Your perfectionism isn't a problem — if you know how to use it

Are you a 'Parisian perfectionist'? How about a 'messy perfectionist'? Psychotherapist Katherine Morgan Schafler believes there are 5 kinds of perfectionists in the world. Find out which one you are with our quiz https://www.npr.org/2023/01/25/1151414475/the-five-kinds-of-perfectionists. This episode originally published January 30, 2023. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit https://www.instagram.com/nprlifekit/?hl=en Sign up for our newsletter here. https://www.npr.org/newsletter/life-kit Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening and convenient playlists of popular help topics like personal finance, getting healthy, and more. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:24Marielle Segarra?

  Would you call yourself a perfectionist?

• 0:26Speaker 02

  Ah, it depends what we're talking about, you know? It takes me 1,000 years to write things, and I don't ever want to show you my car. My car is a hazard.

• 0:35Marielle Segarra?

  Oh, that's funny. So like, opposite extremes?

• 0:38Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah. It depends. It depends, is the answer.

• 0:40Marielle Segarra?

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  What about you?

• 0:41Marielle Segarra?

  No, I definitely feel like I am one, have always been one. And I'm trying to get better at that, which is kind of funny, right? Because I'm even a perfectionist about being a perfectionist.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  You're trying to get better at it?

• 0:56Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, like it's, like, there's something wrong with it. People talk about perfectionism like it's a character flaw or something you need to be cured of. And I guess I've, I've taken that on myself. I've, I've absorbed that idea.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  You feel like it's a bad thing?

• 1:09Marielle Segarra?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Hmm. I think when you hear the word perfectionist, there's like this one image that pops into your head, right? Like, maybe someone who likes to get things done in a certain way or like, needs everything to be just so. But what I learned reporting this episode is that perfectionism doesn't have to be a negative trait, and it's something that you can harness.

• 1:32Marielle Segarra?

  See, I like that. That makes me feel better about myself.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  It makes me feel better, too.

• 1:37Marielle Segarra?

  You're listening to Life Kit. I'm Marielle Segarra, and I'm talking with Life Kit reporter Andy Tagle, who interviewed psychotherapist and author Katherine Morgan Schafler in 2023. She wrote a book called The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  So she wrote this book after spending years in private practice on Wall Street, which is a location that attracts a lot of high-powered, high-achieving women with careers in things like big law and finance. So many of those clients, perhaps unsurprisingly, are perfectionists.

• 2:09Marielle Segarra?

  Right.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. And what she found through that work is that there are actually five different types of perfectionists.

• 2:16Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, when I hear that, I immediately want to take a quiz and know which, which type I am. I'm like, which Spice Girl are you? You know?

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Which Spice Girl are you?

• 2:23Marielle Segarra?

  I think that I always wanted to be Jerry, but I was actually baby. And now, as a younger last, and now I'm sporty.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Okay, you were a baby sun and a Jerry moon.

• 2:41Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, sporty, rising.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Sporty rising.

• 2:43Marielle Segarra?

  I guess.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. We can, we can move on, but I want to, I want to unpack that someday.

• 2:47Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, we need to. We need to.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  So perfectionists can be type A, right? Like, intense and rigid and meticulous. But they can also be messy, or forgetful, or loss a fair. They can procrastinate or up and quit whole projects entirely. But what all these different kinds of personalities have in common is potential.

• 3:09Marielle Segarra?

  Hmm.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  So perfectionists see how the world around them can be better, and that's why perfectionism, when used in a healthy way, can be a really powerful force for change.

• 3:19Marielle Segarra?

  A sort of superpower.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 3:22Marielle Segarra?

