The Five Types of Perfectionists, with Katherine Morgan Schafler

0:00You know, there's not just one kind of perfectionism. There are five kinds. Which kind are you? And how is it effing up your money life? We're going to get some insight into those questions today in our interview with psychotherapist, Katherine Morgan Schaeffler. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast. You can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice that you make carries a trade-off, and that applies not just to your money, but to your time, your focus, your energy, what matters most. That is what this podcast is here to explore and facilitate. My name is Paula Pant. With us on the show today, we have a guest who was trained as a psychotherapist at Columbia University and worked as the on-site therapist at Google and has now written a book about perfectionism.

0:49She introduces a framework that outlines five types of perfectionism. Which type are you and how does that impact your life? How does it impact the way that you handle your money, your career, your investments, the way that you self-sabotage? What's the psychology of self-sabotaging? How often do you get stuck in analysis paralysis? How does that impact your ability to start a side hustle, to buy a rental property, to grow a business, to advance professionally, to make a career change, or to take that six-month trip to South America that you've been dreaming about. We're going to learn all about perfectionism and how to overcome it in this episode.

1:32Let's get started.

1:37Hi, Catherine. Hello. How are you? I'm fantastic. How are you doing? I'm good. Thank you. Catherine, you've written about perfectionism and overcoming perfectionism. What is it? What is perfectionism? There's not an agreed upon clinical definition of perfectionism. There is, if we want to get into the weeds, a technical clinical definition of what's known as rigid perfectionism. That is in the DSM-5, and that explains the type of behavioral perfectionism, mostly that demands that everything be perfectly in order, perfectly 100%. It doesn't really speak to a lot of other aspects of perfectionism, like the emotionally charged types of perfectionism or interpersonal types of perfectionism.

2:35And rigid perfectionism in the DSM is what's known as a transdiagnostic trait, which means it shows up across a lot of mental illnesses like OCD, for example. What transdiagnostic means is that the presence of this thing makes a mental health disorder more likely to show up and more likely to be maintained. So rigid perfectionism is part of what I talk about in the book as maladaptive perfectionism. There's adaptive perfectionism that's healthy and maladaptive perfectionism that's unhealthy. Right. And you have a sentence in the book, I actually highlighted it, that says, a key difference between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionists, what some theorists believe is the key difference, is that adaptive perfectionists find a way to enjoy the process of striving towards a goal, whereas maladaptive perfectionists don't.

3:34What do you mean by striving towards a goal? What is the distinction between striving towards a goal versus some alternate approach to a goal? Well, adaptive perfectionists understand that ideals are not meant to be achieved. They're only meant to inspire. And adaptive perfectionists distinguish between a goal and an ideal, right? So you're striving towards both as a perfectionist because the goal is representative of whatever ideal you're trying to achieve. But when a perfectionist achieves a goal, they always create a new goal and it's a bigger goal because they're not actually striving to complete goals.

4:17They're striving towards an intangible ideal that matters to them and that's important to them. And so research demonstrates it's not actually perfectionistic strivings trying to get to that ideal that are harmful to our mental health. It's the self-criticism we lacerate ourselves with that really endangers our well-being. Lacerate is a fantastic word, by the way. Yeah, well, that's what perfectionism, when it's not managed and becomes maladaptive, feels like. It's like emotionally and mentally whipping yourself. Mm-hmm. You describe five types of perfectionism. What are these five types? Okay.

5:03I love talking about the five types of perfectionists because we only have one type in our mind. What I noticed in my practice and myself, I've worked on-site at Google. I had a practice on Wall Street for a long time. I've worked in a rehab. I've worked in residential treatment. And perfectionism was not just amongst high achieving people. It was everywhere. And I was like, how can this be such a kaleidoscopic topic? And yet we don't know or have language to describe it. And so the five types are my attempt to put language to patterns I saw. And they are the classic perfectionist. And the classic perfectionist, I would say, is the closest that we come to the idea we already have in our minds.

5:51So this is someone who's very buttoned up, put together. Each type has its pros and cons. Each type has its strengths and liabilities. So the pros of the classic perfectionists are, these are highly reliable people. These people do what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it in the way they say they're going to do it. The cons are that interpersonally, this type can come across as transactional and maybe sort of at times even haughty or judgmental because classic perfectionists have this mentality in their mind of if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself.

