to Zero Book Summary - Getting to Zero Book explained in key points

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Getting to Zero summary

Name: Getting to Zero
Rating: 4.5 (323 reviews)
Author: Jayson Gaddis

Jayson Gaddis

How to Work Through Conflict in Your High-Stakes Relationships

4.5 (323 ratings)

28 mins

Brief summary

Getting to Zero by Jayson Gaddis explains how to have a healthy and sustainable relationship by understanding and resolving childhood traumas and emotional patterns. It offers tools for self-awareness and communication for a successful relationship.

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Listening Resolving Conflict Skills

Table of Contents

Getting to Zero
Summary of 9 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 9

What’s in it for me? Learn how to resolve conflict and get to zero.

What does the word conflict mean to you? For many, it conjures up visions of violence, political discord, and war. But these are extreme forms of conflict. What about conflict in your close relationships?

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 – conflict could save your marriage, for example, or help rekindle an important relationship. In these blinks, you’ll learn how to “get back to zero” after a conflict – that is, get to the point where the conflict is resolved and you have the level of connection you desire.

The advice in these blinks isn’t intended to resolve trauma or abusive relationships. For those kinds of situations, please seek help from trauma specialists or other resources that will support you.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how to productively listen and speak during conflict;
the reasons for five of the most common conflicts; and
how making agreements can ease your conflicts.

Conflict is usually the result of either too much closeness or too much distance.

Have you ever really thought about how conflict arises? The specific reasons vary, but 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. Both can make you feel threatened – get too close to someone and you start worrying about being attacked; grow too distant, and you’ll worry about abandonment.

Too much closeness can occur when someone moves toward you in a confrontational way or raises his voice. Behaviors like these feel like acts of aggression, and that sense is only heightened if the other person is actually upset – his body language can make him seem physically bigger than he actually is. The automatic response is for you to get defensive.

Too much distance, on the other hand, can make you feel that the other person doesn’t care about you or is even about to leave you. This happens when someone gives you the silent treatment, abruptly leaves, slams doors, or cuts you off during a discussion. And in today’s hyperconnected, instant-messaging world, a person not returning your call or answering your messages can create too much distance, too. But possibly the worst culprit is simply silence, which leaves you in a state of not knowing what’s going on.

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. Fortunately, you can do something about it.

Start by identifying your coping mechanisms, or disconnectors. There are basically four of these.

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. And 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.

Conflict resolution starts by identifying someone with whom you want to get to zero.

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.

How? Well, start by grabbing a pen and a sheet of paper. Then it’s time to sit down and make your first conflict box.

How you grew up affects how you approach your high-stakes relationships.

Do you feel anxious when your partner doesn’t return your text messages? Do you sometimes feel you want to shut the noise of the world out and find a space for yourself away from other people, including your loved ones?

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.

Conflict resolution requires you to understand the price of conflict avoidance.

According to self-care expert and author Cheryl Richardson, “if you avoid conflict to keep the peace, you start a war inside yourself.”

Often, children feel they have two personalities. The first is free, wild, and innocent – the true self – while the other is constricted in the face of perceived threats and conforms to the rules of the environment it finds itself in – the strategic self.

To resolve conflict, learn to live with your own discomforts and with how the other person experiences conflict.

Relationships fail because, as the author puts it, “People don’t know how to work their shit out” – in other words, people don’t know how to handle their own reactions or those of the person they’re in conflict with. Think back to your past relationships that didn’t work out and you’ll probably find that this was the case – and that this made it impossible for the relationship to recover from even the smallest bumps in the road.

If you’re like most people, you probably find it difficult to deal with your own discomfort. But the good news is, you can learn. Start by identifying whether the source of your discomfort is internal or external. You might think another person has made you feel the way you do – but other people don’t cause your feelings, they just trigger them. Dealing with those feelings is on you.

Listen until the other person feels understood.

Not everyone is a great listener. During conflict, this is particularly so, and you might find yourself becoming defensive very quickly. This often comes down to you and the person you’re in conflict with not understanding each other.

The author’s tool for understanding the person you’re in conflict with is called LUFU, which stands for Listen Until they Feel Understood. There are a few steps to it, but before you even get started, you’ll need presence; in other words, an awareness of your thoughts and feelings coupled with a focus on the other person.

Conflict resolution requires empathy.

Studies have found that between 70 and 93 percent of communication is nonverbal. So 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.

So sit back, relax your belly and shoulders, and check your tone of voice before you take your turn to speak!

Understanding the five most common conflicts helps you resolve them.

Have you ever noticed that, in long-term romantic relationships, after you’ve moved on from the honeymoon period, little things like your partner leaving the top off of the toothpaste tube begin to bug you? Or worse, you realize that your values are different, or that there are just things you don’t like about the person?

The same things happen in families, close friendships, and even the workplace. When you don’t know how to work through conflict, resentments can fester. But thankfully, most conflicts boil down to five common scenarios – and when you understand them, you can work through them better.

You may encounter roadblocks to reconciliation, but you can ease conflict by making agreements.

When you were a child, you learned how to deal with conflict by watching the adults around you. But now, you need to take responsibility for how you do it rather than relying on what you learned.

Think for a moment about your own experience. Did adults comfort you when conflict happened? Did people own their part in the situation? Was there an apology, and who initiated it? Or did you simply find distractions such as sports, food, games, or friends to disconnect from the pain?

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What is Getting to Zero about?

Getting to Zero (2021) is a guide to dealing with conflict in intimate, high-stakes relationships – those with your family, good friends, and partners. It describes a process for “getting to zero” by achieving resolution and closure after conflict.

Getting to Zero Review

Getting to Zero by Jayson Gaddis (2022) is a thought-provoking exploration of how we can heal relationships and build deeper connections. Here's why this book is worth reading:

With its practical exercises and tools, it empowers readers to take active steps towards healthier and more fulfilling relationships.
This book combines personal stories, research, and expert insights to offer a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of relationships.
Through its honest and relatable approach, Getting to Zero makes exploring our own relationships an engaging journey rather than a tedious task.

Who should read Getting to Zero?

Conflict avoiders
Those who project childhood experiences onto others
All who want to resolve conflict in their interpersonal relationships

About the Author

Jayson Gaddis is an expert on interpersonal conflict and its resolution. Founder of the Relationship School, he’s also an author and speaker, and hosts the Smart Couple Podcast.

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