Katherine Morgan Schafler
Appearances
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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 X, Y, and Z. And that's why 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.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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 proud of myself for being introspective right now?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
Am I also looking forward to Saturday night with 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? And just being able to return to the sense that you're a whole human being and being mindful of the fact that this one experience you're having is not who you are.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
vision because when your body is stressed you're 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.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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... not just bad, it's filled with a lot of other stuff.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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 want it to feel or be who you want it to be, whatever, to certify your belonging to something. And you feel the opposite.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
I mean, I don't even know what that really means when people say, like, just be nice to yourself. It's like, what... give me actionable steps, you know? And I think what we, again, to go back to the emotional illiterate piece is like the self-compassion. And this is what I am so excited to talk about. So I'm so glad you asked me that question.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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. Kristen 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,
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
And she starts kindness in the most interesting way, which is being able to just acknowledge you're 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. You're in pain right now and you need to
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
Let's just say 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 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.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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,
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
And 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 have lived before us.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
So someone who is feeling that is not going to feel a sense of common humanity because it feels so uncommon to them. They're probably thinking nobody in my circle has ever had to experience something like this or if you, you know.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
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 are talking about that experience.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And in doing that, you kind of can abandon yourself sometimes because it's like, that's not your job to attend to the other person's emotional landscape.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And so that's how it intersects with perfectionism because if you want perfect connections with people and you can feel that they're not connected with you or disconnected from themselves or sad or whatever, you can get into these really kind of codependent dynamics where you're trying to do the emotional labor for two people or a system of people like a family or a team at work when that's not your job, nor can you control it, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Perfectionist guide to losing control. not maintaining control.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
I mean, I think there are lots of ways in which perfectionism shows up. And if you want to be understood in the way that you're describing, you might over-index on perfectly articulating what you're trying to say and over-index on the language that you're using at the expense of just allowing your energy and understanding
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
who you are to kind of also come into the room right and the way i describe this in the book is like when we think of moments that are perfect or when we perfectly connect to someone When I listen to people describe those moments, they are not describing flawlessness. They are describing wholeness, right? So a perfect moment is a moment which is already whole.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
If you take perfect back to its Latin root, you get per facere, completely done. So when we describe something as perfect, we're not saying it's flawless. We're saying that's completely whole. I don't need to add anything to that to make it better, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And so one of the discoveries that I've made in my work is that perfectionists aren't actually seeking flawlessness, they're seeking wholeness, that sense that like, this is I wouldn't want to change this thing at all. So if you think of like, when we say someone's a perfect stranger, we're not saying like, oh, she was a flawless stranger. We're saying she's a complete stranger to me.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And when you think of someone's laugh that you love, you know, that laugh is perfect. Nobody in the history of earth is like, oh, if they just rolled their giggle a little more at the end, that laugh would be perfect. right? You're like, that's perfect.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And so understanding that when you're communicating with someone and in a conversation with someone, flawlessness has nothing to do with it and is often actually a block to connection. What the other person is looking for is intimacy. And the easiest definition I've ever heard of intimacy is like into me see. Intimacy, from my view, is just when someone sees something real about you,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
and or you see something real about them. So if I were to somehow like lift up my computer and show you my bedside table right now, that would be a very intimate gesture because the things that I have on my bedside table are real, right? It's not staged. It's intimate.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And I think when thinking about conversations and connection, allowing there to be a little bit of intimacy as you feel comfortable, if the person is safe and, you know, all of that, all of that other stuff is in place is a better way to think about how to have a successful quote unquote conversation than like, how do I articulate myself perfectly? You know?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
I love that. Yeah, exactly. Well said.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Perfectly fine.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Such a good question. And I bring up the different perfectionist profiles to help people understand what they're naturally good at and where they can easily offer other people help and where they naturally struggle and where they would do well to ask for help.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
So the way a classic perfectionist can enjoy their perfectionism without isolating themselves in a pocket of like, if you want something, well, do you got to do it yourself is to understand that the strengths of that profile of the classic perfectionist, you know, they do what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it in the way that they said that they would do it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
