Jayson Gaddis - Conquering Relational Conflict

All right, sir, welcome.

Thank you. Great to be here.

Yeah, man, it's been a hot minute. I think I had you on a long time ago. I think I came on your show and then you came on mine. This is probably like two or three years ago, I believe. So it's nice to drop in with you.

After a few years. Just very quickly. What would you say is. Has been going on with some of the highlights of your life in the last couple years?

Yeah. It's so good to see you, by the way. My family really is like being a new dad. You just see the transformation in front of your eyes. It's pretty incredible. And my kids are now 12 and 10. And it's just every month that goes by is just insane and awesome and deep and inspiring and challenging. So there's so many corners there that I could dig into. Just about fatherhood and just the deep honor it is and privilege to raise children in this society. Yeah. So that's probably the loudest thing. And then finishing my book and getting it out there in the world is exciting. And I feel really pumped about helping our culture get.

At least a download about how we work through our differences in a practical, street level way. So that's another big thing that's been happening.

Nice. Nice. Well, yeah, well, we're definitely going to dive into that because conflict is always a pretty popular topic, especially how to resolve it, how to turn into connection, how do we navigate it, what's our relationship to it? So we'll. We'll get into that here in a second. But I do want to ask you the question, which is tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today.

Okay, here's one.

For some reason, I'm thinking of this one where.

I was pretty lost in my adolescence and I tried on a lot of behaviors and different identities. And one year I was a deadhead, smoking weed every day, all day. And the next year I was joined a fraternity, cut my hair, wore a coat and tied a pledge meeting every Monday night and eventually became president of this fraternity. And we were a hard drinking, hard hazing fraternity. And I was really bought into that because I didn't have my own back. I was pretty disconnected. And I was abusing drugs and alcohol, you know, five, six days a week and sort of going just fitting into that male culture at that university. And I didn't even know that I was deep down inside really depressed and anxious and in a ton of pain. And through a series of events, I started to stand up it was like, kind of one of the first moments in my life where I started to have my own back and get inside myself. I saw a speaker. I went and worked for my fraternity, and I saw a speaker named Dave Westhall speak about hazing and how traumatic really, it is for college men. And it was the first time I'd heard the word trauma. And I was sitting in the back row with my arms folded, all hungover and skeptical. But something about the way he spoke, and it just penetrated my heart. And soon after that, I would lead a charge to end his hazing in my fraternity, much to the chagrin of my friends and fraternity members, who.

Prior to this, thought I was amazing, and after this thought, I was the biggest asshole on the planet. And you're finally standing up in truth when a lot of people dislike you. And it was really my first test as a leader. Can I handle the hatred coming toward me and can I still stand my ground? And I stood my ground, and it was. I lost a lot of friends in the process, but it was. I was really proud that I found myself somewhere inside and actually stood up for other people and stood up for myself. So that was. That's probably a big moment, because it was just uncharacteristic of me. I was normally a guy who would just please and try to fit in with the crowd. And this is when I just put my staff on the ground and was like, I'm done. No, we can't do this anymore.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like there's a whole conversation on the role of hazing in our culture. You know, this sort of lack of initiation that men have culturally and socially that we don't. We don't. You know, we used to have all these initiatory rights. I remember being on a show, and I was talking about initiation and the importance of it in our lives, as mentioned. And one of the guys was like, yeah, I was in a fraternity, and we had initiatory rites. And I was like, okay, describe what you did. And it was all sort of like these hazing rituals. And I couldn't. I obviously was a little bit not combative, but I was pretty direct. I said, that's not real initiation. That's. That's just men. You know, young men, boys that are in male bodies harming one another and trying to create some form of a hierarchy out of pain, out of suffering. And real initiation serves a very different function. So I feel like there's a big conversation that we could have there, but let's talk a little bit About, Because I feel like what you're really saying is that you, in that moment, shifted your relationship in some fashion to conflict itself.

And moved out of this pseudo form of initiation through hazing into confronting things, being a little bit more authentically confrontational for the betterment of yourself and for the people around you. And so what role do you think the conflict and confrontation plays within a man's life? Let's just start there.

Yeah, it's an important question. I think.

Maybe I can start by just backing this up one step around a concept that I teach share in my book, which is I call it two shitty choices. And.

