Katherine Morgan Schafler, THE PERFECTIONIST'S GUIDE TO LOSING CONTROL: A Path to Peace and Power

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[0:58]Catherine Morgan Schaffler is the author of the perfectionists' guide to losing control, a path to peace and power.

[1:04]She is a psychotherapist, writer, and speaker, and former on-site therapist at Google.

[1:09]She earned degrees and trained at UC Berkeley and Columbia University with post-graduation certification from the association for spirituality and psychotherapy in New York City.

[1:18]As you'll hear in our episode, I basically tried to get her to be a therapist for me, but she is not accepting new patients, so we'll have to be friends.

[1:25]Enjoy.

[1:26]Welcome, Catherine. Thank you so much for coming on moms. Don't have time to read books.

[1:30]To discuss the perfectionists' guide to losing control, a path to peace and power.

[1:35]Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you.

[1:38]Catherine, I have to tell you, I was like almost in tears reading the introduction to this book.

[1:45]I might cry now. I just feel like you have confirmed pieces of myself that I hadn't been able to articulate this well, and I've always jokingly referred to myself.

[1:57]I mean, I don't even joke about it. I mean, I am a perfectionist, but like you point out in the book, I've had some sort of shame around that.

[2:05]Oh, I'm sorry, I'm a perfectionist forever, but like to see it all spelled out and to like not only have it sort of condoned, but celebrated and to have a whole roadmap to like dealing with this one piece of my complicated personality.

[2:19]So well.

[2:20]Oh my gosh. Anyway, thank you.

[2:22]It's just all about so generous of you to say so.

[2:25]Yeah, I think I think of perfectionism as a power.

[2:29]And power, any power has a dichotomous aspect to it, so it can be constructive or destructive.

[2:36]And we're so over indexed on the destructive part of perfectionism.

[2:41]And we talk about it in our culture in such a bizarre way from my perspective.

[2:45]Like it's this evil force that we need to eradicate from ourselves and particularly women are given this message.

[2:52]And they're, you know, I appreciate using the word shame because there is a lot of shame, especially for ambitious women, which you might know something about.

[3:04]I've been seeing you everywhere lately, by the way, the bookstore. I'm reading my, what if you're with my mom.

[3:12]Yeah, so I'm excited. We've never actually read a book together, but I'm starting to get like immersed in in the publishing world so much with my book coming out. And so I think that would be really fun.

[3:23]But anyway, I digress.

[3:25]So yeah, I think ambitious women feel this sense of their, of a need to hide or at least make palatable in some way.

[3:34]to drive they have how much they want being, you know, saying I want something where I want more as a woman.

[3:43]I think immediately feels like there's a subtext of a lack of gratitude or appreciation or even possibly presence.

[3:51]There's so much to the construct of perfectionist perfectionism that we just get totally wrong, totally wrong.

[3:59]In the book, you give a little quiz, right, a front of like which type of perfectionist you are. I was a classic, but I feel like it was only by one.

[4:09]I was like very, pretty evenly spread out among everything. Tell me about your study of perfectionism.

[4:15]All about these different types. What we should like take away from like what do perfectionists.

[4:23]There are all these ways you try to change the thinking, right, which I love. Like don't think about it like this way, think about it this way, you know, there's like cognitive behavioral type changes, but I don't know tell me more now.

[4:34]Well, I'm a perfectionist myself to which shocked me to discover and I've always been drawn to the energy of the perfectionist and I.

[4:44]looked into this whole topic because I talk about it a little bit in the book. Like just when my life was all coming together and it's like perfectly constructed way and my professional life was skyrocketing and I just been married one year.

[5:03]All this stuff happened that just made me lose control of my life. I got really sick. I lost a pregnancy. I had to go into chemotherapy without being able to freeze my eggs and I just felt like everything got taken away and I never realized how much I tried to control everything until I had that experience and it was so surprising to me.

[5:27]I was like, wait a minute. And so I tried to my best to get an aerial perspective of like what is perfectionism. How can I be a perfectionist if I never know where my phone is.

[5:39]What's going on. And then I realized and noticed all these patterns in my work and.

[5:45]Five personality patterns emerged and I want to just lay the groundwork for the definition of perfectionism that I'm using because there is no clinical definition of perfectionist.

[5:58]And so I was so frustrated because I didn't have the language to anchor what I was seeing and noticing in myself and the people I worked with.

