Katherine Morgan Schafler on Control, Perfectionism, and Letting Go | EP 572

Have you ever felt that your pursuit of excellence leaves you more stressed than satisfied? What if perfectionism isn’t a flaw to be fixed but a strength to be harnessed? In episode 572, John sits down with Katherine Morgan Schafler, psychotherapist, speaker, and author of The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power. Katherine’s groundbreaking approach challenges everything we think we know about perfectionism, showing us that it isn’t something we need to eliminate—but rather, something we can transform into a tool for personal and professional growth. They explore the five types of perfectionists—Classic, Intense, Parisian, Messy, and Procrastinator—and how understanding your type can unlock self-awareness, resilience, and healthier relationships. Katherine reveals how perfectionism intersects with belonging, self-worth, and the universal need to matter, as well as why it can be both a motivator and a barrier in our pursuit of fulfillment. Full shownotes can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/katherine-morgan-schafler-on-perfectionism/Key takeaways:1. The Three Dimensions of a Good Life2. How Novelty and Exploration Lead to Fulfillment3. The Global Village Paradox and Social Media's Impact4. Happiness vs. Meaning vs. Psychological Richness5. Why Regret Comes from Inaction6. The Role of Negative Emotions in a Rich Life7. How to Cultivate Psychological RichnessConnect with Katherine Morgan Schafler: https://www.katherinemorganschafler.com/Sponsors:Rosetta Stone: Unlock 25 languages for life at “ROSETTASTONE.com/passionstruck.”Prolon: Reset your health with 15% off at “ProlonLife.com/passionstruck.”Mint Mobile: Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at “MINT MOBILE dot com slash PASSION.”Hims: Start your journey to regrowing hair with Hims. Visit hims.com/PASSIONSTRUCK for your free online visit. Quince: Discover luxury at affordable prices with Quince. Enjoy free shipping and 365-day returns at quince.com/PASSIONNext on Passion Struck:In the next episode of Passion Struck, John sits down with Katherine Morgan Schaffler, a renowned psychotherapist and author of The Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control, a Path to Peace and Power. Katherine challenges the conventional view of perfectionism, suggesting that it can be harnessed as a personal superpower rather than a flaw. Don't miss this enlightening conversation that could transform your relationship with perfectionism. For more information on advertisers and promo codes, visit Passion Struck Deals. Join the Passion Struck Community! Sign up for the Live Intentionally newsletter, where I share exclusive content, actionable advice, and insights to help you ignite your purpose and live your most intentional life. Get access to practical exercises, inspiring stories, and tools designed to help you grow. Learn more and sign up here. Speaking Engagements & Workshops Are you looking to inspire your team, organization, or audience to take intentional action in their...

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

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  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, you know, failure, but it can also represent learning. 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. That's okay. That's what it takes for everybody.

• 0:35John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck.

• 1:18John R. Miles?

  Hey, Passion Struck fam. Welcome back to episode 572. I am so grateful for the incredible energy, enthusiasm, and dedication that you bring to this community each week. Your commitment to living a purpose driven and intentional life is what makes the Passion Struck movement so powerful. And together, we're creating a ripple effect of positive change. Now, let me ask you something. Have you ever felt that your pursuit of excellence leaves you more stressed than satisfied? What if perfectionism isn't a flaw to be fixed, but a strength to be harnessed? Today, we're diving into the transformative and often misunderstood world of perfectionism with Katherine Morgan Schaffler, psychotherapist,

• 1:58John R. Miles?

  speaker, and author of The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power. Katherine's groundbreaking approach challenges everything we think that we know about perfectionism. That it isn't something we need to fix or eradicate. It's a force that can be harnessed for growth, connection, and fulfillment. In our discussion, we'll explore the five types of perfectionists. Classic, intense, Parisian, messy, and procrastinator. And how understanding your type can unlock self-awareness and strengthen your relationships. We go into how perfectionism impacts our sense of belonging, self-worth, and wholeness, and why it's so deeply tied to our desire to matter. Catherine discusses her personal journey through a cancer diagnosis,

• 2:41John R. Miles?

  which forced her to confront her own need for control, and how it shaped her understanding of resilience, compassion, and joy. We discuss practical strategies to shift from self-punishment to self-compassion, creating a healthier, more intentional relationship with perfectionism. And then lastly, we go into how embracing your perfectionism can help you stop striving for superficial control and start living with real power. Whether you identify as a perfectionist, know someone who does, or simply want to deepen your understanding of how to live more intentionally, this episode will offer insights and actionable tools to help you find peace, embrace your wholeness, and enjoy your life today, not someday. Before we dive into today's episode, let's reflect on the powerful conversation with Shige Owishi we shared earlier this week.

