Afford Anything - The Five Types of Perfectionists, with Katherine Morgan Schafler

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

#437: Do you have a project you want to start … but you’re stuck in analysis paralysis? Do you feel like if you want to do something right, you have to do it yourself? Do you try to wind down after the end of a long day, but your energy levels are just not quite restored? If you answered “Yes!” to any of these questions, then this episode is for you. Psychotherapist Katherine Morgan Schafler, a former on-site therapist at Google, and author of “The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control,” joins us to chat about her research on perfectionism. She shares a framework on five types of perfectionism. She describes the pros and cons of each type, and how to work through some of the negative tendencies to build a more emotionally healthy life. Enjoy! For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode437 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You know, there's not just one kind of perfectionism. There are five kinds. Which kind are you? And how is it effing up your money life? We're going to get some insight into those questions today in our interview with psychotherapist Catherine Morgan Schaeffler. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast. You can afford anything, but not everything.

Every choice that you make carries a trade-off. And that applies not just to your money, but to your time, your focus, your energy. what matters most. That is what this podcast is here to explore and facilitate. My name is Paula Pant. With us on the show today, we have a guest who was trained as a psychotherapist at Columbia University and worked as the on-site therapist at Google

and has now written a book about perfectionism. She introduces a framework that outlines five types of perfectionism. Which type are you? And how does that impact your life? How does it impact the way that you handle your money, your career, your investments, the way that you self-sabotage? What's the psychology of self-sabotaging? How often do you get stuck in analysis paralysis?

How does that impact your ability to start a side hustle, to buy a rental property, to grow a business, to advance professionally, to make a career change, or to take that six-month trip to South America that you've been dreaming about? We're going to learn all about perfectionism, and how to overcome it in this episode. Let's get started. Hi, Catherine. Hello. How are you? I'm fantastic. How are you doing? I'm good. Thank you. Catherine, you've written about perfectionism and overcoming perfectionism. What is it? What is perfectionism? There is not an agreed upon clinical definition of perfectionism. There is, if we want to get into the weeds, a technical clinical definition of what's known as, rigid perfectionism. That is in the DSM-5, and that explains the type of behavioral perfectionism,

mostly that demands that everything be perfectly in order, perfectly 100%. It doesn't really speak to a lot of other aspects of perfectionism, like the emotionally charged types of perfectionism or interpersonal types of perfectionism. And rigid perfectionism in the DSM is what's known as a trans-diagnostic trait, which means it shows up across a lot of mental illnesses, like OCD, for example. What trans-diagnostic means is that the presence of this thing makes a mental health disorder more likely to show up and more likely to be maintained. So rigid perfectionism is part of what I talk about in the book as maladaptive perfectionism.

There's adaptive perfectionism that's healthy and maladaptive perfectionism that's unhealthy. Right. And you have a sentence in the book. I actually highlighted it that says a key difference between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionists, what some theorists believe is the key difference, is that adaptive perfectionists find a way to enjoy the process of striving towards a goal. whereas maladaptive perfectionists don't. Mm-hmm. What do you mean by striving towards a goal? What is the distinction between striving towards a goal versus some alternate approach to a goal? Well, adaptive perfectionists understand that ideals are not meant to be achieved. They're only meant to inspire.

And adaptive perfectionists distinguish between a goal and an ideal, right? So you're striving towards both as a perfectionist because the goal is representative of whatever ideal you're trying to achieve. But when a perfectionist achieves a goal, they always create a new goal and it's a bigger goal because they're not actually striving to complete goals. They're striving towards an intangible ideal that matters to them and that's important to them. And so research demonstrates it's not actually perfectionistic strivings trying to get to that ideal that are harmful to our mental health. It's the self-criticism we lacerate ourselves with that really endangers our well-being.