[6:17]And so what I did with this book is I tried to offer some language to begin to anchor some of what I'm seeing. So the five types are the classic right which this type of perfectionist each has their pros and cons highly reliable add structure to any situation can sort of always figure it out.

[6:37]They say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it in the way they said they would do it. But on the conside sometimes they can be so immersed in the sort of busyness of their structure and plan that they can lose sight of why they're doing the things that they're doing.

[6:54]They can be taken for granted because people just expect them to always do it. Whatever that is. And so they don't necessarily their their style of working or connecting may not necessarily engender a sense of collaboration or things that create connection right.

[7:18]And this is somebody who's like you want something done give it to an intense perfectionist there's there's razor sharp focus on achieving the outcome.

[7:28]It's great at the same time sometimes that focus on the outcome can be so my topic that you get to the outcome in this really destructive way and you hurt yourself and people around you to achieve what you're trying to achieve.

[7:44]And at the end it's kind of like sure you got what you wanted but nobody's happy everybody's miserable you know that kind of thing.

[7:52]Then there's the procrastinator perfectionist and this perfectionist wants the conditions to be perfect before they start these people are so good at preparing there's so good at understanding you know a 360 angle on everything and they're not impulsive right so these are sort of.

[8:08]Steady thinkers yet they have so much anxiety around the beginning of something and they just can't.

[8:16]Execute when their perfectionism isn't being managed and on the filter part to that there's the messy perfectionists and these perfectionists are like start happy they love starting a million things.

[8:29]That's a hugely wide net or superstar idea generators.

[8:34]But when they meet the tedium of the middle of the process like they're like oh I'm just start a business about this and it's going to be named that and this is this is what how my color palette on the Instagram page is going to be and then it's like what do you mean I have to file a PLC like I don't want to do that.

[8:52]I encounter the not perfect not romanticized parts of a process.

[8:57]They just kind of like back away so so if you're not managing that type of perfectionism you're saying yes to everything and committing to nothing.

[9:06]And it all it's like playing jenga like it's built the fall and it's really disheartening when it falls because you because I think you can internalize those messages like nobody takes me seriously and I just can't get my stuff together.

[9:22]And none of that is true it's just that you need boundaries around your perfectionism.

[9:27]And then the last one is Parisian perfectionists and this kind of perfectionism is really interesting because it plays out into personally.

[9:36]So this is when you want to be perfectly liked and you also want to perfectly like other people right so you want an ideal connection.

[9:46]And you want that connection maybe at work or with your kids you want to be the perfect mom whatever perfect means to you.

[9:55]So that's what's really interesting about perfectionism is it's highly interesting.

[10:00]individualized. When I say perfect, I don't mean sort of the culturally sanctioned idea

[10:06]of perfect. It's really nuanced and that's where it can get tricky. It means like, well,

[10:11]it's of course it's okay to get frustrated if you're a mom, but the time you get frustrated

[10:16]and the reason you get frustrated and how long you get frustrated and the intensity of your

[10:20]frustration, if there's all a map for that in your head, like you can't be disproportionately

[10:26]frustrated for some little thing that your kid did, for example, and that's when we get into

[10:35]the trickiness of really being able to identify what's happening, which is that you have a perfect

[10:41]image of what being a mom is and it's not someone who never gets mad, but it's really specific

[10:49]and you may or may not be aware of that. And when you deviate from that, same with employees,

[10:55]same with partnerships, same with all those things, whenever you deviate from this image that you have,

[11:01]if you're not managing your perfectionism, you respond to that deviation with punishment.

[11:06]And if people don't get anything else from this book, I want them to hear that punishment

[11:12]is dumb, it's not a strategy, it doesn't work and not only doesn't work, it makes everything worse.

[11:20]Thank you. Like, we punish ourselves so much and what punishment is very different than

[11:30]discipline. And punishment is different and I spell this out in the perfectionist guide to

[11:35]losing control. Punishment is different than taking personal accountability or rehabilitation or

[11:40]allowing natural consequences to unfold. All punishment is, is laying pain on top of whatever's there.

[11:46]It's a lazy thing to do. It's what most people do when they don't know what else to do because

[11:53]they want to feel responsible or be accountable. And so you're kind of, the grand plan is to be

[11:58]really hard on yourself in order to like whip yourself into shape. And you actually just lodge

[12:08]yourself in shame and stuckness when you do that. Very interesting. So let's say someone's listening

[12:15]and all of a sudden they're like, this is me. Although I have to say, after you ran through

[12:20]the types, I'm not even sure which one I am because there are bits and pieces of me and every single

[12:24]category. But anyway, what do we do with this? And I know you outlined a lot of this in the book

[12:29]and ways to sort of live with this better and use it to our advantage and all of that. But like,

[12:34]yeah, okay, I'm a listener and I'm a perfectionist all of a sudden, obviously I'm running out

[12:39]and buying your book, the perfectionist guide to losing control. But then what?