• 3:24John R. Miles?

  Dr. Owishi is a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and has dedicated his career to studying happiness, meaning, and culture. And he introduced us to this concept of psychological richness, the idea that a life filled with diverse, novel, and challenging experiences can lead to deeper fulfillment. This is a topic I'm going to tackle even more deeply in tomorrow's solo episode, and how we can apply psychological richness to our work environments. And if you're ready to take these insights even deeper, don't forget to check out our episode starter packs. Can't believe we have over 570 episodes now, and I know it can be overwhelming. So we've curated playlists to help you find just the topic that you need to listen to today.

• 4:06John R. Miles?

  You can find them on Spotify or by visiting passionstruck.com/starterpacks. For weekly inspiration and actionable tips, be sure to sign up for the Live Intentionally newsletter. It's packed with exclusive content and tools, as well as challenges to help you put the lessons from our episodes to use. Into practice. And if you prefer watching these conversations, all our episodes are available on our YouTube channels where you can catch the videos and share them with others in your life. We're passionate about growth. So now let's get back to uncovering the science, stories, and strategies behind turning perfectionism from a source of shame into a powerful tool for growth and belonging. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now let that journey begin.

• 4:53John R. Miles?

  I am so excited today to welcome Katherine Morgan Schaffler, the Passion Struck Podcast. Welcome Catherine.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

• 5:01John R. Miles?

  Catherine, the way I normally like to set up these interviews is I'll do a little bit of your background and then we're going to get into later on your terrific book, which I'm holding here, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control. And I just wanted to give this the praise it deserves because not only is it a Next Big Idea Club book, but Amazon and USA Today recommended it as one of their books to readers. So congratulations on that.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  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.

• 5:38John R. Miles?

  You have worked with some of the most ambitious, high achieving individuals, yet one theme is I was looking through your work seems universal, the tension between striving for perfection and a feeling of a sense of belonging. Can you share how your journey for studying perfectionism began?

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, so I always know 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

• 6:20Speaker 01

  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. I've worked in a rehab. I've worked, you know, dealing, helping people deal with addictions of all kinds. I worked onsite 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 at the state. And in all of these contexts, I saw this universal theme. I heard the themes of perfectionism.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  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. 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?

• 7:46Speaker 01

  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. And so the perfectionist's 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.

• 8:17John R. Miles?

  And the book is really written, as I was reading it, more towards women, but it's obviously universally applicable. But you describe perfectionism as a woman's attempt to feel whole in a world that often expects her to minimize herself. And my question to you is, how can we define wholeness in a way that honors ambition while freeing us from the need to overperform or over-control?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  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. 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.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  And one of them is emotional perfectionism. 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. 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.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  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... 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.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  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. So when you think about male perfectionists, you might think of like a James Cameron or Gordon Ramsay 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 women who are allowed to

• 11:40Speaker 01

  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, 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.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  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.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Being called like recovering perfectionist. I'm a recovering perfectionist. It's not something that I often hear men say, if at all, right? When you, 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. 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?

• 13:18John R. Miles?

  Yeah, of course.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Okay, 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, 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,

• 14:00Speaker 01

  don't allow yourself to be called a perfectionist in a kind of derogatory way. And don't do that to yourself either. You have a vision. It's important to you. You want it executed in a certain way. That's okay.

• 14:16John R. Miles?

  Thank you for going into that. And I do agree that language, especially in different environments, tends to play significantly different roles between genders. And I mean, I've seen it play out so many times during my professional career. So you have done a lot of work on empathetic accuracy, which delves into our ability to sense emotional landscapes and how we connect with others, if I understand it correctly. How does that skill intersect with perfectionism?

