Confidence Classic: The Strengths of Perfectionism with Katherine Morgan Schafler

Perfectionism is a power in my view. Right. It is the power to have this cognitive capacity that is unique to our species, which is being able to not just see and interpret the reality ahead of us, but also the ideals we imagine and being able to drive towards that.

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Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet our guest this week. Katherine Morgan Shapler is a psychotherapist, writer and speaker and former on site therapist at Google. And she earned degrees and trained at UC Berkeley and Columbia University with postgraduate certification from the Associate for Spirituality and Psychotherapy in New York City. Katherine, thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you for having me. It is a thrill to be with you. Okay, so this is so funny.

And we started talking about it off air and I said, oh my gosh, let me record this. Okay, here's the thing. After going through your book the Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control, the first thing I said to you is, this is going to be an interesting interview because I'm the anti perfectionist.

Yeah. And you said, I said, that's how I used to think of myself. And what I discovered was that there are so many ways perfectionism shows up in our lives. And I talk about this in the book. I was, I always was gravitated towards perfectionists and I worked with perfectionists in my practice and I specifically marketed myself that way because I just found the energy of the perfectionist to be so compelling. To me, it's like just this dichotomy of constructive and destructive all at once. And it's really powerful. And so it's really interesting to see what happens when someone learns how to manage that and channel that because it really sets them on fire in the best way. I was like, I can't be a perfectionist because, you know, ask my partner, have you seen my phone? Like four times a day. I don't know where my lip balm is. And I'm obsessed with Dr. Brene Brown. So there's no way that I could be a perfectionist. But then, you know, the more I practiced and the more I delved into the research, you see that perfectionism is like this kaleidoscopic topic that. That unfurls itself in all of these individual ways for us. And so that's where the five types of perf came into play, because I really pretty quickly understood, like, oh, we don't know anything about perfectionism. We don't get it. It's so much bigger than the little ring box we're trying to squeeze it into.

Well, I mean, obviously you've worked extensively and with countless people around this topic, so I totally defer to you on it. But I do have to shamelessly tell you that for me, the woman that fired me in corporate America was clearly like, she's your number one perfectionist. I mean, and I don't know, to me, this is what perfectionism seems like. Someone who is very, very fake, who pretends all the time as though, you know, I woke up like this. Although they have their hair makeup done and they have a stylist who's doing their clothes that, you know, they're very punctual and very busy, and their writing's perfect and very organized and say the right thing at the right time and never do something if they're not prepped. Right. Like, everything is a big show that's. And I don't know if this is right or wrong. Well, I know that you talk about this typically it's a female and the ones that I've known, and I know you're probably telling me I'm one, and I don't think I am, but have eating disorders. Like, I see a lot with, like, super don't want to eat food, never eating. And I've known a few in my career that if, like, we'd all roll our eyes like, oh, here we go again. Here comes the perfectionist. But that's been my experience, and. And I actually talk a lot of my speeches now. My motto is, done is better than perfect. And I talk a lot about perfectionism being a veil for fear just to cover up what you're actually afraid of. That's how I've seen it. Shoot me straight.