Lacerate is a fantastic word, by the way. Yeah, well, that's what perfectionism when it's not managed and becomes maladaptive feels like. It's like emotionally and mentally whipping yourself. You describe five types of perfectionism. What are these five types? Okay, I love talking about the five types of perfectionists because we only have one type in our mind. What I noticed in my practice and myself, I've worked on site at Google. I had a practice on Wall Street for a long time. I've worked in a rehab.

I've worked in residential treatment. And perfectionism was not just amongst high achieving people. It was everywhere. And I was like, how can this be such a kaleidoscopic topic? And yet we don't know or have language to describe it. And so the five types are my attempt to put language to patterns I saw. And they are the classic perfectionist. And the classic perfectionist, I would say, is the closest that we come to the idea we already have in our mind.

So this is someone who's very buttoned up put together. Each type has its pros and cons. Each type has its strengths and liabilities. So the pros of the classic perfectionists are, these are highly reliable people. These people do what they say they're going to do, when they say they're going to do it, in the way they say they're going to do it.

The cons are that interpersonally, this type can come across as transactional. and maybe sort of at times even haughty or judgmental because class of perfectionists have this mentality in their mind of if you want something done right you got to do it yourself and so their type of perfectionism doesn't always lend itself to collaboration or engaging with others in a way that engenders connection so they can come off as kind of distant and haughty and for them The classic perfectionists can often feel take it for granted and take an advantage of because everyone sort of delegates tasks to them because they know they're going to get done. So there's that element to it.

If you want something done, give it to a busy person. Yeah, exactly. And if that busy person is also highly organized and highly accountable, even better, which is the classic perfectionist. So the next type is the procrastinated perfection. procrastinator perfectionists, the simplest way to describe it is that they want the conditions to be perfect before they start, which of course never happens, right? So this is on the pro's side, such a wonderful orientation because procrastinator perfectionists are really thoughtful about everything they do. They are not impulsive, which is such an asset. They take major efforts to

prepare and come ready and they see a situation from a 360 degree angle on the con side all their preparative measures can run past the point of diminishing returns and they never actually end up executing because they're not perfectly ready and what's interesting about this type is we're not talking about exclusively aversive stuff like doing your taxes and procrastinating on on that because there's never a good time to do your taxes. And if there is, somebody can call me and tell me because, oh my dad, my taxes is such hell. April 14 at 11.59 p.m. 59 p.m. 59 seconds. This type also procrastinates on things like going on vacation, like asking someone out on a date, things that feel maybe fun and exciting. And so that was really interesting to me to discover

in my years of working with perfectionists of like, wow, this type of perfectionism doesn't discriminate against aversive and pleasurable tasks. Then there's the messy perfectionist. And this is like the counterpart to the procrastinated perfectionist. And messy perfectionists are in love with the beginning. They love starting things. It's so easy for them. And this is the pros part of this type. It's like they can just effortlessly push through the anxiety of a new beginning. They don't experience it as anxiety. They experience it as energy. The other pros of messy perfectionists are that they're naturally enthusiastic. They're superstar idea generators. They're just flooded with ideas all the time about, oh, it could go this way and it could go that way,

and it could go this way. The cons side is that when you hit the inevitable TD the middle of the process. And that middle is not as perfect as it felt in the beginning. Messy perfectionists who aren't managing their perfectionism can really become destabilized by that in a way and really shy away from continuing through the process because they struggle when the middle is not perfect. How does a messy perfectionist come in? How do they differ from someone who simply has shiny object syndrome?

a messy perfectionist has an ideal in their mind about all the things that they're imagining. And they're trying to align that ideal in their mind with all the different ways to execute it. There's a deeper kind of intention with messy perfectionists of, I want this company to sell A, B, and C, and D products and also offer EF and G services and all of this stuff. where someone who has, what did you call it, shiny object syndrome? Yeah, shiny object syndrome. Right. Is there just more on like a dopamine novelty hunt where it's like, oh, this show looks cool,