• 14:49Speaker 01

  I described 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. 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, the pros of being a Parisian perfectionist are like, you're a 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?

• 15:34Speaker 01

  You're naturally inclusive. 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 or one person, you can pretty accurately understand what someone is feeling. Because you can feel it too.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  And you know, 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. You know, the couple or something tense just happened. And so I studied that phenomenon 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.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  As 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. 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? Perfectionism's got to losing control, not maintaining control.

• 17:46John R. Miles?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I interviewed Alison Woodbrooks last week, who's a professor at Harvard Business School, who focuses on kind of the art of conversation. And she said something to me about when we're talking to someone, it really has this duality to it that we're either we either feel seen or we feel unseen. And it what you were just talking about and reading the room and emotions and everything else kind of brought that up to me. Is there a connection between our communication and how others communicate with us and perfectionism?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  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 overindex on perfectly articulating what you're trying to say and overindex on the language that you're using at the expense of just allowing your energy and

• 18:55Speaker 01

  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. If you take perfect back to its Latin root, you get perfacere, 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.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  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, I, 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. 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.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  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 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?

• 21:04Speaker 01

  It's not staged, it's, it's.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Intimate. 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?

• 21:39John R. Miles?

  I love how you describe that intimacy. And the other thing I think about when I, when I think about deep conversations is almost Louise Hay's mirror work, except in her work, it's really putting a mirror against, up against yourself. And I think in real deep conversation, intimate conversation, it's putting up a mirror to each other. Because when we really listen to someone, when we truly are intimate about their lives, we see aspects of our own story in theirs, even though our stories could be completely different. There's still an underlying connection to, to standards or conditions that we all feel, so to speak.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  I love that. Yeah, exactly. Well said.

• 22:29John R. Miles?

  So I never know how these interviews are gonna go. I was gonna ask you a question to describe the five different types of perfectionists, but you kind of already went into one. So I'm gonna change away my approach and I'm gonna go to into each one of them and ask you a question about them. Is that all right?

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Perfectly fine.

• 22:48John R. Miles?

  Okay, so you have five different types of perfectionists. You talked about the second one, which is the Parisian perfectionist. You start out with the classical perfectionist who values structure and self-discipline, but can sometimes come across as rigid or unapproachable. How can someone with this type of perfectionism balance their strengths like reliability or perhaps attention to detail, without letting their need for structure isolate them from others around them?

• 23:24Speaker 01

  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. 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 gotta 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 gonna do when they say they're

• 24:07Speaker 01

  going to do it in the way that they said that they would do it. They're so reliable, so dependable, you know, as you, as you brought up, just naturally infused 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. 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

• 24:51Speaker 01

  for that work. 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. 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 people. And classic perfectionists are, and like,

• 25:32Speaker 01

  when you're in connection with somebody, there's naturally a little osmosis and diffusion happening. So this is an important point that I really want to say, you know, you don't heal by

• 25:49Speaker 01

  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. 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. And, and also, like, as a classic perfectionist, you can give help

• 26:32Speaker 01

  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 complementary system happening here.

• 26:45John R. Miles?

  The third one, I was really surprised by the name when I first read it, procrastinator perfectionist, because I typically don't think of perfectionists as procrastinators. But I can see how it happens when people freeze when it comes to starting new things due to their failure, or fear of failure, or fear of loss. So

• 27:09Speaker 01

  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. And the cons, as you're saying, are like, they can spill past the point of diminishing returns on their preparative measures, and they, and they never actually execute on the thing they most want to do. And that's what 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?

• 27:56John R. Miles?

  For me, it's something I talk about here all the time. Bob Sutton, a Stanford professor, wrote this great book on how to close the gap between knowing and doing. And to me, that's kind of what resonated here. It's kind of the mindset that staying stuck is a greater risk than taking imperfect action, or something like that is what I was playing around with in my mind when I was trying to go through this concept.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:23John R. Miles?