  Well, on this episode of Life Kit, Andy is going to talk to Catherine about all the different ways perfectionism can show up and how we can harness it.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Catherine, in the book, you say a lot of messaging around perfectionism is gendered. Let's start there.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  Yes. Well, you know, I think language really helps control the way that we think about whether something is good or bad, and in turn, whether we are good or bad. And it kind of has this regulatory function where it teaches us, like, how to be more of what we're quote-unquote supposed to be, in the same way that the word bossy, for example, regulates authoritative qualities in girls and women, and why there's no, you know, there's no male version for the word bossy. That's kind of what perfectionism is turning into. And so I wanted to write this book to nip that in the bud.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  And just to say, before this becomes, you know, something that floats around for the next five or 10 years without us realizing what we're doing, which is quelling the ambition and expressions of power in women by pathologizing perfectionism ad nauseam, and then telling women to find balance, which is a directive that is given to women so much, all over the place, in advertising, in food, in podcasts, and in mommy blogs, just everywhere.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Catherine, what's, what's wrong with the messaging about, about just finding balance?

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Well, balance in its original definition of energetic equilibrium is healthy. But balance as it has come to mean now is just being good at being busy.

• 5:10Marielle Segarra?

  Hmm.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  To say that a woman is balanced is not to say that she's hit her sweet spot of energetic equilibrium. It is to say that she can juggle so many tasks and give her another thing, and she won't drop the ball. Look at her go. And that has nothing to do with health. And what kind of balance we're offering to women is elusive. It never comes. And we don't notice that it's not here and that it's not real because we're too busy blaming ourselves, that it's not here yet because we're constantly getting the message of like, if you just had an Instapot, you could be balanced. If you just had this app, you could be balanced. If you just, you know, woke up one hour earlier, you could be balanced.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  And I think perfectionists are people who are not balanced and who are constantly told, you know, slow down, you're doing too much, you need to be balanced, as if we're, you know, as if balanced means health, when it doesn't anymore.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Just find balance. That's all you need to do, just find balance. Takeaway one: perfectionism isn't a bad word or a slight. It's a neutral quality, a tool, that, when used correctly, can be powerful.

• 6:27Speaker 03

  So I think of perfectionism as a natural human impulse, one that is healthy. And perfectionists, the way I define and understand the term, are people who more often than not see the gap between the reality and the ideal and long to bridge the gap. And not only long to bridge that gap, but feel actively compelled to do so. And how you pursue the ideal and why you pursue the ideal, those are the factors that determine whether your perfectionism is healthy or not.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  If we go to the how, are you pursuing the ideal in a way that hurts you or exploits or hurts other people around you? And if we go to the why, are you pursuing the ideal because you think achieving, you know, one goal after the next is going to certify your belonging into some group or some sense of self-worth or some kind of external validation? And there are healthy reasons to pursue the ideal. And I think it's actually, you know, one of the forces that make the world go around.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Next up, takeaway two: people chase their version of perfect in a lot of different ways. There's nothing wrong with longing to bridge the gap between your reality and your ideal. But be wary of how and why you pursue perfection, because there are pros and cons for every type of perfectionist.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  Yes. So the classic perfectionist is what comes to mind when we all think about the perfectionist. So this is somebody who is highly organized, buttoned up, and they are going to do what they said they're going to do, when they said they would do it, in the way that they said that they would do it. And each type of perfectionist has pros and cons. And the pros of classic perfectionist is that they're highly reliable and they add structure to any environment they enter. The cons are that they can sometimes not be as spontaneous or welcome collaboration. And those are qualities which tend to engender connection. And so...

• 8:49Speaker 03

  Being with a classic perfectionist, whether it's in a family system or a work system, can sometimes end up feeling more transactional. And this hurts both the people around the perfectionist and the perfectionists themselves, because classic perfectionists can tend to feel undervalued for all that they do. Then there's the procrastinator perfectionist. And the procrastinator perfectionist waits for the conditions to be perfect before they start. And of course, that never happens. So procrastinator perfectionists tend to ruminate. And that's part of, you know, the negative qualities of this type. And on the positive side, they can prepare so well.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  They can see things from a 360-degree angle. They can really understand all the different legs of decisions. And they are not impulsive, which can be a real asset. But of course, they have real challenges around getting projects off the ground, because they just encounter so much anxiety around beginnings.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  What about messy perfectionists?