let me watch this. And oh, this person is really interesting. And let me talk to them. And there's no underlying intention necessarily there that's connecting all those pieces together. Messy perfectionists do have that. And that's why it's so hard to let go of an idea. or the beginning of something because messy perfections hear that sort of rule of life of you can do anything, but you can't do everything. And messy perfectionists refuse to believe that in a lot of

ways and feel like if you just have the heart, you can get it all done. And of course, that's not true. We have real constraints on our time. Perfectionists are sort of the romantics who can sometimes deny limitations. So far, we have covered the classic perfectionist, the procrastinator perfectionist, and the messy perfectionist. That's three out of five. There are two others left, the intense perfectionists and the Parisian perfectionists. Let's start with Parisian.

What is that? I named this type of Parisian after French women, who I love all women, French women included, and the beauty aesthetic of French women is so alluring to me because it's so effortless, or at least it appears that way. And French women have a way of engaging with themselves and the way that they present to the world in this effortless. I don't really care that much, but behind the scenes, there's a whole lot of work going on, usually. And so that to me really represented the approach that Parisian perfectionists take to their perfectionism, which is a perfectionism that manifests interpersonally. So in your relationship with yourself and other people.

You know, when we think of the perfectionist, we think of someone who is very focused on upward mobility at work or who wants all the things on the table to be organized in such a way. But Parisian perfectionists, the ideal that they're seeking is ideal connection. So they want to be perfectly liked. They want to perfectly like others. They want to perfectly understand others and be perfectly understood. That's what they are after. And so the pros of this type are these are naturally warm people. They're naturally inclusive.

They will, for example, go out of their way to engage a person standing by themselves at a party. and they understand the live wire power of connection. You don't have to explain that to a Parisian perfectionist. On the con side, sometimes Parisian perfectionist wants connection so much that they try to take shortcuts to connection. And there aren't really shortcuts to connection. And so they will do things like over index on people pleasing to try to get that feeling of connection from someone. And of course, that doesn't work to engender connection. And not only does it not work, it also leaves the Parisian perfectionist isolated, meaning they have not connected to the

other person, A, and B, in trying to make a connection with the other person, they have abandoned themselves in the process, and now they're not connected to themselves. And then the next type is the intense perfectionist. And this is a perfectionist who wants to, the end of a process to be perfect. So they are very focused on the outcome. Percastinator perfectionists want the beginning to be perfect. Messy want the middle to be perfect and intense want the end to be perfect. So it's sort of just a different location of where your perfectionism is showing up. So on the pro side, intense perfectionists are just a razor sharp focus. They are extremely efficient. they don't care about being liked, which often helps them professionally and hurts them personally.

And they will get the goal, right? Sometimes their perfectionism goes into overdrive such that they'll get the goal by any means necessary. And that's when this perfectionism can really become maladaptive because, let's say you're an intense perfectionist executing a perfectionism at work and you achieve the goal that you and your team have set to achieve. And it's like, great. You got to where you needed to be. But in the next quarter, half of your team quits because they're all miserable because you've got to that goal without considering how you're pursuing that goal and how you are being treated in the process, meaning how much you're taking care of yourself? Are you sleeping? Are you getting enough rest? Are you

skipping meals and how other people are being treated in the process. So intense perfectionists on the con side can really burn the candle at both ends and burn out and allow their relationships and pieces of their life that really help engender a holistically healthy picture to fall by the wayside in service of achieving a goal. Now, all five of these types share the commonality that they respond to missteps with self-punishment. I want to dive into that. And let's start by talking about the differences between the concept of punishment versus certain other concepts.