6:35And so their type of perfectionism doesn't always lend itself to collaboration or engaging with others in a way that engenders connection. So they can come off as kind of distant and haughty. And for themselves, classic perfectionists can often feel taken for granted and taken advantage of because everyone sort of delegates tasks to them because they know they're going to get done. So there's that element to it. if you want something done, give it to a busy person. Yeah, exactly. And if that busy person is also highly organized and highly accountable, even better, which is the classic perfectionist.

7:16So the next type is the procrastinator perfectionist. Procrastinator perfectionists, the simplest way to describe it is that they want the conditions to be perfect before they start, which of course never happens, right? So this is on the pro side, such a wonderful orientation because procrastinator perfectionists are really thoughtful about everything they do. They are not impulsive, which is such an asset. They take major efforts to prepare and come ready. And they see a situation from a 360 degree angle. On the con side, all their preparative measures can run past the point of diminishing returns, and they never actually end up executing because they're not perfectly ready.

8:12And what's interesting about this type is we're not talking about exclusively aversive stuff like doing your taxes and procrastinating on that because there's never a good time to do your taxes. And if there is, somebody can call me and tell me because my taxes are such hell. April 14 at 11.59 p.m. 11.59 p.m., 59 seconds. This type also procrastinates on things like going on vacation, like asking someone out on a date, things that feel maybe fun and exciting. And so that was really interesting to me to discover in my years of working with perfectionists of like, wow, this type of perfectionism doesn't discriminate against aversive and pleasurable tasks.

9:00Then there's the messy perfectionist. And this is like the counterpart to the procrastinated perfectionist. And messy perfectionists are in love with the beginning. They love starting things. It's so easy for them. And this is the pros part of this type. It's like they can just effortlessly push through the anxiety of a new beginning. They don't experience it as anxiety. They experience it as energy. The other pros of messy perfectionists are that they're naturally enthusiastic. They're superstar idea generators. They're just flooded with ideas all the time about, oh, it could go this way and it could go that way and it could go this way.

9:42The cons side is that when you hit the inevitable tedium, the middle of the process, and that middle is not as perfect as it felt in the beginning, messy perfectionists who aren't managing their perfectionism can really become destabilized by that in a way and really shy away from continuing through the process because they struggle when the middle is not perfect. How does a messy perfectionist come in? How do they differ from someone who simply has shiny object syndrome? A messy perfectionist has an ideal in their mind about all the things that they're imagining. And they're trying to align that ideal in their mind with all the different ways to execute it.

10:29there's a deeper kind of intention with messy perfectionists of, I want this company to sell A, B, and C, and D products and also offer E, F, and G services and all of this stuff. Whereas someone who has, what did you call it? Shiny object syndrome? Yeah. Shiny object syndrome. Right. Is there just more on like a dopamine novelty hunt where it's like, oh, this show looks cool. Let me watch this. And oh, this person is really interesting. And let me talk to them. And there's no underlying intention necessarily there that's connecting all those pieces together. Messy perfectionists do have that.

11:09And that's why it's so hard to let go of an idea or the beginning of something because messy perfectionists hear that sort of rule of life of you can do anything, but you can't do everything. And messy perfectionists refuse to believe that in a lot of ways and feel like if you just have the heart, you can get it all done. And of course, that's not true. We have real constraints on our time. Perfectionists are sort of the romantics who can sometimes deny limitations. So far, we have covered the classic perfectionist, the procrastinator perfectionist, and the messy perfectionist. That's three out of five.

11:55There are two others left, the intense perfectionists and the Parisian perfectionists. Let's start with Parisian. What is that? I named this type Parisian after French women, who I love all women, French women included, And the beauty aesthetic of French women is so alluring to me because it's so effortless, or at least it appears that way. And French women have a way of engaging with themselves and the way that they present to the world in this effortless, I don't really care that much. but behind the scenes, there's a whole lot of work going on usually. And so that to me really represented the approach that Parisian perfectionists take to their perfectionism, which is a perfectionism that manifests interpersonally.

12:50So in your relationship with yourself and other people, you know, when we think of the perfectionist, we think of someone who is very focused on upward mobility at work or who wants all the things on the table to be organized in such a way. But Parisian perfectionists, the ideal that they're seeking is ideal connection. So they want to be perfectly liked. They want to perfectly like others. They want to perfectly understand others and be perfectly understood. That's what they are after. And so the pros of this type are these are naturally warm people. They're naturally inclusive. They will, for example, go out of their way to engage a person standing by themselves at a party.