A lot of people avoid conflict and confrontation, and a lot of men, because, frankly, it's scary, it's uncomfortable, and it's not fun, and it might not go well. And historically, we might have experiences of it not going well. So if we just take two choices, often people set it up as like, okay, path A is tell the truth, confront. And it goes poorly. And I might lose the person out of my life. They might judge me, criticize me, hate me, and disappear. And then choice B is I don't say anything and just go along to get along. But then I have to betray me to do that. So I either lose my relationship in choice A with someone else. Ooh, that doesn't sound good. Or I lose my relationship with myself. Choice B, I don't like either. So I'll just stay on the fence and kind of not do anything. Which gradually turns into choice B, where you're just going along to get along and you're portraying yourself slowly and you're not actually being authentic and having the hard conversations that you might need to have to develop either your own leadership capacities or to have a deeper connection or to feel more empowered from the inside out. And I just think there's so many messages about conflict that are usually negative. And I like to encourage choice C, which is courage through conflict. And it really is taking the path of A, and it's saying, actually, I'd rather lose this relationship than lose my relationship with me. So I'm going to say something and I'm going to lean in here. And I might not know how, but it might be messy, but I'm going to do it anyway. And I'm always encouraging men to lean into that choice C and just see what happens and then really learn how to clean it up if it gets kind of messy or ugly. Again, it's just a skill. So, yeah, big advocate for choice A. Yeah. Which is really.

I like that. I Like that. Because I think. I think sometimes we can get caught between that rock and the hard place. And I think socially, we've in the last however many years been conditioned to be the nice guy. Right. To not, you know, that there's almost like. There's like, assertiveness within.

Almost like assertiveness within us as men has been villainized in some way. So a lot of guys sort of collapse into this place of not speaking what's true for them in an effort to maintain status quo, maintain the peace. And that never goes well for us in most cases. Like you said, we're sacrificing our authenticity in some capacity. So I appreciate the way that you laid that out. What about conflict.

Within the construct of a relationship? Because I think, again, culturally, we've kind of been sold this idea, this sort of Disneyfied, I say Disneyfied version of a relationship where there's not much conflict and everything's perfect and you have the white picket fence. And so what role have you seen conflict play within a relationship?

Yeah, well, I'm glad you said that, because people do Disney. This romantic notion, if I find the one or meet the right person, we won't have a lot of issues. There won't be a lot of drama. And that's really sad because, as you know, the power of a strong partnership over time is the willingness and ability to work through conflict. In fact, that's after interviewing the world's leading experts on this subject. We all agree that the most successful relationships are relationships where both people in that relationship in an intimate partnership have this willingness and ability to work through it. And it's a learned skill. So.

Again, such an opportunity, when you and I, let's say you and I are in a relationship, we disagree or we have value differences, or we get into a place that's really hard for us. If we both commit to staying in the fire, we will get to the other side. We just need to learn how. We need to learn how to listen better. We need to learn how to speak in maybe a more considerate way. We need to learn how to clean up a mess if we create a big mess. All that's learnable, and I feel excited about that. Just trying to help people understand, like, no, no, this is okay. You know?

Yeah, I appreciate that. I think that's well said. One of the things that my wife and I always talk about is, like, conflict, healthy conflict can lead to more intimacy. It can lead to connection. It can lead to so many wonderful things. And the notion that our relationship, like, I think Jung had this saying that like the fastest horse to individuation is marriage. And that no marriage, no relationship in general has existed without some form of healthy conflict. And that we shouldn't want to avoid that because it's almost like in those moments of conflict that we have the opportunity to become more conscious, that conflict is almost happening because this unconscious in us, our shadow, our pain, our hurt, our insecurities, is meeting the unconscious of another person. Right? Their pain, their hurt, their embarrassment, et cetera. And how we learn to work through those things is going to also define the strength of our relationship. Would you say that that's roughly accurate or how would you add to that?

Yeah, I would just say yes. And I would maybe say it in another way so people can hear it in two ways, which is my wife and I, we've been together 14 years and I've done a lot of deep work on myself. And the most fruitful has been in my marriage with her and as co parents and husband, wife, where I take the view that kind of like you're saying that whatever's triggering me about her behavior the way she is, whatever is a disowned part of myself. And my job is to learn how to love that part of myself so that I can embrace her. For example, quick, just practical example is early on because I had disowned my emotions as a kid. That was one of the biggest blocks for me in intimacy later on in my adult life. And I had it that women were too emotional and too dramatic and too intense. Right. Because that was disowned in me. And I had almost a disdain for emotions out there because I had so repressed mine. So early on in our relationship, I had to get very good at feeling my own feelings, which allowed me to have capacity to be with hers right before, because before that she'd get emotional and I basically shut her down or turn away. And no partner likes to feel shut down around their emotional experience. So in a way, my wife has taught me over the years, and my kids as well, to get bigger around my capacity to feel my feelings. Anything, rage, hurts, fear, joy, all of it. I have such a bigger capacity now than I used to. So that's kind of what a partner can bring out in us and invite us into.