So the difference between punishment and discipline or the difference between punishment. and personal accountability, the difference between punishment and the natural consequence. Let's address each of those. First of all, why do people self-punish? Perfectionists particularly. Right. Well, perfectionists can self-punish. And when you're punishing yourself, you're in a maladaptive space. Perfectionists can also engage in a self-compassionate response, which is the opposite of punishment. Right. So perfectionism, just to go 30,000 feet in the air here, is fluid and context-based. Like, listen, if you're wondering, if you're a healthy perfectionist or an unhealthy perfectionist,

let me kill the suspense, you're both. I'm both. Everybody who's a perfectionist is both. We are both because life is not static and it changes. And sometimes we engage in punitive responses to our thoughts, to the outcome, to whatever's happening and the goal that I'd like perfectionist to carry is not perfect self-compassion responses 100% of the time because that's not possible but it is to understand that you have a choice and the choice is punishment which to get to your question is so ineffectual it's not just

ineffectual it makes everything worse and what a punishment is when you deny yourself something that you know will help you, or you purposely create something that you know is going to hurt you. And the goal of a punishment is to create more pain. And the reason that we engage in punishments is because we think pain is a motivating force. And the thing is, pain can be a motivating force. We are in enough pain already. You do not need to make a motivating force. You do not need to manufacture more pain for yourself in order to get what you need and want in this life. And that's what a punishment is. It's just let me lay pain on top of this. And that way, I'll be really extra motivated to get what I need, you know, this idea of whipping yourself

into shape. When we're in pain, our stress response is activated, right? If we don't feel good when we're in pain. And when you don't feel good, your body is responding to that by flooding yourself and your brain with hormones and chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline. And the more your stress response is activated, the more your mind operates in a totally different way. So you're looking for short-term solutions to get you out of the immediate situation as opposed to being able to have the luxury of a long-term, wide perspective in which you can see multiple solutions unfolding. And when your stress response is activated, you're also experiencing fear, whether you know it or not. And when we feel fear, we contract instead of expand.

When you're in a state of fear, you're making decisions based purely on a posture of defense. or trying to protect yourself from something. So you're less risk averse, for example. And it just doesn't really benefit anybody to be in that state of mind because you don't understand how limited your perspective it is when you're afraid. This gets to the whole control power thing, because when you're afraid, you double down on control, because it feels like the responsible thing to do.

When you're empowered, you engage in your own power, your own internal sense of, I want to do this. I am excited to do this. Or I know that executing in this way will be what's best for me as opposed to. I know that executing in this way

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That's your commercial payments, a fifth, third better. What are some specific ways that self-punishment manifest? What are specific behaviors? Punishment looks really nuanced, and it can be tricky to understand the ways we're punishing ourselves. Punishment looks like doing something that you know is going to hurt you. So I'll give you a really common example, which is staying up way past the time you mean to go to bed, and you're watching TV. I don't have the stats on this,

but I think 100% of human beings in the United States, at least have done this at some point where it's like, okay, I know I'm supposed to go to bed. I'm so tired, but I also need me time. So I'm just going to watch TV. But you've been doing this for the past few nights, for the past few weeks, which, oops, it turned into months. And you're like, stuck in a cycle.

because you keep doing it, you keep feeling worse about doing it, and you keep feeling stuck. And the way to tell the difference between whether you're punishing yourself and whether you just need a moment of restoration to watch TV past your bedtime is that restoration feels good and punishment feels bad. So if you were to need to decompress as we all do and kind of blank out and brain flush and watch TV for hours just mindlessly, after you did that, if it were true restoration, you would feel restored, you would feel good. If you were doing a behavior and you don't feel restored and you don't feel good, you might want to examine whether you're actually in a cycle of punishment. punishment also looks like not setting boundaries with people who don't treat you well punishment also looks like not allowing yourself to ask for help or take a trip because you feel like well I'm not going to take the trip until I lose the weight that's a punishment you're making access to goodness fun adventure whatever it is contingent upon your

performance and you're saying you are not entitled to this good thing until you perform better or are a different person in some way. How is that distinct from tying a particular reward to a particular outcome? Punishment is reactive. And when you're thinking about something like discipline, which is like after I do X, Y and Z, I am going. to reward myself, that's proactive. And discipline seeks to create structure, whereas punishment seeks to create pain. And so when you're lacerating yourself in the punitive place of, let's just go back to the 10 pounds, then you'll go on the trip. It's more of when you get it together and stop doing this, then you'll be able to. Whereas when you're disciplined and engaged