13:34And they understand the live wire power of connection. You don't have to explain that to a Parisian perfectionist. On the con side, sometimes Parisian perfectionists wants connection so much that they try to take shortcuts to connection. And there aren't really shortcuts to connection. And so they will do things like over-index on people-pleasing to try to get that feeling of connection from someone. and of course that doesn't work to engender connection and not only does it not work it also leaves the parisian perfectionist isolated meaning they have not connected to the other person a and b in trying to make a connection with the other person they have abandoned themselves in the process and now they're not connected to themselves and then the next type is the intense perfectionist.

14:29And this is a perfectionist who wants the end of a process to be perfect. So they are very focused on the outcome. Procrastinator perfectionists want the beginning to be perfect. Messy want the middle to be perfect and intense want the end to be perfect. So it's sort of just a different location of where your perfectionism is showing up. So on the pro side, intense perfectionists are just razor sharp focus. They are extremely efficient. They don't care about being liked, which often helps them professionally and hurts them personally. And they will get the goal, right? Sometimes their perfectionism goes into overdrive such that they'll get the goal by any means necessary.

15:20And that's when this perfectionism can really become maladaptive because let's say you're an intense perfectionist executing your perfectionism at work and you achieve the goal that you and your team have set to achieve. And it's like, great, you got to where you needed to be. But in the next quarter, half of your team quits because they're all miserable because you got to that goal without considering how you're pursuing that goal and how you are being treated in the process, meaning how much you're taking care of yourself. Are you sleeping? Are you getting enough rest? Are you skipping meals?

15:58And how other people are being treated in the process. So intense perfectionists on the con side can really burn the candle at both ends and burn out and allow their relationships and pieces of their life that really help engender a holistically healthy picture to fall by the wayside in service of achieving a goal. Now, all five of these types share the commonality that they respond to missteps with self-punishment. I want to dive into that. And let's start by talking about the differences between the concept of punishment versus certain other concepts. So the difference between punishment and discipline, or the difference between punishment and personal accountability, the difference between punishment and the natural consequence.

16:57Let's address each of those. First of all, why do people self-punish? Perfectionists particularly. Right. Well, perfectionists can self-punish. And when you're punishing yourself, you're in a maladaptive space. Perfectionists can also engage in a self-compassionate response, which is the opposite of punishment. So perfectionism, just to go 30 ,000 feet in the air here is fluid and context based. Like, listen, if you're wondering if you're a healthy perfectionist or an unhealthy perfectionist, let me kill the suspense. You're both. I'm both. Everybody who's a perfectionist is both. We are both because life is not static and it changes.

17:40And sometimes we engage in punitive responses to our thoughts, to the outcome, to whatever's happening. And the goal that I'd like perfectionists to carry is not perfect self-compassion responses 100 % of the time, because that's not possible, but it is to understand that you have a choice. And the choice is punishment, which to get to your question is so ineffectual. It's not just ineffectual. It makes everything worse. And what a punishment is when you deny yourself something that you know will help you, or you purposely create something that you know is going to hurt you. And the goal of a punishment is to create more pain.

18:32And the reason that we engage in punishments is because we think pain is a motivating force. And the thing is, pain can be a motivating force. We are in enough pain already. You do not need to manufacture more pain for yourself in order to get what you need and want in this life. And that's what a punishment is. It's just, let me lay pain on top of this, and that way I'll be really extra motivated to get what I need. You know, this idea of whipping yourself into shape. When we're in pain, our stress response is activated, right? We don't feel good when we're in pain. And when you don't feel good, your body is responding to that by flooding yourself and your brain with hormones and chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline.

19:32And the more your stress response is activated, the more your mind operates in a totally different way so you're looking for short-term solutions to like get you out of the immediate situation as opposed to being able to have the luxury of a long-term wide perspective in which you can see multiple solutions unfolding and when your stress response is activated, you're also experiencing fear, whether you know it or not. And when we feel fear, we contract instead of expand. When you're in a state of fear, you're making decisions based purely on a posture of defense or trying to protect yourself from something.