Yeah. Beautifully said. I love that. I love that. Okay, well, let's maybe just talk about in your book Getting to Zero. You start the book off by just laying the groundwork for what is conflict and what is zero. And so I would love for you to just Piece that out for the people so that they understand the framework from which we're going to operate in this conversation.

Cool. So I define conflict as a rupture, a disconnection, or an unresolved issue between two people. And it's anything in our lives that with another person that just feels off. Something feels off between us. You could call that conflict. And then zero is us. When we're at our best, it's getting back to a good place. It's the happy place or the good place when we feel relaxed in our nervous system, calm, connected, and okay. And if 0 being a 0 to 10 scale, anything above a 0 is when we're mildly or very triggered. A 5 or 6 or 7 is like, we're very upset and we're very aroused in our sympathetic side of our nervous system. So any couple or friend or business partnership, our lives are better when we're at zero. We don't have issues with other people. We can sleep better, our appetite is back, we feel healthier. So I just want to encourage people, get to zero, get back to that good place and just learn how, because a lot of people will tolerate being at a five or a low grade three all the time in an intimate relationship, which is really bad for your health.

Yeah. Can you just speak a little bit more about what's happening from a physiological standpoint within the body when you move away from a zero when you're at a five or a six or a seven?

Yeah. So I call it. The simplest way I describe it is a scared animal. Like, we're social mammals, and one of the worst threats is to be on the outs with another person in the herd. And often that's an intimate partner, and it feels threatening. And so our scared animal gets activated and starts to move from a 0 up the scale toward a 10, depending on how upset or threatened we feel. And we're usually threatened by either too much closeness, a person's in our grill, too much, too intense, like whatever, like engulfing us or whatever. Or they're too far away from us. That's the silent text message that doesn't get returned, for example, or the person that won't talk in conflict. That's also scary for some of us. So we move from the front part of our brain to the back part of our brain. I call it the front seat and the back seat. Just simply because when we're in the front seat, we can drive and grab the steering wheel and we know where we're going and what we're doing and what to say, when we're in the backseat, the scared animals got the wheel and we're offline, and we're going to say and do stupid shit. And usually there's cortisol moving through our nervous system and a lot of other hormones that are, you know, trying to fend off the threat. And if that goes on too often, too long, it's really not good for our health. And there's. There's clear studies on this. The Gottmans, for example, say that in their research that couples who know how to work through conflict well live 10 years longer than couples who don't. I mean, 10 years of your life, that's. That's pretty huge. So. And if we just understand the basics of this is not good for me, if I stay not at a 0 to 4 or 5.

I hope that would motivate us to learn how to get back to a good place.

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. It's almost like part of our.

Individuation process sometimes is stepping more fully into learning how to be in confrontation and conflict with other people. If we're the people that repress and run away, but we internally were feeling all of that anger and that rage and that disappointment, or we're the person that's volatile.

Learning how to move towards a middle ground is an incredibly powerful tool. And I think, as you're saying, in our culture, it's almost socially acceptable for us to operate out of three out of five. A lot of the guys that I work with, when they come to work with me, and I'm sure that this is the case for you as well, within the couples that you work with, is like one person almost always operating at this higher state where their nervous systems are charged, they're a little agitated almost on a regular basis. And that is a very challenging place because you're much closer. Right. Your rev limiter. Imagine your car revving up at 4,000 rpm.

Exactly.

And staying there and staying there, it's like, well, that's going to be hard on the engineering.

It's pretty obvious, right? Okay. So getting to zero for you, maybe just defining that a little bit more. And then what does it look like for us to begin to move towards zero? And we'll unpack this a little bit more. But just a basic look at it.