• 10:02Speaker 03

  The messy perfectionist is in love with beginnings. They can start anything effortlessly, just breeze through all the anxiety that a procrastinator perfectionist might.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  But the problem with messy perfectionists is that when they hit the middle of a process and the TDM that is involved in staying committed to goals and carrying out those goals, they can kind of lose interest and lose energy, because the middle isn't perfect. It doesn't match the perfect, romanticized energy around starting. And I want to make a side note to say that all of these types of perfectionists can be expressed in lots of different contexts. So you can be a messy perfectionist when it comes to dating and love going on the first date, love the second date. And then the third date, you're like, this person is chewing really loudly.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  And I don't like this. And I don't know where this conversation is going and this and that and whatever.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  OK, how about intense perfectionists?

• 11:09Speaker 03

  This is the perfectionist that's kind of, I think publicly, we think of someone like Steve Jobs or Gordon Ramsay, Anna Wintour, as intense perfectionists. They have razor-sharp focus. They are really great at generating outcomes. Sometimes, they can prize the outcome so much that they lose the sense of team building, for example, or relationship building in the process. And they get the outcome at the great expense and opportunity cost of everyone around them sort of satisfaction. And sometimes even, you know, level of comfort or safety,

• 11:54Speaker 03

  depending on whether they're having outbursts or not.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  OK, and then finally, Parisian perfectionists.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  So the Parisian perfectionist, the easiest way to describe it is that they want to be perfectly liked. And that is how this perfectionism manifests on a surface level. But on a deeper level, it's about wanting perfect connection, wanting perfect connection to themselves, to their community, to their partners. Maladaptively expressed, Parisian perfectionism looks like people-pleasing at the expense of sacrificing one's own sense of identity and pleasure. But on the pros side, Parisian perfectionists are genuinely warm people who focus on inclusion, collaborate well, love working with others. And they're effortlessly inviting all of those things in.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Think you know what kind of perfectionist you are? We'll get into what to do next after the break.

• 12:56Speaker 04

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• 14:13Speaker 02

  Well, Catherine, your book taught me that I am mostly a Parisian perfectionist. And I feel both seen and attacked by this information. How is knowing your category helpful?

• 14:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's such a great question. I offer all of these categorizations as perspectives and not the truth. I really offer these as starting places to begin to understand patterns and to say, what do I like about this pattern? What do I want to continue about? That how does this show up, again, in all of these different ways? With my parenting, with my friendships, with dating, with work, with my family, and my own relationship to myself? And it's just a starting place to begin to ask and answer those questions.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Takeaway three. Understanding your particular brand of perfectionism can help you better see yourself and use that information to your advantage. For example, Catherine, you have a lot of tools in the book about ways to work with and reframe our type of perfectionism. One of those was understanding the difference between explaining and expressing something. Could you walk us through that idea?

• 15:21Speaker 03

  So explaining is saying what's happening, right? So I am leaving work early. Expressing is saying what's happening and what you feel about what is happening. I am leaving work early because I am feeling stressed. And when you only explain, you know, I need this by tomorrow, and you don't express, I need this by tomorrow because I had a conversation with the client today, and I'm starting to feel anxious about whether they're going to back out. When you only explain, it emphasizes this transactional, no team, no collaboration,

• 16:05Speaker 03

  no sense of actually knowing or connecting to the person. All that matters is the outcome, and we just need to get it done. And it really makes people around you feel disconnected. And it can make you feel disconnected to yourself. And if you only, on the other hand, express, which is what a lot of messy perfectionists and Parisian perfectionists tend to over-index on, then you're talking a lot about how you feel and what the experience of being you is like, but you're not actually asserting your wants or needs. And so you might say, I'm feeling really burnt out. OK, well, why don't you explain that you're feeling really burnt out