Right. Well, I think everything you said is correct and has some truth to it and. Right. And so I'm not interested in getting anybody on my side. I'm interested in getting people on their own side and getting them to be introspective and looking inward and saying, like, who am I? What do I want? What are the ideals that I'm operating with that may or may not be conscious. And to me, a perfectionist is someone who more often than not, right. Notices an ideal and notices that there's a difference between the ideal that they can imagine in their minds and the reality plunked down in their laps. And what makes them a perfectionist instead of just an idealist who enjoys dreaming about that ideal is this compulsory active impulse to bridge the gap themselves, to try to. And perfectionism, in my view, is an innate human tendency, and that's how it first presented itself in psychological literature. But what's really interesting is that culturally, through each decade, terms like perfectionist shape shift, and they become implicit drivers for whatever's happening in the zeitgeist. And I think that's, you know, in the same way that Basi, for example, served to regulate authoritative and assertive qualities in girls and women. You know, you talked about the, the gender component that I bring up in the book. Perfectionist is, in my view, serving as an implicit driver to, like, repress women's power and ambition. Right? When women express power and ambition, there is huge pushback for that unless they're expressing that power and ambition in domains which are typically homemaker, archetypal kind of settings, I. E. Martha Stewart is perhaps the most famous perfectionist of our time, and nobody is telling her perfectionism isn't unhealthy because her perfectionism is expressed through traditional femininity kind of ways. Marie Kondo, Same thing. You know, these people have New York Times bestselling books, syndicated TV shows, podcasts, all that stuff. Like, why does it feel off brand for me to tell you and your listeners that Martha Stewart, before she started her company, was a stockbroker on Wall Street. You know, this is an impressively industrious woman who wants a lot, gets a lot, does a lot. But Martha Stewart living is based on, like, weddings and, you know, color palettes that pop and social gatherings and all of these, like I said, typical homemaker things. And so we don't say, like, you know, what, Martha Stewart needs to, like, tone down her perfectionism. But when we have Serena Williams assertively confronting, I don't know anything about sports, but whatever the umpire is in tennis, whatever the umpire or referee, the person who sits in the really high chair in tennis whenever they, you know, she's lost so many matches and received so many penalties because of her visible drive and because it's not being expressed in a domain that she's been welcomed in, not just because she's a female, but also because she's black and these things Aren't coincidences, you know, so, yes, there's a huge gendered aspect to perfectionism. You know, you look at James Cameron, Steve Jobs, Gordon Ramsay, we not only say like, well, you know, they're perfectionists, we celebrate them for their perfectionism. Gordon Ramsay's become a mogul for his public Persona of being an intense perfectionist. And then we have someone like Anna Wintour who we, you know, cast as a devil in Prada because she's a leader, but she's not maternal enough, she's not warm enough, she's not, you know, she's not quote unquote feminine enough. We don't like ambitious women in this culture. This is a misogynistic culture.

So I don't necessarily agree with you on that. And, and I know we, we come at this from very different angles. So I just think back to my own experience in my own life and.

I remember when I was in my.

Late 20s, I went through a really, I was very, very powerful at work. I was executive leadership for a big media company, one of the only women on the team. And my entire career I had been in very high powered positions. And of course, when I was younger, people would fight back at it because I was younger. And then as I, you know, grew in age, people were much more receptive of it. However, in my late 20s, I'll never forget, I started watching what I ate to the point where it was psychotic. Like, I'll have three pieces of cheese in my mind. Like, now that I look back, I went through a phase when my life was not good. It looked good on the outside, but on the inside, I was started struggling with, wait a minute. When I grew up, was my life like this? Like, I started diving into my past in a way that I had never done it, never noticed it, or wanted to notice it. And I started becoming really acutely aware of it in my late 20s and wanting to dive into it. And then outwardly, I started behaving differently. Now that I look back, I was trying to control the things I could control. My workouts, what I was eating, how I was dressing. And I was showing up much more in the traditional, in my mind, quote, unquote, perfectionist way. And it didn't last for very long because I ended up going down a rabbit hole, finding my biological father. Like, I went all in on this stuff and, you know, opened some doors that really made it way messier than ever. And then I realized I have no control over any of this. But I wonder, for me, it all seemed around control and wanting to have control. Is that the same driver for anyone that's a perfectionist?