Yeah. So when my wife and I feel good in our family and our kids also, we like to operate in our actual home at zero. Like, things are safe and secure here, and it feels like a safe harbor and a launching pad in Our home. So when you get beat up by life or challenged, we all can come home and feel good. And sadly, a lot of people's homes, whether it's their partnership as a metaphor, as a home, or their actual home, it feels bad to come home because there's all this unresolved tension. So most people kind of can intuit the difference there that. Do you look forward to going home? Do you feel like it's a soft place to land? Your partner's arms, for example, are a soft place to land. If not, you're not at zero, and you're tolerating swimming around in waters that are little, like you said, agitated or just off. Something feels off. And a lot of us are sensitive enough to pick up on that difference. But some of us did grow up in families where it was never at zero there. And so we don't know that it could be better than a three. Right. Three is like, our baseline. And so if it's like, hey, I'm pretty good. I'm a three, but I'm just here to assert that you can get actually even lower than that and feel even better, but you just got to learn how. Yeah. And so it's just learning how to, again, communicate better to get back to that good place.

And how would you say that most people do conflict? Like, are there certain types of.

There are.

Yeah. Categories. Can you just talk about that a little bit?

Yeah. I call them conflict styles. And again, under threat, we move away. If we think of, like, a bullseye target, the center being zero, and then there's concentric circles outside of that zero place, Those are the numbers going up. So we either posture, which is like, we move up, and we get big, and more like a porcupine, we collapse into kind of shame and withdrawal, like, more like a hermit crab, or we seek, like, a golden retriever. Like, are we okay? Are we okay? Or we avoid, like, a feral cat, where we're just, like. We just leave the room and we're fine, and we just kind of turn on Netflix, and we just kind of compartmentalize and ignore it. So these are typically the styles that people do that I've noticed over the years.

I'm definitely.

And it's just a porcupine way to talk about it.

Yeah, I'm definitely the porcupine. That's. That's.

You are.

That's historically been my. Been my move. It's like, you know, I grew up in northern Alberta and Canada, and it's like, you posture up. You know, that's what you Do.

Yeah. Right.

So which is. Which doesn't. Usually you work very well in a relationship. Posturing up like that is getting ready to throw down. So I didn't mean to cut you off.

No, it's okay. And actually, porcupine, like a lot of men actually will, they find themselves in low grade irritability and they don't really know what's going on. That's the porcupine. You're just doing your thing to someone. Touching you is agitating. It's just like, get out of my space. Can be the porcupine, or a porcupine can be more of an aggressor that's always wanting to talk about it and fight about it and talk it out and like, raise their voice and that. That can also be a person who's posturing.

Yeah. My Vienna calls it the jackhammer.

Wow.

You can get intense in that kind of way.

I can, definitely. Yeah. Well, it was funny because, like, at the beginning of our relationship, we had wildly different conflict styles, you know, just because of the different homes that we grew up in. And so do you find that part of the work that couples need to do is to really understand their conflict styles and.

Learn how to navigate the two? Can you speak to that a little bit?

Yeah, it's a great question. Because the two primary styles that we're talking about here are seek and avoid or pursue and distance. Those are. Now we get into more of an attachment conversation in terms of how our nervous system is wired with other people, especially under stress. Do we. Do we see connection as resourcing under stress, or do we see it as stressful? That's more of an avoider type. So those two primary styles are what most people can start to go. Oh, yeah, right. We get into a snag, and you're the one that kind of retreats and withdraws, and I'm the one that wants to talk it out or I get anxious or whatever, scared, and I want to figure it out. And that's very normal. And that kind of polarity is actually necessary to, I think, to form a secure attachment and a strong bond. And if the two people can learn how to work with those styles, man, that's actually a pretty strong team. And there's nothing wrong. We're not saying, oh, you're wrong for your style or that's bad, or mine's better than yours. It has nothing to do with any of this. It's just you're wired how you're wired. You grew up in the family, you grew up in you got this relational blueprint now, and here it is. How are we going to work with it? And it's just, maybe we can even have a sense of humor about, wow, yeah, we do our thing. This is what happens. And couples just need to get smarter about how they work with that.

Yeah, I remember I was actually writing about this in the book that I'm writing the other day about this moment in the beginning of.

My relationship with Vienna. And.

Again, we just had very different conflict styles. And I remember being at her father's place and watching her and her father engage in this, like, bickering and this arguing. And, like, it was. It was litigious, you know, it was almost like they were both trying to prove each other wrong and the little smallest nuances of details. And it was like two lawyers going at it. And I was like, oh, shit. Like, this is exactly what she does to me. Like, I get it now.

Yeah. And that probably allowed you to maybe have more compassion. Right? Because you see, wow. Think. Imagine her growing up in that year after year for a couple decades. That's okay. That's a lot. Right. That can be stressful. So, again, we're. If we understand where our partner comes from, that's really helpful with conflict, because then we can not make them wrong. And we can open our heart to, like, a little boy or a girl or a little kid who, you know, was doing the best they can. This is. This is the environment they grew up in.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Well, you know, in the book, because I think one of the things that I really wanted to talk about was how do we navigate conflict? And you. You talk about resolving.