They're so reliable, so dependable, you know, As you brought up, just naturally infuse structure into any situation that they're in. And the cons are that sometimes that can create a transactional feel from the people around you where they feel like they know a lot of facts about you, but they don't really know who you are.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And the classic perfectionists themselves can feel kind of taken for granted because it's like, oh, she always plans the vacation or they always do the deck. So let's just let them do it. And it's like, just because you like doing something Doesn't mean it's not work. It doesn't mean you don't want acknowledgement for that work.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
So I think, you know, asking for help in the sense of letting people know you a little more, letting yourself feel more connected, saying that you would like appreciation. is one way to start creating connections. All of these profiles are complementary.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
So like a classic perfectionist and a Parisian perfectionist would do very well to link up because Parisian perfectionists are so indexed on relationships and connection that they're not necessarily the most structured professionals. people and classic perfectionists are. And like when you're in connection with somebody, there's naturally a little osmosis and diffusion happening.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
So this is an important point that I really want to say, you know, you don't heal by learning how to edit yourself. You heal by learning how to be who you are in the world. And I didn't write this book so that people can identify their weaknesses and then try to churn those weaknesses into strengths and be good at all things at all times for all people.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
I wrote the book so that people could understand their blind spots and understand, oh, I need help with this. And I'm not going to try to make this a strength because doing that comes at the opportunity cost of like not enjoying my strengths, which are so easy for me. So let me just ask for help on this.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And, and also like as a classic perfectionist, you can give help really easily and that helps people feel connected to you. And it's not a heavy lift for you because you do it so well and easily. So there's a complimentary system happening here.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
So they're like professional perfectionists can be professional procrastinators because like, you know, this type wants the thing to be perfect, the conditions to be perfect before they start. And the strengths of procrastinator perfectionists are they're such thoughtful people. They're so well-prepared. They can see a situation from a 360 degree angle.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And the cons, as you're saying, are like they can spill past the point of diminishing returns on their preparative measures and they never actually execute on the thing they most want to do. And that's what's such a painful experience to know you want to do something, know you would be good at it, Know you're ready and just feel stuck, you know?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Right. Well, the same way everyone else can, which is understand where you need help and get it right. So messy perfectionists are in love with the beginning of anything, right? Perfectionism doesn't just happen at work or in a traditional achievement context, like grades. It can happen in any context. It's a very fluid construct.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
So you can be a messy perfectionist, for example, when it comes to dating. Messy perfectionists are what I call start happy. They love starting something new. I would say they push through the anxiety of it, but there is no anxiety of it for them. They're the counterpart to the procrastinator perfectionist, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And so the strengths of that is like messy perfectionists, naturally enthusiastic people, superstar idea generators. Like you want a name for a podcast and messy perfectionists can come up with 50 in like an hour, easily half an hour. And they just have all this momentum and excitement and contagious energy around starting and launching a project and they cast such wide nets.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
But if you're not managing this perfectionism, The negative side is that you say yes to a million things without giving yourself the chance to commit to any of it because you're spreading yourself too thin. And then when you hit the inevitable tedium of a process, if we go back to our dating example, you're on like the fourth date and
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
You're noticing like this person chews quite loudly or something starts irking you like messy perfectionists can bolt. They run or like in a work example, if you're launching a business and then you have to file, you know, a professional license with the state. And you're like, this is boring. I don't want to do this. I don't know how to do this. It's just like your energy deflates upon itself.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And you get this sense if you're not aware of your tendencies to make up a story in your head about why that's happening. And the story is a negative self-narrative. And it goes something like, Well, I must just not care enough. I must not be disciplined enough. Nobody takes me seriously. I must just not be smart enough. I'll never get my stuff together. This isn't going to happen for me.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
I might as well, you know, give up. And it's so difficult to contend with that. Whereas like a messy perfectionist, get the project started, then get a procrastinator perfectionist or one of the other kinds of perfectionists in the mix, someone who's naturally structured and it's going to help you to see the project through.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
I identify, for example, mostly as a messy perfectionist, which is why I have zero interest in self-publishing any of my books, because I need a team of people around me to help bring the project to conclusion and worry about things that are very detail-oriented, like I don't even know the language to use for like binding the book and sending it to this factory or whatever else. Like, no thanks.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
I would like a publisher to do that. I would like my agent to help me, you know, share the idea with other people. Once I generate it and once I write it, like then I just do, I just finished the rest by getting a ton of help constantly, you know?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Yeah. Someone asked me on a panel once, like, so how did you decide to go with the publisher and not self-publish? And I could not stop laughing because I was like, I, just publishers do so much work and agents and there's so much behind the scenes stuff that is so hard and tedious and like doing that in addition to the creative work of putting something out into the world.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