Yeah. Well, you're bringing up some really interesting corollaries, and eating disorders is one of those. And I want to really dive deeper into that. And first, I want to answer your question about the association with control. And I want to also be clear. Perfectionism is a power, in my view, right? It is the power to have this cognitive capacity that is unique to our species, which is being able to not just see and interpret the reality ahead of us, but. But also the ideals we imagine and being able to drive towards that, and any power exists within it. There's a dichotomy, right? So, you know, wealth, beauty, anything like that. Art. Art can inspire and art can objectify. You know, wealth can be philanthropic. Wealth can be exploitative. I'm like, you need boundaries around any power, and you need boundaries around perfectionism. And I think that we are a culture that is not emotionally literate. And I include myself in that. In that, like, we prioritize analytical intelligence in school instead of emotional intelligence. Most of us are in our 20s at the earliest, before we hear words like boundaries. We don't know the difference between dignity and respect, or compassion and pity, or self self love and self care. And if you know some of that stuff, it's because you have independently sought it out through podcasts like yours, through books like the Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control, through Oprah, through all that stuff. And so, yes, perfectionism can manifest in completely destructive, disempowering ways. And that happens when you know you have to ask yourself why you're striving and how you're striving, because the answers to those two questions will determine whether or not your ideal chasing your perfectionism is healthy or not. Why are you striving? Is it because you think that getting external validation is going to certify your belonging into some group? Is it because you know you're trying to be complete and be whole in some way? Or is it because you're innately curious about something, because you're passionate about a cause that you have found worthy of a lifetime of striving that you know you can't finish, that you know is never going to be done? And how are you striving? Are you hurting yourself in the process? Are you hurting other people in the process? Because if your answers to either of those questions is yes, you're not in a healthy space. And so my whole thing about being able to expand the way we think about perfectionism is because I don't believe in eradication. As a therapist, I can tell you that that approach does not work. And it sure as hell does not work with perfectionists. Like, you can't tell. Part of the reason why I wrote this book, and you know this because you've written a book, there are so many reasons that bring us to writing books, right? And then at the same time, there's like one reason or a few key reasons. And I just kept looking around at all the books about perfectionism that were like, just don't be so much of a perfectionist. Just don't sweat the small stuff. Just set your goals a little less, a little. Just turn down the volume a little. And it's like that. That, to me is like trying to teach someone to manage their anger by telling them to calm down.

Like, oh, that does not work.

And never in the history of life has that worked. And yet we continue to barrel down this, like, dumb, dumb quest to try to get perfectionists to fall in love with the average. And it doesn't work. And we need an entirely different framework. We need to, like, think outside the box and throw the box away. Because what's unique about being a perfectionist is that it's an enduring identity marker, meaning people who relate to that identity relate to it through their entire lifetime. This is, you know, backed in the research, but it's also what I've found in my work. It's like being a romantic or being an activist. Like, once you get those kinds of identities, sure, there's leeway and there's variation in the intensity and ways that that shows up, but, like, that's who you are. And so to tell a romantic to, like, be a more practical about love, like, that's not going to work. And to stop being a romantic, it's like, listen, you can be a romantic all day long and into the night, but you need boundaries around that if you want it to be a healthy thing that you enjoy. And once you put boundaries around it and once you understand what you're working with, then it's like the best thing in the world to be a romantic. And you could celebrate yourself and you can, like, really lean hard into that. Whereas without boundaries, you can get into, like, toxic, abusive, shitty, terrible relationships. And you are. You will be in danger for sure. And so I feel like, you know, we don't talk about any of that stuff with the framework of perfectionism in that construct. We just tell people to not do that. And to me, it's like, that's not helping anybody. You know, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a bad thing when you're not conscious about the ways in which it can really hurt you, or about the ways in which you can use it to your advantage and like, actually enjoy it and enjoy who you are.

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I asked you to try to find your passion. Can you walk us through? Because this is helpful for me. And I took your quiz, by the way, even though the funny thing is, Katherine, I didn't want to. When I read that you had a quiz, I thought, oh, I don't want to take that. I'm not a perfectionist. And when I saw myself respond in such a visceral way, I knew I had to take it, right? I'm like, oh, that's like, oh, you're.

My kind of people. You go right to the discomfort. I'm like, I got to like our number one hobby. What's uncomfortable? Let me just go sit in the center of that.