How to resolve our inner conflict as a means to.

Getting to zero, to being able to navigate conflict externally in our relationship, but also how to be with our triggers, the things that set us off. And I think from a tactical perspective, I can kind of hear the audience being like, okay, how do we do this in real time? So what are some of the things that you would say in terms of how to resolve that inner clock conflict and be with your triggers when it's like the heat, right, Your partner's coming at you, or there's conflict with your parent. What does that look like?

Yeah. So first, we want to start with the view we've already, Connor and I have been laying down, which is, conflict's not a problem, it's an opportunity. And then if we also have the view that I'm going to stand for three in my marriage, for example, standing for three is just, again, a concept that you're operating from a context that says, no matter how bad it gets, I'm going to take a stand for myself, so I'm not going to lose me. And I'm going to take a stand for you and I'm going to take a stand for us. So we're standing for three. It's a really powerful frame to then go, okay, when it gets hard between us, I've got to remember to fall back into this kind of contextual agreement we have, which is, I'm not going to let, I'm not going to throw you under the bus, I'm not going to just make you wrong and leave. I actually made a commitment here. So we have to start with just that kind of frame and context. And then practically once we get into it, there's a few things we can do. But I got to start by saying conflict itself in the moment. A lot of us actually can't change a whole lot there. And it's better to put your attention on what happens as soon as the conflict is over, which is the repair. So I call this the conflict repair cycle that's going to go on the rest of your life in high stakes relationships like a marriage. And if you can get good at the cleaning up the mess part, which is the repair and reconnection part, no matter how bad the conflict was or is or will be, you're going to be okay. And that process of getting good at the repair part is actually what's builds security in a long term relationship. So while there are techniques we can do in the moment.

Really the book is actually what happens after the moment and how effectively can we get good at cleaning up the mess? So I just needed to say that, yeah, it's good. And then I can offer a couple practical tips if you want. In the moment.

Yeah, I mean, I think I like the idea of the repair afterwards because I think people are always like, well, how do I catch myself in the moment? And.

Usually when I'm working with guys and they're sort of like the volatile type or the loud type.

Or even the shutting down type, and they say, you know what, I lost it. I just lost it in the moment. I totally shut down and I stormed out or I lost it and I got angry and I yelled and it's like, well, what did you lose in that moment? It's like, well, you lost your conscious capacity to respond. You lost your prefrontal cortex. Now you're acting from that backseat driver perspective, as you were saying. And so it is very challenging to catch ourselves in the moment.

So focusing on the repair afterwards is important, I think is exactly what you're saying. But can you share some of what you have found to be supportive in the moment? Because I know that people are definitely looking for those types of resources as well. And then we'll talk about repairing after.

Yeah, totally. So in the moment, especially if you can understand your conflict style, seek or avoid. If we just keep it simple, if you're more of a seeker and you want the connection to you're kind of coming at the person, you have to really start to get that that's actually more threatening to the avoider, partner or other person. And the sooner you can catch that, that like I'm making this worse, the better. And then you can do things like relax your shoulders, take three huge inhales and exhales instead of standing squaring off with the other person. You can actually even just change your body language to the side a little bit, 3/4 view or even profile view almost. So you're standing as if like the two of you are going to start to look at the conflict together, rather than I'm in this conflict with you fighting you. However, that said, for either avoider or seeker types, eye contact is pretty critical for.

Not going into memory and making it worse and instead being in the moment. And even as scary and as uncomfortable as it is to look another person in the eye, especially when you feel like you hate them and you want them to get the hell out of your life in that moment, it's the thing you want to do because otherwise you are going into looking at the ceiling in bed, for example, two people arguing in bed, but looking at the ceiling or in the car. We're going into long term memory. And now we're stacking up all the negative memories and times that this has happened before and we're actually getting even more activated. So eye contact strangely will help you reduce the charge, even though it feels counterintuitive. That's a big one. Another one is just how can. Again, my body language. What am I communicating with my body? And can I know my person well enough to know that space is what helps them or closeness is what helps them. Even a hand on the shoulder, a hand on the leg. Can we just take a breath together for a minute and you know, call a pause.