  Which brings us to the fourth. Yeah. Which brings us to the fourth one, which is the messy perfectionist who thrives on new beginnings but struggles with follow through, often putting the blame on themselves when things fall apart. So how can someone who's a messy perfectionist embrace their creativity and adaptability while working within the real world constraints of things like time, resources, etc.?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  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. 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. There's, 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? And so the strengths of that is like

• 29:36Speaker 01

  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. 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

• 30:19Speaker 01

  dating example, you're on like the fourth date and you're noticing like. This person choose 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, 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 and, 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.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  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. 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. 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

• 31:49Speaker 01

  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, whatever else, like no thanks. 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 finish the rest by getting a ton of help constantly, you know?

• 32:18John R. Miles?

  I absolutely see having gone through the process, what you, what you mean. I would either have to go down the traditional publishing or the hybrid publishing to, to get it done for the exact reasons that you just brought up.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Someone asked me on a panel once, like, so how did you decide to go with the publisher self 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. 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

• 33:15Speaker 01

  them by saying, here's a great book. 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?

• 33:26John R. Miles?

  And Catherine, that brings us to the last one, the intense perfectionist who's laser focused on their vision, often struggling with anger or frustration when things don't go as planned. And as I was reading this type, it, it made me think of Steve Jobs.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:43John R. Miles?

  Because he was someone who was so laser focused on his vision, he didn't give a hoot about likability. That was like the last thing from his mind. So if you're, and this is a type in the Fortune 50 world that I existed in, I saw a lot of this. And you see a lot of it, I think, in entrepreneurs too. So how can someone, if they're an intense perfectionist, balance their drive for results with the need for collaborating and having empathy on others, which typically can be lacking?

• 34:16Speaker 01

  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? Often we get into like a politeness contest, contests 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 into something. And

• 35:04Speaker 01

  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 all your Q3 goals and next quarter, half your team's going to 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? Did you notice like you can hear forks scraping

• 35:49Speaker 01

  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. 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.

• 36:26John R. Miles?

  Yep. I, well, if you look at the Harvard study of adult aging, or if you look into self determination theory, they both showcase how important relationships are to us and our overall well being. So absolutely plays into our sense of mattering and belongingness regardless of what type you are. I'm going to switch the conversation a little bit on you.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Okay. I was just going to highlight Dr. Bruce Parry's research. He's a researcher whom I love and admire very much. I talk about this in the perfectionist's guide to losing control, but his research is about how Nothing impacts your mental health more than the quality of connections you have with other people, which he calls relational wealth. So right now, you're either living on a spectrum of relational wealth or relational poverty. And where you are on that spectrum has a bigger determining factor of your mental health, more than your socioeconomic status, more than whether or not you do or don't have a mental health disorder, more than the difficulty of what you're going through right now is. You know, connection with other people is the thing

• 37:37Speaker 01

  that like people say time heals all wounds. No, that's a bit. Connection heals all wounds, you know? And so the sense of connectedness and relational wealth is such a game changer to understand that.

• 37:52John R. Miles?

  Well, thank you for sharing that. And where I wanted to go, which is a little bit different direction is I had a lot of impact in my life from cancer. And my earlier this year, I lost my sister to pancreatic cancer. And anytime who I that I see someone who's gone through it, it's kind of like the ultimate test of losing control, because it's a very difficult situation to control the outcome, no matter how much you want a certain outcome to be the one that you achieve. You've personally spoken about your own cancer diagnosis as

• 38:35John R. Miles?

  a disruption rather than using the word itself. And as I've read and listened to you talk about it, it kind of forced you to confront your independence on control. How did that experience shift your own understanding of perfectionism and control? And how has it shaped not only the message of the book, but your message going forward?

• 38:59Speaker 01

  I'm sorry to hear about your sister. What was her name?

• 39:03John R. Miles?

  Carolyn.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Caroline. That's my sister's name.

• 39:06John R. Miles?

  I used to call her Caroline, and she hated it. And she would always bring me back to Carolyn. But the reason I did it is my

• 39:14John R. Miles?

  Us three siblings were named after the Kennedy kids. So John, John Caroline Patrick.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 39:20John R. Miles?