Well, that's because for so long in my life I avoided what was uncomfortable. So I learned just by doing it the wrong way that if I, you know, see fear as a green light, that means go and go faster. I'm going to be able to break through it and find out what it was that was holding me back. So can you talk to us a little bit about the five different personality types within perfectionism?

Sure. And let me also say that, you know, Deepak Chopra says it best when he says identity is at best provisional. Right. So I'm offering these.

What does that even mean?

It means like, you can't say, this is who I am with certainty. You know, it's like we are fluid beings, right? So who we are, the roles we Carry the ways in which that changes what we want, what we desire, what's important to us. All of these things bend and fold and change all the time, and we're continually having to revisit, like, our identity. Right. And so the five offerings are not about saying, like, you must be one of these things. It's about saying, here's a framework to kind of examine some patterns that might be showing up for you. And I'm offering this framework to help you kind of orient yourself to these patterns. But I'm not saying, like, this is who you are. I don't think human beings, like, I just think we're so, so much bigger than personality types. And I think mental health in general is contextual. So it's like I might be extroverted when I'm on stage, but really introverted at heart, you know, and so it just depends on where you are, what's happening in your life, all this stuff. So, anyway, so the five types are Therapist.

I love that we have you on right now because everybody is getting your vibe. It's so good. So helpful. Thank you.

Oh, thank you. So the five types are one Classic. So. So this is sort of the closest to what we think of as a perfectionist. Like, pretty, preppy, buttoned up. Each type has their strengths and they have their weaknesses. So classic perfectionists, highly reliable, add so much structure to any situation that they're in. They do what they say they're going to do the way they say they're going to do it when they say they will do it. But on the con side, they can interact in a way that feels transactional and. And just kind of generic. And they may feel like they're taken advantage of just because they are so reliable and do everything well, that people kind of see them more as the people who will do the stuff instead of connecting to them on a deeper level. And then there's Parisian perfectionists. The simplest way to explain this is like someone who wants to be perfectly liked. And Parisian perfectionists, their ideal isn't about the achievement metrics that you were talking about before, like, bigger, better, faster, more fancy title, you know, more money, whatever it is. This is achievement metrics of connection. So I really want an ideal connection with you. I want us to have the most connective conversation we can have. I want to be the best mom, the best partner, the best friend. I want to be most deeply connected to myself. I want to know myself perfectly and love myself perfectly. That's like Parisian perfectionism. And then there's messy perfectionism and this is when you want the middle of something to be perfect. So messy perfectionists are super generators when it comes to ideas. They have a million and one ideas. They're start happy, they have zero anxiety, which is always so impressive to me, about beginning anything. And they'll cast a huge wide net. And they're in love with the beginning of something. But once they hit that tedium in the middle where it's boring or slow or they're not getting immediate results, they become, or can become disillusioned with that because that doesn't feel as perfect as the romanticized beginning. And again, these aren't just showing up in work situations, but also like a messy perfectionist in dating would be like in love with the first three dates. And then it's like you're chewing kind of loudly, I'm out, You know, like, oh, this is imperfect anymore. I'm out of here. And the counterpart to that is the procrastinator perfectionist who wants the conditions to be perfect before they start. So the advantages to the procrastinator perfectionist are like, these are people who have 360 degree angles on everything. They are super planners. They're very prepared, they're not impulsive. You know, they can be very committed and they will see something through. But beginning it, God, that's hard for them. Because to take an idea out of your head and start to implement it in the world for a procrastinator perfectionist, because that inevitably changes it. They feel like they're like taking a baseball bat to something they love. You know, whether, whether it's a book or whether it's like, okay, I'm really ready to start dating. And then you join a dating app and you see a couple profiles and you're like, this isn't how I want to feel when I start dating. And then you immediately back away from that, right? Because it's like if the beginning isn't perfect, you don't feel like you have a launching pad. And then there is an intense perfectionist, which this is like someone who is very focused on an outcome. So this is more like the Steve Jobs type of personality where their strength is, they have razor sharp focus, they will get it done. The risk is, how are you getting it done? Are you disregarding interpersonal respect? Are you on the opposite of Parisian perfectionists? Intense perfectionists do not care at all about being liked or admired, which works out very well for them professionally and really hurts them personally. So often when this kind of perfectionism isn't managed this is the kind of perfectionism where you're like getting so far ahead in work and yet your own actual personal life is just becoming increasingly devoid of any connection. And so intense perfectionists run a real risk of like isolating themselves hard. And that's a hard. That's a hard thing because I think one of the worst aspects of unhealthy perfectionism is when you get what you want. And it's like, I call it in my book, being struck with a thousand daggers at once because you finally got the thing that you thought would make you, you know, feel the way you wanted to feel or be who you wanted to be, whatever, to certify your belonging to something. And you feel the opposite. You feel like shit because you have to confront the fact that there is no substitute for self worth and there's no substitute for real connection with other human beings. You know, so you talk about.