Just relax or you know, just relax my jaw. There's, there's lots of things like that we can do if we need to take a break. I call it a pause. Let's. Can we just Pause for a minute. This is too, too heated. We can just. A lot of people like keywords or whatever. That's fine. Pause is good because it assumes that we're going to hit play again and we're going to come back. So that's another one that we can do. Well.

So those are some ideas.

Yeah, really good. I like the eye contact piece. What about for the people that, like, drill into other people with eye contact? You know, it's like that intense, like, like, you know, staring, like prison style, staring you down. Any, like.

Information for them?

Yeah. Again, outside of the conflict, can you two people have a conversation that, you know, your gaze gets really intense? For me, I know it's maybe better for us, but would you be willing to blink or can I remind you to blink or just soften your gaze? Is that okay that I remind you of that? Because you might not be aware that you're doing it. And again, we sometimes see things first before the person, the other person. Right. And if we have agreements that it's okay to bring it up in a non shamey, blamey way, you can be like, right, yeah, I'm doing that thing, aren't I? Or it's like the voice, the tone of voice is another big one. Right. Hey, I hear you loud and clear. And would you be willing to just relax your tone of voice for a minute? Because a lot of people will say, stop yelling. And the person who's raising their voice doesn't perceive their yelling. They think they might be open to the feedback that they're raising their voice. But. Right. We tend to exaggerate what the person's doing. You're yelling at me, and it's like, would you. Rather than blame them for yelling at you, you might invite them into. Do you mind just lowering your tone of voice? Just take a breath with me. Or like, we can help each other out. In other words.

I find that when we work together as a team around our patterns in the moment, it's going to go better versus what a lot of spiritual people do is, hey, you go do your work in that side of the house, I'll go do my work in that side of the house and come back in a better place. That's okay. It's good to have that skill. But it can be more efficient actually in the moment, in the room. If we stay in the room.

Yeah. So the repair, sometimes not even the repair, but the maintaining connection as you move through some of these pieces, rather than separating into different corners and going your own way, which can create that sort of othering or emphasize that othering. What you're saying is to the best of your capacity with the person that you're in conflict with, to try and maintain some form of connection with them.

Yeah. And this is harder for the more avoidant withdrawer person who tends to retreat. They like space. They're like, sweet. I get a break, I get to go to my corner of the house or I get to go, leave. Basically that's like, ah, that's relief for them. So it's a little edgier for them to just stay in the room, stay in the house, stay in relationship, stay in contact here. And sometimes we're at our capacity, it is good to take a break and we have to know ourselves well enough and each other to know when we're going in circles and we're actually making this worse. Let's, let's hit a pause. Let's pick this up tomorrow morning or later tonight when we're a little more in the front part of our brain.

Yeah, I know that that was the hard part for me. Like in my early 20s, late 20s in relationships, I was definitely the checker router. It was like, oh, we've reached a place in this conflict where I don't want to deal with this anymore. So I'm going to go play video games or I'm going to go leave and grab a beer with my buddies. I'm not dealing with this shit. And so I had to train myself to maybe pause like you're saying, and take a moment and gather myself, but then to try and re engage and maintain that connection. It was hard, man, because every part of me was just like, f this, I'm out. I don't want to deal with this shit.

Oh, dude. So with you. Yeah, yeah. I'm curious if that's changed once you got married and got into a committed partnership. Because some people's styles can change once they lock into a longer term relationship.

Yeah, I mean I definitely, I think the level of commitment that I experienced in getting engaged and getting married has changed that. And I found myself more, I don't know what the word would be, but certainly more willing and open to staying and engaging in the dialogue and more.

Almost more responsible for my own nature and experience. I think it's also a byproduct of the work that I've decided to do and really committing myself to embodying what I talk about.

But I definitely have noticed that part of me is less likely to want to check out or walk away or disengage entirely.

Yeah.

And when. If and when it has happened in our relationship, that it's always been this, like, red flag for me to be like, oh, something's good. Like, this is clearly my shadow, this is clearly me right now. And I need to check in about that because disengaging in that way I know is not effective based on everything that I know and have read. So, yeah, definitely.

My style actually switched from being super avoidant before marriage to being more anxious. So I'm more of the anxious partner who. I don't like it. If my wife is retreating in any way for a certain amount of time, depending on the severity, it like just brings up all this stuff from my childhood. So I had this. And people will notice this. The listener might. You might reflect on your history and notice, okay, under stress. Did I have a parent, at least one of my parents, who was there some of the time and actually helped me when I was struggling some of the time? That's more of an anxious, ambivalent type person who you're in an adult relationship, you're going to be the one who's advocating for connection. Whereas if you grew up in a family with the other parent, let's say, who is just completely avoidant and distant and it's like, go deal with your shit, go to your room. And it was like, go outside, go to video games, go to books, whatever. You're going to be more on the avoidance spectrum. And so some of us have both. That's what I'm saying is depending on who we're with, we can either kind of do that retreating thing or we can get pretty anxious.