[12:42]Right. Well, I think you're hearing a little bit of you sprinkled in all these

[12:47]personality profiles because perfectionism is really context dependent and fluid. So like,

[12:53]I think we all had this experience when we just went home for the holidays,

[12:57]you're a different person. If you go home to your family, I don't know about anyone else,

[13:02]but I tend to regress into like my 14 year old self. And I get into really like classic perfectionist

[13:11]kind of ways because there's something soothing about that to me. And some people can be

[13:17]a messy perfectionist at dating. Like, they love going on the first, second, third date.

[13:23]Oh my gosh, it's so great. And then you're on the fourth date and, you know, the person says something

[13:29]or does something that really puts you off and you feel like, oh, the whole thing is off,

[13:35]you know, you call it all off. And so this shows up in a lot of different contexts.

[13:41]And I would say the number one thing that you can use as a tool to kind of help you

[13:49]cultivate the power of your perfectionism is self compassion. And I dedicated a whole chapter to

[13:56]self compassion because it's one of those words that we just kind of toss around and nobody

[14:00]really knows what it means. And or what it looks like. And we think of it in this reductive way,

[14:08]like self compassion being super nice to yourself, like really, really sweet. And that's not

[14:13]self compassion is self compassion is a three step resiliency building skill. And it's a skill that

[14:21]you need if you want to progress and grow. Like, you can't really move if you don't engage in

[14:27]self compassion the best you can hope for a stagnation. So maybe I could just go through those three

[14:32]steps to kind of spell those out. This is from Dr. Kristin Neff's framework of self compassion

[14:39]and the first step is mindfulness. So again, another word like, what does that even mean?

[14:44]But she extracts her definition of mindfulness from Buddhist thinking and she means,

[14:51]let's say you experience disappointment. The goal is not to say like, how can I not feel disappointed

[14:58]a better question is what else do I also feel? So if you learn to turn your head just one degree

[15:05]to the right and see that you might also feel relieved that at least now you know whatever it is

[15:11]that you just found out that made you feel disappointed or maybe you're curious about this other

[15:16]thing that you forgot about because you've been so immersed in, you know, whatever it is that's

[15:20]making you felt disappointed or maybe you feel sensual or excited or playful or tired or whatever

[15:27]and just beginning to like see that there are lots of colors in your emotional landscape and

[15:33]disappointments not the only thing you're experiencing. I think that's why people feel so stuck

[15:38]in those moments is because we let one emotion just eclipse us like a tidal wave. So mindfulness is

[15:45]one, common humanity is another and that's just you know there's millions of billions of people

[15:51]who have had your exact problem and it doesn't feel that way when we are having the problem

[15:58]particularly around problems that are taboo for our culture like sexual abuse for example

[16:04]it feels like this is such an uncommon thing no one can ever relate to me nobody could understand this

[16:10]and I described common humanity as like imagine someone picked you up like one of those

[16:16]claw grab and machines at an arcade and plunked you down in a room full of 50 people who are telling

[16:24]their story of having the exact same problem that you have and you don't have to talk you don't

[16:29]have to do anything you should have to sit there and listen and immediately that's curative

[16:34]and nothing's even happening except that you're realizing like oh I'm not alone no we

[16:40]we tell people you're not alone all the time and people tell us and I think we all register that

[16:47]intellectually but I don't know for me when I'm in those moments unless I'm hearing someone's story

[16:53]which is I think why storytelling and books are so powerful you just don't emotionally register it

[17:00]you know and so that's common humanity and then the third component of self-compassion is kindness

[17:07]and kindness looks like recognizing that you're in pain and that's hard and so sometimes we

[17:15]we kind of dance around like oh I feel disappointed or this sucks or having a really hard morning

[17:22]and we we're using all these euphemisms in some ways to detract from acknowledging like I am

[17:29]hurting this is painful this person friendship relationship like really hurt me and if you can

[17:38]acknowledge that you're in pain and then just do one kind thing for yourself like

[17:44]not problem solving you're not trying to fix anything you're just saying like oh are you cold