in your discipline, again, that feels good. Good. Punishment feels bad. Some of the other examples of punishment that you mentioned, rumination, dissociation, interpersonal turmoil, endless people pleasing, negative self-talk, and self-sabotaging opportunities that come up. Why, in particular, what is the psychology behind that last one, the self-sabotage, once you work so hard to achieve X? why then sabotage that thing that you spent potentially years trying to achieve and finally have? The answer is simple. It is that you don't believe you deserve it. If we go back to the top of the conversation of how to tell if your perfectionism is healthy or not, there are two guiding questions. How are you striving and why are you striving? And if the how is you're striving in a way that hurts you or others around you, that's maladaptive perfection.

And if the why is you're striving because you think achieving your goal is going to certify your belonging into some group or make you finally lovable or make you worthy of the kind of person who gets to go abroad or whatever it is that you're attaching to your performance, that's maladaptive perfectionism. I call this phenomenon a thousand daggers. This is backed in the research. When perfectionists who are in a maladaptive space get what they want when they achieve their goals, even when they surpass their goals, this wild thing happens, which is that they are not only not pleased, they are less happy and more displeased because there is no substitute for self-worth. And the process of winning forces you to realize that.

When you win and you still don't feel like you deserve to feel good, be around good people, enjoy your life, that's a really sobering experience. And it's one that is really common. And I have a lot of empathy for the person who has sacrificed so much and felt like as soon as I'm making six figures, then I can spend more time with my family and do this and do that because I'm going to feel like a real adult. Or as soon as I'm married, I can finally feel safe in my relationship because that's going to make me enjoy like a sense of stability. And when you're outsourcing all of that stuff, and then you achieve the goals that you think are going to deliver it to you. And you keep checking the mail and like there's nothing coming in the mail.

You're not feeling what you expected to feel. It's painful. It hurts. And what a lot of people do in that moment of pain and opportunity to say, oh, I was outsourcing something and I need to just focus this more internally is instead of sitting with that pain, they say, well, I guess it's not the best-selling book. I guess I need to level up. And then they just like immediately throw themselves and all their energy into a bigger, better, faster goal, thinking maybe this will be the thing. This will be the ticket. And of course it won't be. So at this point, we've defined perfectionism. We have outlined a framework for five types of perfectionists, and we've discussed

maladaptive ways in which perfectionism shows up, such as self-punishment. Let's shift the focus to solutions now. Let's talk about new thoughts that people can engage in when they catch their mind veering towards a maladaptive state. One point that you make is that counterfactual thinking is a cognitive reflex. It's instant, but we maybe should be wary of it. First of all, what is counterfactual thinking? Yes. Counterfactual thinking is when your brain creates alternative scenarios to what's actually happening. So there is a fact of the matter, which maybe, for example, is that I was just in a car accident and I am still alive.

a counterfact might be I was just a car accident and I could have died. So we have this really unique to our species' cognitive capacity to see and understand the reality at our feet and also imagine ways in which that reality could be improved and ways in which it could be worse. So it's the I could have or if only I would have. Exactly. And, according to research, we revert to counterfactual thinking for lots of reasons. It's a great reflex. It can help us prepare for the future, for example. So if you go on a hike and you're thinking, God, I wish I would have worn socks. My feet wouldn't be so cold. Then the next time you go hiking, you remember the socks. So there's a functionality to counterfactual thinking, but it can also

be really destructive if you allow it to spill into rumenum. rumination, rumination mistakes worrying for preparation. So there are upward counterfactuals in which you imagine a scenario in all the ways it could be improved and downward counterfactuals in which you imagine ways in which the scenario could be worse. And downward counterfactuals have the function of allowing you to be more grateful. They have what researchers call a mood repairing function. So that is, to use our example of the car accident, oh my God, I was in a car accident and I'm alive, but the counterfact to that is I could have died. And then you were just in this terrible thing that happened to you. You crashed your car. It might even be totaled. You might have