Yeah, that's good. Let's talk about some triggers and then let's talk about repair afterwards. So in the book you talk about being with your triggers and being with the other person's. And I was hoping that you can just define that a little bit, give some context to it and then maybe outline what does that actually look like.

Yeah. So being with our own triggers, I call self regulation. If you're like a psychology nerd like me, you might. Self regulation is just the ability to regulate and be with my own disturbance, my own discomfort when you and I are in a conflict, for example. And one of the tools I teach in the book, and that's pretty simple, is just a quick two minute meditation that I call the Nestor Meditation. N E, S, T, R. That's an acronym that just stands for number. You just put a number on 0 to 10 when you're activated. Like how activated am I Am I three or a five? Emotion is E. Just name a feeling. Happy, sad, glad, scared, raged, you know, hurt, whatever. S is sensation. What kind of sensations am I feeling in my body? Hot, cold, tension in my back, constriction in my chest. Those are sensations. And then thought. T is thought. What am I thinking about? Am I just over here spinning my wheels, making the person wrong or making myself wrong? And then R is resource. Where do I just feel okay? I've been walking on this earth for X amount of years. I probably have a place in my body or my experience that's okay. And that little check in is huge for being able to be with my experience. Even though the longer you can just sit there and just be with those emotions and sensations in particular, the less you're going to get taken out by them and want to distract and medicate or reach for your phone or whatever. Like really just stay with yourself because then you can come back to the person in the repair stage and just tell them what is going on inside and you can take responsibility for what, what emotions you're feeling and what's happening in there. So that's on the self regulation side. And then, and also there's self reflection. I should say that, that it is good when you take space to just reflect. Ask yourself some questions like why am I, why am I so mad? Why am I so scared right now? Like what really is going on here? And hold genuine curiosity about yourself more than anything. And then in terms of being with another person's triggers, you know, it's not enough to be in a partnership where it's like their triggers are their problem. Some people have that view and I used to actually have that view, which is, hey, you get triggered by me, Connor, that's not my problem. Go deal with it, man. That's your stuff. But if we're in a marriage, if we're in a partnership, that's a pretty dismissive position.

Doesn't work very well.

Yeah. And it's just not considering this person and how they're wired. And if we're really a team, and I believe we're a team and I'm invested and I made that commitment to you. I want to learn how to be with you when you're most upset. Even if I'm the person that upset you, I want to be able to handle your emotions, your anger, your sadness, your fear. And I want to stay in the room and learn how to be with all that's coming up for you. Kind of like you're learning how to Be with your son's tantrums, fears, upset, anger, you know, all the emotions that a baby goes through. It's the parents like, whoa. It's like, this is a lot. And, well, other adults are like this sometimes. And if we can learn how to be with another person's upset man, again, we're demonstrating we are a secure anchor for them. They can lean on us in hard times, even if we're the source of it and we get stronger together.

Yeah, I think there's also something intrinsically rewarding in that. You know, I don't know. I. You know, I can't speak for everyone, but I find for myself the more competent that I've become in being able to, however we want to label that, hold space, be with my partners, you know, big emotions or disappointments or whatever it is. It's like that is, for me, inherently rewarding because it feels like I've become a more available, more open, more competent human being, but also a more competent partner. And even I remember working at Apple, and part of my job as a district leader was to handle really hard, really disappointed clients. And I started to become more proficient in actually dealing with that confrontation and that conflict. And there was something really rewarding with it, because I think in our climate, in our world, in our culture, not everyone knows how to do that. Not everyone knows how to be with other people when they are in conflict, but we all need that. We all need a harbor where we can go to when we're really charged.

Okay, well, I feel like we could go for a long time into this conversation. This is a really robust conversation about conflict. And your book lays out the do's and don'ts, which I love, which is tactical. And you talk about the five most common fights and how to face them. And so I feel like this provides a lot of value for people that are wanting to learn and understand how to navigate conflict. I was hoping that maybe we could sort of end this conversation with what does the repair process look like.

After.

A conflict has ensued? Whether that's in a relationship, like a marriage, or even just with a co worker.

Yeah.