I don't, I can't do that. And I don't want to learn how, because I don't need to, you know, because you can have people who are very good at that and who love doing that and for whom that is a strength and could do that really easily. You can have those people help you to do it and you can help them by saying, here's a great book.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Can you bind it and put a barcode on it and get it into Barnes and Nobles and do all the stuff that I have zero interest in doing?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Repetition is how we learn. And we think repetition, like repeating the same mistake over and over again, we think that that's an emblem of our failure. No, that's an emblem of our growth. Repetition can represent failure, but it can also represent learning. Habits need to be in repetition.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Thinking of ourselves as people who are strong, capable, good, worthy, loving, free, that identity structure needs some repeating. And by some repeating, I mean, maybe it takes you years. That's okay. That's what it takes for everybody.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
So intense perfectionist pros side are exactly that. They don't care so much about being liked by others, which tends to help them professionally and hurt them personally. But when you don't care so much, when you're not fixated on people liking you and winning a popularity contest, it's very easy for you to be direct. Right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Often we get into like a politeness contest with people because we don't want to hurt their feelings or we don't want to be perceived in a certain way. We're focused on impression management. Intense perfectionists have no time for that. And that's really helpful in creating momentum around a project and infusing efficiency.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
into something and you know as you said the con side to this is that they can sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture right so an intense perfectionist might get the goal they will get the goal done but it's like at what cost and sometimes the ends don't justify the means an intense perfectionist not managing their perfectionism can forget that so it's like great you hit
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
all your Q3 goals and next quarter, half your team's gonna quit because they are all so miserable, right? Or great, everyone's at Thanksgiving on time and dressed in the clothes you wanted them to wear and the table looks beautiful and the food tastes delicious, but did you notice nobody's laughing?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Did you notice like you can hear forks scraping on the plates because nobody's feeling any sense of spontaneity or connection or warmth because your goal wasn't those things. Your goal was to, you know, have some kind of like concrete vision of what you think the moment is supposed to be.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And so to answer your question, I mean, I'm going to bore you because it's the same answer as all the other ones, but it's, it's understand where you need help. You need help remembering that relationships matter and successful outcomes that are sustainable are built on sustainable, healthy connections with other people.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Sure, thank you for reading that. So these stories are fictionalized because they're not my stories to tell. I don't talk about my clients' lives in the book, but they are generated from the sort of kernel of truth and dynamic that appears all the time in my work. And so when I worked in a rehab as a group counselor,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
it was not that uncommon for someone to show up to therapy intoxicated or under the influence, especially because a lot of my work was in early recovery. And so Ava is this client who at the end of our group, I typically have people go around in a circle and say something that they heard someone else say that stuck with them.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And Ava, she let go of that and just confessed to the group that she was intoxicated. She was drinking before group and she plans on getting intoxicated more after group. And this is what's called in the therapy world, a last minute bomb. It's when... It's when your client says something very important or otherwise urgent when there is no time for you to discuss this thing.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And it happens all the time. And I see it as a really healthy gesture because it's like, I really want to talk to you about this, but I'm too scared to do anything other than bring it up. And usually it's like the therapist brings it up at the next session and it's productive. In this case, I asked everyone to leave and for Ava to stay and she knows what she needs to do and what she needs to do.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And what all she wants to do is to take a hot bath. She just wants to go home. Her house is a 15 minute walk away from the rehab center. And she just wants to take a hot bath. But she doesn't feel entitled to do that because in her view, she effed everything up.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And so she's going to go out and drink more because she is in this mentality of I already ruined it, you know, so I don't deserve to do the thing that a healthy person would do. And I said, sometimes what I ask people when they make a mistake in recovering and they have a relapse is like, what would you do in this moment if you were five years sober?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
What would a person who's five years sober do with these feelings they're feeling? And the person knows. They're like, and she said, I would just take a bath. I've been cold all day. And so something as simple as taking a bath, Ava is not going to do because taking a bath is for someone who didn't just mess up. Taking a bath is for someone who's smart and healthy, which she has decided she is not.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And so she's in a cycle of punishment. And to me, I define a punishment as doing something you know is going to hurt you or denying yourself something you know is going to help you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And if I could wave a magic wand and get the reader of The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control or the listeners of your podcast to just hear one thing out of all the things I'm yip-yapping about, it is that punishment doesn't work. Personal accountability works, discipline works, rehabilitation works, and natural consequences unfolding work. Those are all very effective strategies for change.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Punishment is not. Punishment not only doesn't work, it makes everything worse. And the whole grand plan there is I'm going to make myself feel so pained about this situation that it's going to motivate me to never be in this situation again. And so you're trying to heal yourself by hurting yourself.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And when you think of the times that you've made the healthiest decisions, the most right decisions, the decisions that you feel are most reflective of who you are, your strongest, best self, you have made those decisions because you are in touch with a sense of strength and goodness inside yourself. There's a part of you that says, I'm a good person and I'm capable of good things.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