Thank you for breaking that down, first of all. But you talk about these underlying issues, lacking self worth, fear, anxiety. How do you guide people away from those things into self love and self compassion and allowing and embracing and channeling this into a power instead of a holdback.

Yeah, well, that was what I was most excited to talk about in the book because I think we're getting a lot of that wrong with this. Like, just love yourself. We talk about it like a panacea. And it's like, you know, someone who's struggling to love themselves hears that and they don't know what that really means. I mean, I don't even know what that really means. When people say, like, just be nice to yourself. It's like, give, give me actionable steps, you know, And I think what we, again, to go back to the emotional illiterate piece is like self compassion. And this is what I am so excited to talk about. So I'm so glad you asked me that question. Self compassion is not being really nice and sweet and polite to yourself. Self compassion is a three step resiliency building skill. And the framework that I use in the Perfectionist guide to losing control is based on research by Dr. Kristin Neff, who was the first person to really research into compassion. She's like, for self compassion, what Brene Brown is to vulnerability.

Right?

She's like the one. And she breaks it down into these three steps. And we don't know what those three steps are. And we don't understand that when you exercise self compassion, that ushers you into a sense of real accountability for your life and real power instead of this, like, petty control. I Mean, that's the spine of the book is like we are trading our inherent power for all of this control that doesn't even work and is an illusion in the first place. And it's tantamount to like trying to move a car by getting behind it and pushing it instead of just sitting in the driver's seat and driving it. But we don't know the difference between control and power or like how to access our power. And one of the best ways to access power is through self compassion. But we live in a culture which teaches us that self compassion is kind of like this hippie thing to do. And especially in corporate America, it's not the move, right, that you need to be hard on yourself and punitive with yourself and bust your ass and do all of this stuff. And that's what's going to get you across the finish line. And the research says the exact opposite. When people are punitive with themselves, they burn out. They don't operate with premium energy, they're not solutions oriented, they have less creativity. You know, it's just negative across the board. And so the three. Do you want to get into the three steps of self compassion? Okay, so the first is self kindness. And again, what I love about Dr. Neff is she really funnels it down to like talk about what kindness is. And she starts kindness in the most interesting way, which is being able to just acknowledge like you are in pain. And that's why you need to be kind to yourself. You're not just having a bad day, you're not just flustered. Like you are in pain right now. And you need to move towards yourself instead of away from yourself and have some empathy. So when I think about the difference between being kind and polite, empathy comes into play. And empathy is about being able to understand what someone is feeling. And the someone in this case is yourself. And so that looks like, you know, let's just say, you know, you had a really bad meeting and you're starting the negative self talk of like, I can't believe I said that. I can't believe I said that. I am so embarrassed. That was such a, you know, blah, blah, blah. All the things self compassion would look like disrupting that and saying, God, it is really hard to feel this embarrassed. I am in pain. Like, this hurts. This is the worst. And you have to acknowledge that. Whereas I think when people, when we tell people to just be nice to themselves, they have the exact same flustered meeting and then they're like, it's okay, you're okay. And it like falls flat because we know what the truth feels like. And that's not the truth. You're not okay, like, and it wasn't an okay meeting. You didn't do a good job. Like, that's the truth. And that doesn't have any commentary on who you are. Right. It just means you had a bad meeting. It was not your shiniest moment. And so that self kindness is being able to acknowledge like, God, this is hard, I'm hurting. The second one is common humanity, which is being able to say that we live amongst billions of people and billions of people live as have lived before us. And hopefully if we, you know, can switch gears, billions of people will live after us on this world which is in fire. And someone somewhere is having your exact experience. And like, you're not alone in that. And that is part generating connection, part like, get out of the narcissistic mindset that like, you are the only one who's ever suffered this much. And the more you're experiencing something that is taboo in our culture to talk about, the more shame you're going to feel and the more alone you're going to feel. So for example, sexual molestation, right? We don't talk about that. It's not okay to talk about it. You know, all the things. So someone who is feeling that is not going to feel a sense of common humanity because it feels so uncommon to them. They are probably thinking, nobody in my circle has ever had to experience something like this. Or if you, you know, no, it's so common.

