Confidence Classic: The Strengths of Perfectionism with Katherine Morgan Schafler

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0:32Don't wait for a problem to remind you you're uncovered. Policies start as low as$29 a month. Get protected in minutes at nextinsurance.com. That's N-E-X-T insurance.com. 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. I'm on this journey with me each week. When you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my closeup.

1:17Tell me, have you been enjoying these new bonus confidence classics episodes? We've been dropping on you every week. We've literally hundreds of episodes for you to listen to. So these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones you may have already missed. I hope you love this one as much as I do. 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. 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.

1:56Catherine, 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 gonna 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.

2:54And 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.

3:38And so that's where the five types of perfectionists came into play, because I really pretty quickly understood like, oh, we don't we don't know anything about perfectionism. We don't get it. This it's so much bigger than 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.

4:17Someone who is very, very fake, who pretends all the time as though, you know, I woke up like this, although they have their hair and makeup done and they have a stylist that'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 crept. 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 gonna tell me I'm one and I don't think I am, but have eating disorders.

4:51Like I see a lot with like super, don't wanna eat food, never eating. And I've known a few in my career that like we'd all roll our eyes like, oh, here we go again, here comes the perfectionist. But that's been my experience. 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.

5:34I'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 bossy 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?

7:06When 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. 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?

7:59You 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 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.

8:49And 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.

9:33She'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 I know 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 twenties, 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'd been in very high powered positions. And of course, when I was younger, people would fight back at it because I was younger.

10:09And 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 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. I had 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.

10:43And 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.

11:17Is 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 also the ideals we imagine and being able to drive towards that. And any power exists within it.

11:58There'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-love and self-care.

12:46And 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 Lose and 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?

13:38Is it because 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 gonna 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.

14:22As 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.

14:55And it's like, that to me is like trying to teach someone to manage their anger by telling them to calm down. Like, it 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.

15:35This 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 little 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.

16:25Whereas without boundaries, you can get into like toxic, abusive, shitty, terrible relationships and 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. Meet a different guest each week.

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20:16Don't wait. Go to quince.com slash confidence for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash confidence to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince dot com slash confidence. I ask 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, Catherine, 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.

20:57Right. I'm like, oh, that's like, oh, you're my kind of people. You go right to the discomfort. I'm like, I get it like our number one hobby. What's uncomfortable? Let me just go sit in the center of that. Well, that's what was 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.

21:28And 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 our identity, right? And so the five offerings are not about saying 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.

22:20And 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 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.

23:13So 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 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.

23:59And 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.

24:45So 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.

25:31And then it's like, ah, you're chewing kind of loudly. I'm out, you know, like, oh, this isn't perfect 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're 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 it's a book, or whether it's like, okay, I'm really ready to start dating.

26:28And 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 path. 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?

27:11Are 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 thing because I think one of the worst aspects of unhealthy perfectionism is when you get what you want.

27:59And 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 or 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.

28:43How 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, here's 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 me actionable steps, you know, and I think what we again, to go back to the emotional, illiterate piece is like, self compassion.