[17:50]can I get you sweater do you need some tea you want to sit down you want to just like watch a show

[17:57]and relax for a minute because this is a lot you know so that's one tool that I present in the

[18:04]book of like the tool of self-compassion it's much more sophisticated than I think it's advertised

[18:11]in our culture and I'm really excited about people beginning to understand what that means

[18:17]and what it looks like because you can access it at any time and even if you just do one of those

[18:23]things like that's good I mean so self-compassion is kind of the self to punishment it's like

[18:33]the opposite of punishment the self-compassion okay well good amazing resources when you talked

[18:41]about the hard time in your life can you tell us a little bit more about that and how it affected

[18:46]your need for control or just how you got through it emotionally yeah well you know one thing

[18:55]that's really oddly sad about that time is that and this is what made me realize like wow I'm

[19:04]really operating from a mindset of control instead of a mindset of power is that I was really

[19:11]calm during that time and like it was peaceful to me because I was like oh the bad thing that I was

[19:18]always sure was gonna happen is happening now the shoe has dropped and now nothing else bad can happen

[19:24]which doesn't logically make any sense but it made me realize how much I was moving through my daily

[19:31]life just kind of trying to stave off some like impending disaster and just trying to control

[19:39]all the stuff that I had so that I wouldn't ever lose it and or on the converse trying to control

[19:45]all the stuff that I felt close to getting so that I could finally have it and I was just sort of

[19:52]operating for the outcome instead of living in my daily life and when I got sick

[20:00]because I had this false emotionally charged logic of like,

[20:03]well, this is the bad thing.

[20:04]Nothing else bad could happen,

[20:05]which thankfully it didn't, but it could have.

[20:07]I was just in such a place of peace and power,

[20:11]which is like the subtitle of the book,

[20:12]finding peace and power,

[20:14]because I think when you let go of trying to control,

[20:17]because I had no control.

[20:19]I couldn't do anything about losing my pregnancy.

[20:21]I couldn't do anything about, you know,

[20:24]being one year into my marriage

[20:25]and feeling like, oh God, I don't know if we can have kids now.

[20:28]I don't know if my partner's wants to be married to me.

[20:31]I don't know if I'm worthy of being his partner now,

[20:36]because this isn't what he signed up for.

[20:38]And just all the themes that I delve into in the book,

[20:42]it was like a crash course in all of that.

[20:45]In addition to like the thousands and thousands of hours

[20:48]of clock to psychotherapist,

[20:51]listening to people,

[20:52]be really honest about their lives.

[20:54]And I'm always like, why isn't everyone

[20:57]is like a therapist because when you hear people all day long,

[21:02]being really honest about what's going on

[21:04]and how they feel about it,

[21:06]it can't, you can't not be changed by that, you know?

[21:11]And so being a therapist is also this like mini crash course

[21:14]in growth because that's what it means to really listen.

[21:19]It's like listening is not taking in information

[21:21]and being able to dictate it back.

[21:24]Listening is being able to be changed

[21:26]by what the other person is saying.

[21:29]And my clients have changed me in the most indelible,

[21:33]beautiful ways and the curriculum of my life has also helped

[21:38]with that as it has with everybody.

[21:41]We all, nothing's unique about my story,

[21:43]really we all go through things,

[21:47]go through periods where we just like free fall,

[21:51]which is lose control and the things that we thought

[21:54]we were so sure about are like gone

[21:58]or they're glitching or something weird is happening.

[22:01]And that's not gonna be the last time that happens in my life.

[22:04]You know, that's the nature of life.

[22:06]I don't need it to be the last time that that happens, you know?

[22:10]So I really always thought I knew how to anchor myself in power

[22:16]but I had, that was the moment I had to prove it to myself.

[22:20]And after that moment I was like,

[22:22]great, now I have to write a book.

[22:24]It was obviously writing this book

[22:28]is like the best thing I've ever done,

[22:30]hardest thing I've ever done.

[22:32]But I wasn't expecting to,

[22:34]but it was like I had to

[22:37]entertain all this, all that stuff that just came together.

[22:42]You know, I hate to say like it was such a gift

[22:45]because I don't wanna wrap a bow on it.

[22:47]And I don't want other people to hear me

[22:49]and feel the expectation of wrap a bow

[22:51]on whatever hard thing they're going through.

[22:54]But that's the seed of the book.

[22:57]Is that that moment in time for me?

[23:01]And what ended up happening with your husband?