20:19So you're less risk averse, for example. And it just doesn't really benefit anybody to be in that state of mind because you don't understand how limited your perspective is when you're afraid. This gets to the whole control power thing, because when you're afraid, you double down on control because it feels like the responsible thing to do. when you're empowered you engage in your own power your own internal sense of i want to do this i am excited to do this or i know that executing in this way will be what's best for me as opposed to i know that executing in this way will get me out of the situation You know, like control and fear match with desperation.

21:20Power and possibility match with more of an enthusiasm.

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25:10What are some specific ways that self-punishment manifests? What are specific behaviors? Punishment looks really nuanced, and it can be tricky to understand the ways we're punishing ourselves. Punishment looks like doing something that you know is going to hurt you. So I'll give a really common example, which is staying up way past the time you need to go to bed and you're watching TV. I don't have the stats on this, but I think 100 % of human beings in the United States at least have done this at some point where it's like, okay, I know I'm supposed to go to bed. I'm so tired, but I also need me time.

25:53So I'm just going to watch TV. But you've been doing this for the past few nights, for the past few weeks, which oops, it turned into months. And you're like stuck in a cycle. Because you keep doing it, you keep feeling worse about doing it, and you keep feeling stuck. And the way to tell the difference between whether you're punishing yourself and whether you just need a moment of restoration to watch TV past your bedtime is that restoration feels good and punishment feels bad. So if you were to need to decompress as we all do and kind of blank out and brain flush and watch TV for hours, just mindlessly, after you did that, if it were true restoration, you would feel restored, you would feel good.

26:48If you're doing a behavior and you don't feel restored and you don't feel good, you might want to examine whether you're actually in a cycle of punishment. Punishment also looks like not setting boundaries with people who don't treat you well. Punishment also looks like not allowing yourself to ask for help or take a trip because you feel like, well, I'm not going to take the trip until I lose the weight. That's a punishment. You're making access to goodness, fun, adventure, whatever it is, contingent upon your performance. And you're saying you are not entitled to this good thing until you perform better or are a different person in some way.

27:39How is that distinct from tying a particular reward to a particular outcome? Punishment is reactive. And when you're thinking about something like discipline, which is like, after I do X, Y, and Z, I am going to reward myself. That's proactive. And discipline seeks to create structure, whereas punishment seeks to create pain. And so when you're lacerating yourself in the punitive place of, let's just go back to the 10 pounds, then you'll go on the trip. It's more of when you get it together and stop doing this, then you'll be able to. Whereas when you're disciplined and engaged in your discipline, again, that feels good.

28:28Punishment feels bad. Some of the other examples of punishment that you mentioned, rumination, dissociation, interpersonal turmoil, endless people pleasing, negative self-talk, and self-sabotaging opportunities that come up. Why in particular, what is the psychology behind that last one, the self-sabotage? Once you work so hard to achieve X, why then sabotage that thing that you spent potentially years trying to achieve and finally have? The answer is simple. It is that you don't believe you deserve it. If we go back to the top of the conversation of how to tell if your perfectionism is healthy or not, there are two guiding questions.

29:14How are you striving and why are you striving? And if the how is you're striving in a way that hurts you or others around you, that's maladaptive perfectionism. And if the why is you're striving because you think achieving your goal is going to certify your belonging into some group or make you finally lovable or make you worthy of the kind of person who gets to go abroad or whatever it is that you're attaching to your performance, that's maladaptive perfectionism. I call this phenomenon a thousand daggers. This is backed in the research and perfectionists who are in a maladaptive space get what they want when they achieve their goals.

29:52Even when they surpass their goals, this wild thing happens, which is that they are not only not pleased, they are less happy and more displeased because there is no substitute for self-worth. And the process of winning forces you to realize that when you win and you still don't feel like you deserve to feel good, be around good people, enjoy your life, that's a really sobering experience. And it's one that is really common. And I have a lot of empathy for the person who has sacrificed so much and felt like as soon as I'm making six figures, then I can spend more time with my family and do this and do that because I'm going to feel like a real adult or as soon as I'm married I can finally feel safe in my relationship because that's going to make me enjoy like a sense of stability and when you're outsourcing all of that stuff and then you achieve the goals that you think are going to deliver it to you and you keep checking the mail and like there's nothing coming in the mail you're not feeling what you expected to feel it's painful it hurts and what a lot of people do in that moment of pain and opportunity to say oh i was outsourcing something and i need to just focus this more internally is instead of sitting with that pain they say well i guess it's not the best-selling book, I guess I need to level up.