I want people to know this, that it's so common.

It's so common. You know, same with domestic violence, you know, suicide. All of these issues which are so common but are still shamed in our culture and which are still weighed down with stigma. It's like if you're feeling that stuff, one way to kind of generate common humanity is just imagining yourself in a room full of people who have, who are talking about that experience. And that's why support groups are helpful, for example, because they generate a sense of common humanity, of like, oh, I'm not the only one who's, you know, X, Y and Z. And that's why, you know, frameworks like AA and things like that. It's a community, it's community. And what community is, is like shared common humanity. And then the last component of self compassion is mindfulness. Another word that's been radioactively commodified in our culture. And what NEF means by this is like being able to say, yes, that meeting was Embarrassing. It was the worst. I hated it. But also, that's not all I feel. And being able to turn your head a little bit and say, like, what else do I feel? Do I also feel, you know, proud of myself for being introspective right now? Am I also looking forward to Saturday night with, you know, going out with my girlfriends? Am I also really curious about this book that's been sitting on my nightstand for two months? That has nothing to do with my job, you know, and just being able to return to the sense that, like, you're a whole human being and being mindful of the fact that, like, this one experience you're having is not who you are. It doesn't say anything about what's possible for you in the future. It's feeling like it's eclipsing your whole reality, day, life, whatever, because your stress response is activated and that narrows your line of vision. Because when your body is stressed, you're wired to focus on like the next one minute of your life. And so you're contracting. And mindfulness is about letting your body and mind know it's okay to expand now. There's no tiger in the room with me, you know, and you're safe and this isn't all you feel. So perfectionists feel disappointment a lot amongst a litany of other emotions. And instead of asking yourself, like, how do I feel less disappointed? How do I get rid of my disappointment? A better question is, what else do I feel? Because then you make space for the disappointment and you make space for the rest of your emotional landscape, which is, you know, not just bad, it's filled with a lot of other stuff.

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I asked you to.

Try to find your passion.

It's funny because when you're talking about oh no, you're okay. You got out of that meeting like everything's fine. That's definitely how I manage myself for the majority of my life. And to your Point, it's not helpful. It doesn't really resolve anything, but get you to like ignore what just happened and move on to the next thing where you're probably going to duplicate the same behavior again.