Well, again, it's the most important part of this whole thing is. And the question we want to frame for people and the question the listener wants to have in your mind is, how can we get back to a good place again? And how can I be a part of that process? How can I move this forward so that we're okay again? How can I do that? And that's the repair. And the better you get at this, the more security you're going to build again long term with this person. So how is one of the things that we can do is someone in the conflict or as soon as we're done and we're still feeling really off and disconnected and we had the kind of argument and it's like, ugh, we're just like feeling terrible. As soon as you are able, whoever you are, you can come back to the person with a little bit of insight into your own part. And you can say things like, hey, partner, friend, I just want to take responsibility for what I did or didn't do to make this situation go down and to make it worse. Here's what I did. I raised my voice. I was a jerk. I can see that. I also, you know, didn't unload the dishwasher in that way. I didn't actually consider your feelings when that thing happened yesterday with your friend. I did all that. Yep, I can see that. And I blew it. And I can imagine this is the second. So the first part is owning and the second part is impact. And I can imagine the impact on you was or is blank, that you felt hurt, that you felt dropped by me, that you felt angry, that you felt scared and alone. And when we do those two things, we take responsibility and we basically empathize, man. The other person is going to start to settle down and they're going to start to feel like, wow, this person actually cares about my feelings and my side and what they did to me or what didn't work for me. Gosh, this feels really good. And.

Along those lines, we can just take it a step further and we can be the bigger person and we can say with this commitment, and this is chapter 11 in the book, is we can make a commitment that I'm going to listen to you until you feel understood. And I call that lufu L U F U.

And when we make that kind of commitment to the other person, they feel again cared about, considered like we. It matters that we're going to get back to a good place, that I'm going to actually sit here as long as it takes until you're feeling mostly understood. And so someone has to lead that. And I call that being a relational leader. And it doesn't matter who it is and no one's going to keep score, but it's like someone has to step up and say, okay, I want to listen to you until you feel understood. So those are a couple of things that we can do to begin that repair process. And if we have a Commitment and an agreement ahead of time. Also that you're going to also do the same thing for me. We're going to do this for each other because it's good for both of us because we're standing for three, and we're not going to let it go too long. And an agreement we can make is we both agree that we're not going to let this go longer than 24 hours without at least an attempt to address it. And a 24 hour agreement is really good because we're all busy, but that pushes us to not delay it. I'm busy. Let's just talk about it this weekend. And it's like Tuesday. It's like, okay, wait, you're making me wait till Saturday till I address this. I feel terrible over here. So I think 24 hours is a good one.

Nice. I love that. I love some of those pieces to just help people repair afterwards and some of the structure around that, especially the time component. I think often, especially when it's a charged issue, a lot of people have a tendency to just let it linger. It's like, well, maybe this will just resolve itself, especially the conflict avoidance. It's like, I don't want to deal with this. And so you will talk about it on Saturday.

And then it doesn't happen. Right. So good. Well, Jason, listen, we're going to have to wrap up. I appreciate you coming on the show and diving into this topic, and I feel like it's an incredibly important one. So I think we're going to have to perhaps bring you into the alliance to come and talk to the men. And maybe we'll have this book as one of the monthly themes, because this is a good topic. But for the people that are wanting to learn more about some of the resources that you have about getting to zero, where can they find you and where can they find the book?

Awesome. Thanks, Connor. Yeah, and happy to serve in whatever way. What works for your peeps. Yeah. So probably the best place is gettingtozerobook.com because there you can find wherever to buy you buy the books, bookshop.org or Amazon or whatever. But you also get some bonus stuff like a conflict style quiz. You can take the conflict style quiz there to understand your conflict style. There's a little downloadable PDF there, other resources in that. There's also a link there that takes you to our podcast, which Connor's been on and also with his wife. And that's relationship school. The Relationship school podcast.

Awesome. Yeah, that was a fun interview. I think we talked about long distance relationships.

Totally. I still get emails from that. Just people getting really served by that one. You helped a lot of people there.

Good, Wonderful. Good, good, good. Awesome brother. Well, thanks again for coming on. I appreciate you. For everyone that's out there listening, if you know someone that could benefit from listening to this episode, that could benefit in improving their conflict skills, then definitely man it forward, share this episode with them. Maybe even send Jason's book to them just as a little subtle hint or a gift. And don't forget to rate and review. If you are watching us on YouTube then leave some comments below. Any questions that you had about this episode, what you loved, what you learned. And if you are tuning into us on the podcast, don't forget to share this episode and leave a rating and review. So until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.