  Caroline. So I would always kind of jokingly say Caroline because of that. And for whatever reason, she didn't like it. But.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Wow. Patrick Kennedy also died as a young baby. So that's interesting that your parents named all three of you after all three of the Kennedys. I call my sister Carls because she doesn't like the name Caroline either. It's like when we use our real names with our siblings, it's like, what did I do? It's that closeness, which, you know, makes me feel the loss for you so much more.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  So when I was diagnosed, there was a really high treatment rate. It was like 95%. And so I wasn't necessarily worried about overly consumed with dying, though every single time that I needed treatment, it was like, well, we'll do this and then that will nip this in the bud. And then that didn't work. And it was like, I was in the 1% for whom that doesn't work. And then we did another thing and it was like the 1% for whom that doesn't work. And when you hear something like 95% treatment rate, you forget that that means there's a 5% fatality rate.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  And so, you know, there's just a confusing moment. For me, it was more about being 30, I was 33 at the time and I had just been married. And my partner and I really wanted to have kids. And I felt like, oh, I might not be able to have kids. And I didn't have time to freeze my eggs before I did chemotherapy. And so a lot of the themes of the book about self-worth and understanding that you are a whole human being worthy of all the love, freedom, dignity, connection and joy that any version of you, the most accomplished version of you could ever be worthy of.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  You're worthy of all those things now, just because you're a human being, right? You don't become more worthy because you get really good grades or because you lost weight or gained weight or because you learned to make people laugh, or in my case, because you can have a child. And I intellectually knew that, but. Your feelings don't give a shit about your intellect sometimes. It's my personal experience. And so it was like a lot of reconciling with, can I still be like a good wife? Can I still be worthy of the life that I dreamt up for myself? If I can't do this thing that I have always longed to do. And I think sometimes people feel variations of that.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Like when you get fired or if you go through a divorce, or if this one part of your identity is threatened in some way. And for me, it was about understanding, and I hate the cliche of it, how much I was over indexed on control by losing so much of it in like the span of two weeks. You know, chemotherapy is like six hours a day. And

• 42:25Speaker 01

  so I, I had to really call my professional life to the things that were absolutely essential, which was running my practice and not doing any of these other things that I had been, you know, worked for years for the opportunity to do. And to say, no, I can't, I'm sorry. And I'm also a very private person. So I wasn't telling people why at that time. It was just a lot of working for something for years. And the trajectory was like an X. It was like right at that moment that my career started skyrocketing. I had to say no to everything. And I just always thought I was disciplined or that I had a lot of ambition. I didn't think of myself as a controlling person,

• 43:10Speaker 01

  but I really was like trying to painstakingly control my life so that I could have as much, collect as much goals in as little as time as possible and be really efficient about living, which as I say it now, sounds so silly. And that was really hard for me to acknowledge because I think of myself as someone who's self aware and who stays in the vein of this work, you know, as a therapist. And I just had this big fat blind spot to how much I was controlling. My life, the relationships in my life, how much I put my self-worth into external

• 43:50Speaker 01

  markers, like whether or not I could have kids, or how much money I was making, or whatever else. And so, you know, li- life helped me out in its strange way by turning everything upside down. And I just lost control, you know, and

• 44:08Speaker 01

  and another way to say that is you surrender to something bigger than yourself. And I position in the book, like, the opposite of control is really power. And power is always internally sourced, and control is always externally sourced. And that's how you can tell the difference between the two. And so in Losing Control, I was able to better connect to the power that was always there, but that I was just letting it collect dust a little bit. And I think we all have these seasons of our life where we just forget what we know, or maybe we didn't learn it in the first place.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  And the thing that you're so good at, you let it sit on a shelf because you're trying to be better at the thing that you're, that is hard for you. Or the thing that you have inside of you that will calibrate and do so much of the work for you, you minimize because you can't quantify it, you can't measure it, you can't see it, you can't taste it, you know? It's just something that you can feel, like be in touch with. And to me, it's like timelines and

• 45:22Speaker 01

  bank accounts, or treatment rates, or things that are quantifiable are so much more of a comfort when you're scared. You know, it's like, let me see the numbers going up or the numbers going down. And to have a nonlinear process, which healing always is, is never linear, is really scary, you know?

• 45:41John R. Miles?