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I appreciate you saying that because I think it's important to know that the way that we react of like the I'm embarrassed I fell, oh my God, am I going to start crying in public? I'm just going to, you know, whatever it is, it doesn't have to be the way that we respond. And you can do both, right? You can have the reaction of like, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. And then you get in your car and you drive home and you start crying or whatever you do, and then you thoughtfully respond and then you're like, no, actually I'm not fine. This does hurt. And so, you know, giving yourself room to be a human being looks like what you're talking about. And being able to have a natural, normal reaction, which is to kind of like minimize, maybe brush aside, pretend it's not important. And that's why, you know, ideally you have built in moments of stillness or self reflection at some point in your day where you can kind of like revisit those moments and say, okay, let me really think about what that meant or did not mean to me.

So powerful.

Okay, so you talk a lot in.

The book about reframes and can you share with us some of the reframes that are helpful?

Yes, I'm obsessed with reframes. So reframes are shifting the language a little bit around the way that you talk about something so that you can think about it differently. Because one of the best ways to change your perspective is to change the language you use. And so one example that's my favorite example that I've heard is have you heard of the phrase attention seeking behaviors? I've heard of some, yeah. It's like sometimes if a teenager is like spray painting on walls or I don't know, whatever teenagers do, they're like, oh, they're just doing attention seeking behaviors.

Or some 40 something year old mother wearing a bikini out at night. I live in Miami.

Right, right.

Okay, so that too.

Right. Of all of these ways that we kind of cluster people into like, oh, she just wants attention. The reframe is like connection seeking behaviors. Like know that the teenager's not just trying to get your attention, they're trying to connect and the, the mom is trying to connect. Like these people might be feeling lonely or Separated. And so I think that that reframe really helps extend a little empathy toward the person as opposed to like attention seeking behaviors, which is a little bit of a dismissive language and doesn't so negative too. Yeah, it's judgmental for sure. And it doesn't invite any empathy. So, you know, that's one example of a reframe. Another one that I think is really powerful is like, it's a pet peeve of mine when people say, you know, it's not, it's not weakness to ask for help, because when you need help, it's like hearing that it feels like a weakness still because you're someone saying like, don't worry, it's not weak. And to me, that's not enough of a reframe. To me, a positive reframe looks completely different. You know, the reasons that we don't ask for help is because we think of asking for help as, I can't do it on my own, I'm not strong enough to do it on my own. I can't figure it out. I'm not smart, I'm not resourceful enough, whatever it is. And a way that I think is helpful to reframe asking for help. It's like asking for help is a refusal to give up. And when you reframe help that way, it's like if you're really, really determined you're going to ask for help, if you are really invested in getting the thing that you need help with done or being the version of yourself that you need a little help and collaboration to be, then you're going to ask for help. And to me, that's like exciting to think about it that way. And that's like a little more energizing than, you know, this. Like, don't worry. It's like asking for help isn't a weakness. It's. It's kind of like a backhanded compliment. When you say stuff like that. It's like, I never said it was a weakness, but you think it's a weakness. So you're reassuring me. It's not. It's very confusing when you're in, again, when you're in that mindset of, you know, feeling scared to ask for help, not knowing how to ask for help, not knowing who to go to. It takes a lot of energy to ask for help because it's not a single question. It's a series of like micro steps of even knowing, like what you need help with, feeling emotionally entitled to the help, all of that stuff. And so, yeah, It's a refusal to give up. That's what asking for help is. It's a signal of determination. And I think that that's really admirable. You know, I think the strongest people are the ones who ask for support.

Absolutely. And I love that reframe. Thank you for sharing it with us. Who is this book written for?

Well, I heard something once, and you tell me if this is true with your book. Someone told me in the midst of me writing this that we write the books. We need ourselves a hundred percent.

That's true.