• 16:50Speaker 03

  because you have been covering for someone who's been sick for three weeks? And you can no longer do that. You've realized that that's not tenable, right? And so I think that part of our communication patterns in some of these personality types can pop up. And they're not necessarily bad. We don't need to subtract anything. We don't need to get rid of parts of who you are. We just need to add to help you connect more with yourself and others and help you understand yourself and help others understand you better, too.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  And finally, takeaway four.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  To better know when your perfectionism is healthy, or getting away from you, learn the difference between control and power.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  So, control and power, like lust and love, look very similar. They're not the same thing. Control is about manipulating. Power is about influencing. Control is myopic. You have to plan everything one step at a time because what you do next depends on all the factors that you are aware of and have information for. Whereas, power is really visionary. It allows you to take the luxury of taking great leaps of faith and being able to say, no matter what happens with the outcome, I know who I am and what's important to me,

• 18:23Speaker 03

  and I trust myself that I'll understand what to do next. Whereas, control is more frantic. It has a desperate energy and an attendant anxiety that other people around you can feel. And when we feel powerless, we double down on superficial control, and it backfires every time. In the moment, it feels like being controlling is the responsible thing to do when you can't find your own power.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  What do we gain when we seek control?

• 18:53Speaker 03

  So, I think one of the reasons why people feel locked out of joy is because they haven't forgiven themselves

• 19:03Speaker 03

  for past versions of themselves that did or did not do something. And if you don't forgive yourself, you don't trust yourself. And if you can't trust yourself, you can't give yourself license to have power. You micromanage yourself. You try to control yourself. It's just like a boss who doesn't trust their employee. They're going to be checking in every second on what they do, and they meet that person with suspicion instead of confidence. When you have that kind of relationship with yourself, you just cannot bring your full self to the table. You can't relax. And if you don't trust yourself, you're trying to move through life memorizing the right thing to do

• 19:48Speaker 03

  instead of trusting yourself and the way that you feel and whether, on the most basic level, you feel good or not. Does being around this person make me feel good? Does being at this job make me feel good? You don't trust yourself to do that, and so you just end up in your head. You're thinking. You're making pros and cons lists all day. You're denying your instincts any say in the matter. And you just can't, in my opinion, think yourself through your life. You have to be open. And to be open, you have to be able to say, I don't know what is coming next. There is some degree of surrender required for that.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  And you cannot be in surrender and in control at the same time.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Catherine, thank you so much for talking with me today.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  Thank you. This has been such a pleasure.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  To recap, takeaway one, perfectionism is powerful. You just have to learn to use it to your advantage.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  Takeaway two, there are a lot of different ways to reach for perfection. There's nothing wrong with longing to bridge the gap between your reality and your ideal. But be wary of how and why you pursue perfection.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Building on that, takeaway three, understanding your particular brand of perfectionism can help you better see yourself and work towards your strengths.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Ask yourself, are you hurting or helping the people around you in pursuit of your ideals? Does this action serve to connect or distance you from your values?

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Are you pursuing this ideal for the right reasons? Or are you seeking some kind of arbitrary external validation?

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Finally, takeaway four, seek power, not control.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Remember, as Catherine says, you are perfect as is, meaning you are complete and therefore worthy of rest and joy exactly as you are in this current moment. Don't wait for that mythical perfect balance or to achieve perfect personhood. Lean into your strengths and start trusting your own instincts today, right now. You got this.

• 22:15Marielle Segarra?

  That was reporter Andy Tagle talking to author Catherine Morgan Schaffler. Before we go, if you have a moment, I was wondering, would you rate and review Life Kit in your podcast app? Tell us a favorite tip that you've learned or what kind of episodes you like the best. We love hearing from you. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Claire Marie Schneider with help from Kayla Lattimore. Our digital editor is Malika Gharib, and our visuals editor is CJ Riechelmann. Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor, and Lauren Gonzalez is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Margaret Sereno and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Jimmy Keely. Special thanks to Darius Cook. I'm Marielle Segarra. Thanks for listening.

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