and I can do this, and I deserve this. So you make good decisions when you feel good. And when you feel bad, which punishment is what, that's all punishment does. That's how you can tell if you're punishing yourself, because the goal of the punishment is to create pain. And that's how you can tell if you're punishing someone else too.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Like the silent treatment, punishment, your goal is to make someone feel bad. when you feel bad, you make decisions that aren't the best, brightest, boldest decisions. When you feel bad, you make decisions that make you feel, when you feel bad, you are not feeling strong, you're feeling weak, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And so you're like, well, it might as well, or I already ruined it, or you just have this defeatist attitude. And so I explain what happens to Ava in the rest of that chapter. And I think we all have like an Ava inside of us. That's like, I know what the right thing to do is, but I already ruined it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
People do this all the time when, when they're trying to do a goal and they have like those four golden days of January 1st and 2nd and January 3rd and January 4th. And I'm on it. And this year is different. And then January 5th comes and they take a backwards step back. Yeah. And they're like, well, now I'm going to make this a whole narrative about how I'm a failure and I'm not a good person.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Thank you so much. We're all excited about The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control finding its audience really quickly. So that was wonderful.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And I don't deserve to feel good because look, I couldn't even do it for five days. And then you start this punitive self-talk and all this punishment. And then you do the exact thing that you've been trying and working hard to not do. And it's like, look, relapsing, taking step backwards, that's a part of growth. You can't, repetition is how we learn.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And we think repetition, like repeating the same mistake over and over again, we think that that's an emblem of our failure. No, that's an emblem of our growth. Repetition can represent failure, but it can also represent learning. We need repetition to learn. And we hate that about learning. We just want someone to tell us the definition of a word and then forever somehow memorize it and know it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
But that's not how it works. I can't even remember the restaurant I went to last week. It's on the tip of my tongue. I might need to have some repetition of that for a while. Habits need to be in repetition. thinking of ourselves as people who are strong, capable, good, worthy, loving, free, that identity structure needs some repeating. And by some repeating, I mean, maybe it takes you years.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
That's okay. That's what it takes for everybody.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Yes. Well, thank you so much for having me and sharing your hard one platform with me. You're so easy to talk to. I loved this. And I also wish we had another, I'm going to call it three hours.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
I can, you know, I think reading a book by a therapist and going to actual therapy are very different things, but I tried my best to punch like two years of therapy into a book of universal themes that whether you identify as a perfectionist or not, like, they're going to be salient for you in some way. At least they have been for me in my life.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And the whole book is really like a container space for myself. It's like a ringing bell for me to help remember the things that I know. I feel like so much of our personal work, you could tell me if you disagree or not, is like just 90% of the work is just remembering what you know. You know what I mean? But we can fall into these moments of amnesia when it comes to this stuff.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
You can find me at my website, kathrynmorganschaffler.com. I'm also on Instagram at kathrynmorganschaffler. And you can take a quiz, a fun, not empirically validated one minute online personality quiz to find out what your perfectionist profile is at perfectionistguide.com or in any of the other places I just said.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And the book is called The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control, A Path to Peace and Power. And it's available in hardcover, paperback, on Audible, at all the places that you can buy all the books. So thank you so much again for having me. I loved this conversation.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
My pleasure. Thank you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Yeah, well, so I always knew I wanted to be a therapist. It's an interesting job to know you want to be as a little kid, but I've always loved listening. And I've spent my whole life listening. So what you hear when you listen ends up being a lot in a certain way, but really funnels down to these same universal elements in another way. And I've worked in a lot of clinical settings as a therapist.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
I've worked in a rehab. I've worked helping people deal with addictions of all kinds. I worked on site at Google. I had a private practice on Wall Street. I worked in residential treatment with kids who were traumatized and abused and became wards of the state. And in all of these contexts, I saw this universal theme.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
I heard the themes of perfectionism and they weren't always coming from a place that was unhealthy. what I noticed was that perfectionism is a power. And like any power, it has a dichotomous nature, right? So it can be constructive or destructive. And I became really interested in the ways in which it is constructive and why we don't talk about that more.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Because in the research world, we've been talking about that for years. Decades of research has focused on what academics call adaptive perfectionism, when your perfectionism is there to help you and heal you, right? As opposed to maladaptive, which is when the perfectionism we all kind of think about with the kind of perfectionism that... stalls you and hurts you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And so the perfectionist guide to losing control is about how to understand this power that you have as a perfectionist to not waste time and energy trying to not be a perfectionist because that doesn't work and to lean more into adaptive ways of being your whole full self.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