[23:04]Well, we're still together.

[23:06]I actually, like one night I said to myself,

[23:10]like I'm just gonna give him an out to this marriage.

[23:15]I was like, I'm not gonna do it when I'm sad.

[23:17]I'm gonna do it when we're both in a good place

[23:21]and we're happy and connected.

[23:22]And I'm just gonna tell him something to the extent of like,

[23:26]I love you.

[23:28]I want you to be happy.

[23:29]I know you want kids.

[23:30]I don't know what's gonna happen.

[23:32]I know you didn't sign up for this.

[23:34]We're one year in like, it's okay, you know.

[23:37]And I did do that.

[23:39]And he just laughed at me in the most wonderful way.

[23:45]And he was like, I didn't marry you

[23:48]so that we could have kids.

[23:49]I married you so that we could be together.

[23:52]There are lots of ways to bring kids into our lives.

[23:55]And if we can't figure out any of them,

[23:58]you know what he told me?

[23:58]I don't know if he's gonna be mad at me

[24:00]for saying this or not.

[24:01]But he was like, then we could just blow all our money

[24:04]on dumb shit and nobody can be mad at us.

[24:08]Nobody can be mad at us because we'll be so sad.

[24:11]So I was like, okay, that sounds good to me.

[24:16]Oh my God, I love it.

[24:17]Well, that's good.

[24:18]I'm glad he had such a humor.

[24:20]And that's awesome.

[24:23]Oh my God.

[24:24]Yeah, I needed some comic relief in that moment for sure.

[24:27]Oh my gosh.

[24:28]So great.

[24:30]So are you still seeing,

[24:31]and you're still seeing private clients

[24:34]and you're open people?

[24:35]I'm not at the moment.

[24:36]I do not.

[24:37]I'm out of my practice to write this book.

[24:39]And, you know, now that I know how to write a book,

[24:42]I have another one that I wanna write, of course.

[24:45]A perfectionist work is never done.

[24:48]Oh, I love it.

[24:48]I'm excited for that.

[24:50]And, you know, I'm just letting this whole process take me

[24:58]to wherever it's gonna take me.

[25:00]I love that.

[25:01]Well, that's like an anti-perfectionist thing, isn't it?

[25:03]Just like letting things go?

[25:05]I feel like that's been, or not.

[25:07]Well, I mean, I think it's the adaptive perfectionist.

[25:11]Adaptive.

[25:11]Yeah.

[25:12]Mm-hmm.

[25:13]All right.

[25:14]Yeah, okay.

[25:15]Catherine, again, this book,

[25:18]I'm gonna just, like, spend a lot more time with this book.

[25:20]I think I'm gonna, like, even next to my bed.

[25:22]I'm gonna give a copy to my husband.

[25:23]I'm just gonna be like, okay, understand me a little bit better.

[25:27]Now, if you will.

[25:28]So anyway, thank you.

[25:29]It was really great.

[25:30]And you're a great writer and I'm excited for the next one.

[25:33]Thank you so much.

[25:34]Congratulations on everything that you are doing.

[25:38]I can't wait to just see everything on hold.

[25:43]I mean, we're like, in the next month,

[25:46]there's, yeah, to secure first book on your imprints coming out, right?

[25:50]Yeah.

[25:51]The store's opening.

[25:53]Yeah.

[25:53]You're everywhere.

[25:54]You're everywhere.

[25:55]I'm sorry, I must be annoying.

[25:57]No, I love it.

[25:58]I love it.

[25:59]That's what I, they are exactly the kind of person I talk about in the book,

[26:03]the person who's not afraid to be out there and be doing what they want to do

[26:08]and taking real pleasure in their lives.

[26:11]I love seeing people out in the world living in that way.

[26:15]And, you know, it's a great example in model.

[26:19]Glad I can be of use.

[26:23]All right.

[26:23]Well, thank you so much.

[26:24]And now that I know that we're so close, we'll have to get together all next event.

[26:29]I have her.

[26:29]I don't know something for sure.

[26:31]Absolutely.

[26:32]Okay.

[26:32]Take care.

[26:33]Thank you.

[26:34]Thanks so much.

[26:34]Bye bye.

[26:35]Bye bye.

[26:37]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

[26:40]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens

[26:43]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

[26:45]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibi Owens.com

[26:48]and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every

[26:52]other week.

[26:52]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound for the Sound Editing.

[26:56]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro

[27:00]and now trim music.