So, I mean, I think I wrote it for myself or perhaps a past version of myself. And I also wrote it for people who just feel stuck and who need some kind of connection. And, you know, the book offers so much of what I see presented over and over and over again in my work as a therapist, and not just in my private practice in New York City with, like, you know, I used to have a practice on Wall Street. I worked on site at Google and all of these kind of, like, shiny places, but also, you know, I also used to work in a rehab. I also used to work in residential treatment with kids who were abused and neglected and became wards of the state. And this. These issues in the book are universal. And I think ultimately, as human beings, we lose track of what our power is, and we double down on superficial control. Not because we think that control, that controlling and manipulating works, but because when you don't feel empowered, control feels like the responsible thing to do. Controlling the hell out of yourself, your body, other people, your work. And that's how I think of control. I talk about the difference a lot in the book. That, like, control is about manipulation. Power is about influence and inspiration. You know, control is myopic. You have to plan everything one step at a time, because it depends on what just happened, what you do next. Power grants you the ability to take huge leaps of faith. Because power, in my definition, is simply understanding the immutability of your worth. And what that means is that there's nothing anybody can do or say, including yourself. And I think we. We are the ones who try to talk ourselves out of our worth the most. To change the fact that you are worthy of all the love, joy, connection, and dignity in the world, no matter what. And you have no hand in that. That happened to you when you were born, and nothing you can do or not do is going to change that. And when you understand that you are already worthy of all of those things and that you don't need to hustle and do Anything to earn them, particularly joy. We don't earn joy. And I think that's a struggle for perfectionists of, like, well, once I launch this product or once I make this salary, then I can relax and start enjoying my life. And it's like, you make an excellent plan to be very happy later, you know, and it's like your life's happening right now, and once you understand that you're worthy of all those things, it's like you already got the goods. And then you can just go out into the world and play in a certain way, you know, and find your people and do all the things. It's just such a liberating mentality, and it's one that can feel really elusive. And even after, you know it, like, I know that I know I'm worthy all the time, but I don't remember it all the time. And I need so many reminders. You know, when I was at the association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy, I went into this Buddhist teacher's office, and I had preconceived notions about what a Buddhist teacher would be like. You know, like, I thought he was going to be super chill, calm, maybe dressed in, like, not the same stuff that, you know, I don't know, not in a suit, that kind of thing. And I get in there, and there's banners everywhere. Like, banners, as if someone has had a party and they're getting in my way because they're hanging. And I'm like, what the hell is all this? And so I say to the guy, what is this? And he's like, they're reminders. And I look at the banners and there's things written on all of them. And I sat down and I don't mind long patches of silence. And the. He didn't mind either. So we just kept. We just sat there silently. And then he looked at me and broke the silence and was like, I don't know about you, but I need reminders all the time, every day. And I was like, me, too. And it was so powerful because here I am, like, seeking out this teacher who is, you know, the teacher to go to. And he said this very human thing of, like, it's easy to forget this stuff. And that's part of why I do this work, because it. It allows me to stay in the vein of it, because otherwise, you know, it's just so easy to drift. And it. We don't drift because we're bad people or because we're not smart people or because we don't believe we deserve love. We drift because we're human beings, and human beings forget. And so we need to, like, put, you know, little earbuds in our ears and listen to your show, and we need to read books, and we need to, like, be around people who echo the values that we think are important so that we can remember these are what are important to me, you know?

Oh, this conversation is so important, and I'm so here for it. All right, guys, the Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control. A path to Peace and Power. You've got to check this book out, Katherine. Where can everyone get the book? And where can everyone follow you so.

You can get the book wherever you buy books? And I am at Katherine Morgan Schaffler on Instagram. I also have a website, Katherine Morgan schaffler.com and thank you so much for having me and just inviting this conversation forward. And I particularly appreciate it because the book made you stop and you said, I don't know if I agree with all of this, but I'm really open to listening, and I'm really curious about what you have to say. And I always love people who meet curiosity with just, like, I want to get closer to that, you know? So thank you.

Well, your work is amazing, and it definitely made me see perfectionism through a totally different light. And I love your idea of expanding it instead of contracting it. So keep up the amazing work you're doing. And, guys, get Catherine's Brook, you will not regret it. Until next week. Keep creating your confidence. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably, something will happen. No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it.

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