some injuries, but yet you feel grateful because your brain has the ability to understand that in another version of reality unfolding, you could have died. And so you're flooded with a sense of gratitude and energy and positive feelings in a way. Perfectionists often make upward counterfactuals in which they imagine a way a scenario could be improved. And in fact, more often than not, this is how perfectionists see the world. It's part of perfectionism. Perfectionism is an innate natural human impulse to understand we can see this counterfactual reality that is potentially better and potentially improved. And everybody has that. But perfectionists are people who experience the world through that lens more often

and the not. So perfectionists are seeing the world like that in a patterned way. And if you don't understand that, look, that's just a reflex. That's just a way that your brain works. So you're always going to be seeing an upward counterfactual. And that's not a bad thing. But being able to understand what to do with that counterfactual is really useful. Research has really created so much rich information about where to take these counterfactual thoughts. For example, if you're in a meeting and you say something that really wasn't received well in the meeting and you probably shouldn't have said, not because it wasn't received well, but because it wasn't thoughtful. It wasn't what you intended to say. So the mistake is really on you.

You might have the counterfactual of, oh, God, I could have just not said something in meeting, why did I say something? So just understanding, oh, my brain is experiencing a counterfactual, and there are lots of directions this can go in. Research has identified additive, next thoughts. So the next place you position your thoughts to go is, what can I add to this counterfactual scenario that's unfolding in my brain that can help me be in a solutions-oriented place? For example, maybe I can come to meetings in the future with a question in mind, or maybe I can email my team after the meeting if I have a question that I feel would be really purposeful to bring to the team. And additive thoughts after a counterfactual are really helpful because they create multiple solutions and multiple possibilities. And they lie in contrast to subtractive counterfactual thoughts, which is the way that most people will default.

into thinking about counterfactuals of a subtractive counterfactual pattern means that you just try to subtract something away from the situation. In this case, it would be, I'm just never going to talk in meetings again. That's it. And so the solution is only one solution, and it's to stop doing something or never do it again. And it's not really helpful because it just makes you feel like that's all you can do if you want to improve, it's just to stop something, which isn't really generative or powerful. Right. So there are other ways to think about counterfactuals if they're problem-based or character-based. For example, someone might say, if only I could have considered how much inventory we already had,

we wouldn't be having this budget problem versus a character-based counterfactual. which is if only I weren't such an idiot, we wouldn't be having this budget problem. You know, there are automatic counterfactual thoughts or elaborative. There are counterfactual thoughts which spur self-compassion and ones that spur punitive self-talk. And so there are all these ways to really put language around what's happening in your brain so that you can begin to understand that your perspective is a choice and the perspective you choose will help you either. feel better or worse and that it is better to feel better. I could get into this whole broaden and build theory, but I think it's a really powerful understanding to share. It's a great

theory by Dr. Barbara Fredrickson. Tying in this whole punishment doesn't work because punishment doesn't feel good and punishment creates pain is Dr. Barbara Fredrickson's broaden and build theory Her theory states that if you can get yourself feeling good, then that broadens which she calls your thought action repertoire. So if you're feeling good and having more positive thoughts, then you act more positively. And you know, it's a whole triangulation, right? Right. The thought action, it's the emotion, thought, and behavior triangle. Exactly.