I wouldn't say perfectionism is a woman's attempt. I just think it is a gendered term. So women and men are both impacted negatively by perfectionistic standards, but it unfolds in different ways. And I could write a whole book about perfectionism for men. For example, one of the constructs I talk about in the book is emotional perfectionism.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
We tend to think of perfectionism in this one myopic way of behaviorally manifesting itself of like, I like all the pens in a row. I like all the towels to be straight. And what I noticed in my work is perfectionism is kaleidoscopic. It shows up in a million different ways. And one of them is emotional perfectionism.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And emotional perfectionism is like when you want to feel what you perceive to be the perfect way about something. And that doesn't mean happy all the time. It means that we're all kind of walking around with these pie charts hovering over our minds about how... angry you're supposed to be versus grateful versus solutions oriented versus et cetera.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And one of the things that I think a lot of men feel when it comes to emotional perfectionism is you're not allowed to feel unsure. You're not allowed to cry. You're not allowed to need nurturing, warmth, guidance, attention. Like it's a very rigid expectation culturally that we place upon men and it has really detrimental effects. And so what I say in the book is,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
This affects both men and women, but very differently. And the way it affects women is that women are kind of called perfectionists as a way to regulate their power and authority. Like if a woman is very much like, I don't like it that way, I want it this way.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
At work, she might be called a perfectionist and told to kind of balance out, don't sweat the small stuff, all these little directives that are actually about not taking ownership over an idea or a vision. Whereas a man who... does the same thing might be called a visionary.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
So when you think about male perfectionists, you might think of like a James Cameron or Gordon Ramsey or Steve Jobs, who were just genius visionaries, wanted things in a very particular way, in a very particular style. And when you think about female perfectionists, you might think of like a Martha Stewart or Marie Kondo, like
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
women who are allowed to be public about their perfectionistic standards, but only if it is expressed through archetypal homemaker interests that are not in competition with men. Because if you're not doing that, then otherwise you're sort of like the Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue or Serena Williams. You're a difficult woman or you're
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
you know, just not balanced enough, you're not maternal enough, you're fill in the blank, not enough of something. So that kind of I don't know if that answers your question, but that is what the difference is in the term. I think I don't know if you feel this way, John, but I think language is such an immediate locator for gender performance expectations.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And you can learn a lot about a culture by the language that we use, like words that we have for things, but you can learn a lot more by the absence of words, right? So there's a lot of language around being called like recovering perfectionist. I'm a recovering perfectionist. It's not something that I often hear men say, if at all, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
When you use the term strong-minded, that's really a descriptor for... femininity. You don't say watch out for him. He's a strong minded man, because that descriptor gains a superfluous quality when you're talking about men. And the idea there is like, well, men are supposed to be strong minded. You know, men are supposed to know what they want.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And the subtext of that subtext is like women aren't, you know, and so it's like, even like, do you know the phrase resting? Bitch face?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
Well, there's no resting jerk face, right? For a reason, because women are expected to be palatable and pleasing all the time. And when they display a neutral facial expression, there's a punishment for that. And it's kind of jokey jokey. You know, no one's really being punished, but it's not really jokey jokey.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
You know, like, there's no name for that for men because the message is like, you're not supposed to, you don't need to be that all the time. And so perfectionist is like, let me, let me like blow the whistle on this term. If you're an ambitious woman seeking power. Don't allow yourself to be called a perfectionist in a kind of derogatory way. And don't do that to yourself either.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
You have a vision. It's important to you. You want it executed in a certain way. That's okay.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
I describe five types of perfectionists in the Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control. And one of them is the Parisian perfectionist. And that's someone, all perfectionists are seeking an ideal. And the Parisian perfectionist is seeking ideal connections with other people.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And there are pros and cons to each type of perfectionist, just like there's pros and cons to the perfectionism, perfectionist construct in general. And I think if you're someone who really
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
The pros of being a Parisian perfectionist are like you're naturally warm person, you have empathy pretty easily you can put yourself in someone else's shoes and get a good sense of what they might be feeling you go out of your way to help people feel included right you're naturally inclusive.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
And the cons of that particular perfectionist profile are like, sometimes you want connection so badly that you try to take shortcuts to it and you people please instead of engaging in authentic connection. And so if you're really good at empathic accuracy, which is you can accurately read the room, right? Whether it's a group of people,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
or one person, you can pretty accurately understand what someone is feeling because you can feel it too. And the colloquial ways we describe empathic accuracy are like feeling someone's eyes on you from across the room, or like you walk into a room, I don't know if this has ever happened to you, and you could just like feel the tension in the room.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572
You know the couple or something tense just happened. And so I studied that Because I think it's so interesting how people vary in their ability to feel what other people are feeling. And can we get better at doing that? And the people who are naturally good at it. and don't know it, like how much do they understand, oh, this person is upset, so let me work very hard to help them feel better.