  It absolutely is. And when I think back upon Carolyn's journey, she was extremely driven. She went to Columbia like you did and had a thriving career, but she told me that throughout her life until the very end, she always felt something was missing, like she wasn't doing what she was really called to do. And I think two pivotal things happened to her. She's, we were all raised Catholic. But a decade or so ago, she became a Buddhist and really, really immersed herself in the study. And I think her Buddhist beliefs and letting go helped her navigate her cancer really in a profound

• 46:24John R. Miles?

  way. And then her way of dealing with the repeated chemotherapy was she decided to go back to school in the midst of all of this and got a man social work. And so she kind of poured herself into that and wanting to help people.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Hmm, that was her calling?

• 46:43John R. Miles?

  That was her calling and she really felt immense gratitude that she got to do that, even though it was for a short time, she felt like the lens that she was able to talk to people was much different because of her having to face her own mortality. And she ended up saving a number of teenagers' lives who were contemplating suicide or help people who were navigating their own illnesses, think about how to approach it in a different way.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  That's so beautiful. I love that. That's very inspiring. I'm not going to forget that. And I think the lesson there is like, when you're doing what you're called for, or what you really love, your worst day of doing that is going to be better than your best day of living a life which doesn't feel like it belongs to you, you know?

• 47:32John R. Miles?

  A hundred percent. That's what the whole Passion Start Podcast is all about.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:38John R. Miles?

  So I, we have spent so much time talking about the first half of your book and I had originally oriented the whole conversation to be discussing more of the back half of the book because to me, that's where you get to put all of your teachings into practice. And I want to jump to chapter five and I want to read something to you to set it up. In this chapter, you write, "Clients use the word stuck to describe themselves as often as therapists say boundaries. Occasionally, we're stuck because we're genuinely confused about what's happening and what to do about it. But that kind of confusion is rare. Nine times out of 10, and I find this to be so true.

• 48:18John R. Miles?

  We know exactly what to do to improve our lives and yet we struggle to do it. The reason we're struggling is that we're engaged in a cycle of self punishment, which is what this chapter is all about. When you continue to use self punishment as a strategy for positive change, you precision yourself in a type of, I love this word, "psychial purgatory, doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over while hating yourself for it every time. You know you're stuck. You want to generate different outcomes. You are in fact desperate to generate different outcomes, yet you repeatedly make the same negative choices. And on this podcast, I talk about all the time, the power of choices, especially our micro choices and they lead you into either into a valley of doom

• 49:02John R. Miles?

  or a waterfall of greatness. But as you describe it, this downward loop of self punishment is a painful spiral and it really is. And then you go into the story of Ava and I was hoping, since I gave you that setup, maybe you can just quickly go through Ava's story and talk about this powerful concept.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  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 this 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, 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

• 50:06Speaker 01

  someone else say that stuck with them. And Ava, for 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. 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

• 50:48Speaker 01

  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, 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. And so she's gonna 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

• 51:28Speaker 01

  thing that a healthy person would do. And I said, you know what, sometimes what I ask people when they make a mistake in recovery and have a relapse is like, what would you do in this moment if you were five years sober? What would a person who's five years sober do with these feelings they're feeling? And the person knows, right? They're like, and she said, I would, 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. 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

• 52:13Speaker 01

  something you know is going to help you. And if I could wave a magic wand and get the reader of the perfectionist 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. 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

• 52:54Speaker 01

  in this situation again. And so you're trying to heal yourself by hurting yourself. 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 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. It's that's

• 53:36Speaker 01

  how you can tell if you're punishing yourself, because the goal of a punishment is to create pain. And that's how you can tell if you're punishing someone else too, 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? 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,

• 54:18Speaker 01

  I know what the right thing to do is, but I already ruined it. 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.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  And they're like, well, now I'm gonna make this a whole narrative about how I'm a failure and I'm not a good person 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. 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

• 55:19Speaker 01

  an emblem of our growth. Repetition can represent, you know, 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 word, of a word, and then like forever somehow memorize it and know it. But that's not how it works. Like, I can't even remember the restaurant I went to last week. It's on the tip of my tongue. Like, I might need to have some repetition of that for a while. You know, 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. That's okay. That's what it takes for everybody.

• 56:05John R. Miles?

  Well, Catherine, thank you so much for sharing that. And I'm gonna have to wrap up here, because I know you need to go. But this is one of those episodes where I wish I had another hour with you, because there are a few that we just talked about self-punishment. But there are a few things I just want to give to the audience on why they should buy this book. Two of my favorite chapters were chapter seven and chapter eight. In chapter seven, Catherine goes into 10 key perspective shifts to help you find the success you're looking for. And in chapter eight, she goes through eight behavioral strategies to help each type of perfectionist. So definitely encourage you to buy the book to learn about those things. And one of my favorite things that you talk about in the book is perfectionism

• 56:50John R. Miles?

  is a power. And

• 56:53John R. Miles?

  To me, it's this whole idea that we're already whole, not because of what we do, but because of who we are. And embracing this belief can deepen our sense of belonging. And we shouldn't look at perfectionism as a negative aspect to us, but as a strength, we just need to learn how to harness. So with that, what is the best way for listeners to learn more about you?

• 57:20Speaker 01

  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 gonna call it three hours, because 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 gonna be salient for you in some way. At least they have been for me in my life. 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. You know,

• 58:04Speaker 01

  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 you know, we, we can fall into these like moments of amnesia when it comes to this stuff. You can find me at my website, kathrynorganschaffler.com. I'm also on Instagram at kathrynorganschaffler, 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. And the book is called The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power, and it's

• 58:47Speaker 01

  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.

• 58:57John R. Miles?

  Thank you too. And I also love that you highlighted other guests that I've had on the show in the book, like Amy Morin. So

• 59:04Speaker 01

  I love her. Yeah.

• 59:06John R. Miles?

  Those things were great, too. So thank you so much, Catherine. It was such an honor.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  My pleasure. Thank you.

• 59:12John R. Miles?

  And that concludes today's episode. What an enlightening and thought provoking conversation that was with Katherine Morgan Schaffler. Today's episode was a powerful, thought provoking exploration of perfectionism, what it truly means, how it impacts our lives, and how we can transform it from a source of shame into a source of strength. Catherine's insights into the five types of perfectionists, her deeply personal story, and her strategies for embracing self compassion have given us a fresh and empowering perspective on living with intentionality as well as authenticity. As we close, I encourage you to reflect on your own relationship with perfectionism. Are you striving for control? Or are you embracing your wholeness? Are you giving yourself permission to enjoy your life today rather than waiting

• 59:54John R. Miles?

  for that elusive perfect moment? Catherine's wisdom reminds us that perfectionism isn't about fixing ourselves. It's about reclaiming our power, connecting to our sense of belonging, and choosing joy over judgment. If Catherine's message resonated with you, please take a moment, leave us a five star rating and review. Your feedback fuels the show and helps us bring these transformative conversations to the Passion Struck community. And if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode, share it with them, because one conversation can spark a lifetime of change. You'll find links to everything we discussed today, including Catherine's book, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control, in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Don't forget to check out the video version of this conversation on our YouTube channels and explore our sponsors and exclusive deals at passionstruck.com/deals.

• 1:00:37John R. Miles?

  Supporting our partners allows us to continue delivering impactful episodes like this one. Before we go, I want to remind you that I love bringing these insights to organizations and teams through keynotes and speaking engagements. If today's discussion inspired you, and if you think it could benefit your workplace or community, visit johnrmyles.com/speaking to learn more. Next week, I am thrilled to sit down with Randy Blythe, lead vocalist of the renowned metal band Lamb of God, and author of the forthcoming memoir, Just Beyond the Light: Making Peace with the Wars Inside Our Randy delves into his personal journey of maintaining positivity and perspective amidst life's challenges. He shares insights on balancing sobriety, art, and surfing, and offers hope that true balance is achievable, even in seemingly hopeless times.

• 1:01:20John R. Miles?

  Join us for this compelling conversation that explores finding light beyond the darkness.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  Fear is a real MF'er, a top shelf, grade A, son of a bitch that will let you ruin your whole week if you let it run the show. That's a sentence in the book. And in this world of so much information coming at us all the time, it's hard to filter out what we should be worried about and what we shouldn't.

• 1:01:47John R. Miles?

  And remember, the fee for this show is simple. If you found value in today's episode, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And as always, take what you have learned here and put it into action so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, live life, passion struck.