So when we make a mistake, our impulse is often to. lacerate ourselves and say, I can't believe you did that. You should never do that again. You should never talk in the meeting again. Or you're such an idiot or whatever it is thinking the more pain we create, the more will motivate ourselves to get it together next time. Actually, the more self-compassion you give yourself, the better you feel. And the more you can, in Dr. Fredrickson's words, broaden and build your life. So she has so brilliantly said that feelings are not just end states. They're not just, oh, now I felt good. They're generative states. So it's now I felt good. And so I did other things that you do when you're in a positive good space. And when you're in a positive good space,

you tend to make positive good decisions. So the better you can get yourself feeling, the more your life expands. And I'll give you an example, if you have a really tough meeting and you're driving home in your car and you're just really beating yourself up over it in your head, you're going to get home and feel even more depleted, even worse than you felt in the beginning. You're not going to want to talk to anyone. You're not going to want to reach out. You're just going to kind of want to numb out. Whereas if you have a really tough meeting and you are compassionate with you. You're not going to want to reach out. You're just going to kind of want to numb out. Whereas if you have a really tough meeting and you are compassionate with yourself, which is a three-step resiliency building tool, and you're applying those three steps, then you're going to start to feel comforted, which is going to help you feel safe. And on the most basic level, feeling safe makes people feel good. And you're going to get home. And instead of being like, oh, this, I can't wait for this day to be over. I just want to fast forward the whole night and watch Netflix and eat a bunch of takeout. Instead of doing that, you're going to get home and say, okay, what do I need?

I don't want to make a really good nutritious meal. Or maybe you sit and make yourself some tea and just have a moment in which you say, okay, I'm going to text my friend Lisa. She always has a way of laughing about situations like this. And then you kind of do some things that don't immediately make you feel better, but they certainly don't make you feel worse. And you go to sleep at a reasonable hour and you wake up the next day. and you feel reset in a way.

Whereas on the punishing version, you numb out, stay up late watching TV, eat a bunch of takeout, like wake up the next day and just feel worse. And now that you're not numb, you still have your pain from yesterday to contend with. And now you have new pain, which is, oh, and now I feel gross because I spent all last night

just kind of zoning out. We'll come back to this episode in just a minute. But first, you mentioned there are three steps to achieving this emotionally healthier state? What are those three steps? Yes. So those three steps come from Dr. Kristen Neff's framework of self-compassion, which is common humanity, mindfulness, and kindness. And so we can start with kindness. And she very simply says to be kind to yourself, you have to acknowledge that you're in pain. Then you do something simple to make yourself feel comforted because it's hard to be in pain.

And she doesn't necessarily outline these steps. That's my spin on her work. But for example, that's just asking yourself, do I want a tea? Am I cold? Do I need a moment alone? You know, that's kindness. Kindness doesn't necessarily seek to immediately solve the problem. You're just like giving yourself some basic comfort.

All right. Then there's mindfulness. And mindfulness is understanding that whatever feeling, your feeling, let's call it disappointment. That is not all you feel. So you're not over identifying with any one thing. And the best tool that I can offer people when they feel something like disappointment, it's not a good question to say, how can I get rid of my disappointment? A much better, more useful question is, what else do I also feel? So you're not tasking yourself with trying to eradicate all your negative feelings or experiences, you're just turning your head a little bit and saying,

what else do I also feel? Do I also feel relief maybe that at least now I know, whatever the thing you know is that's disappointing you? Do I also feel excited about this event that I forgot is happening because I've been so focused on achieving this goal? Do I feel playful? Do I feel nervous? Do I feel tired? Do I feel excited? And the point is not trying to stack up all these positive emotions that you feel and try to get yourself like a pep rally. The point is to say, oh, disappointment is not all I feel and so that you can see your emotional landscape instead of this like one thing that is eclipsing the whole show. And the last component is common humanity. And that's understanding that you're not alone in a really deep and visceral way. So the best way that I can

explain this is, you know those grabber machines at an arcade that grab like a stuffed animal? Yeah, yeah, the claw machines. Common humanity is like in those moments where you're like, nobody understands what it is like to be me. This is so hard. I can't talk to anyone about this or I've talked to people about this and they still don't get it and you just feel isolated and stuck. It is as if a claw machine grabs you and plunks you down in a room with 50 other people who are all talking about the same kind of problem, right? which is maybe you were betrayed or you don't feel like you're ever going to become the person who you imagine in your head or you think things are taking too long or a constellation of all

of those things and just listening to all of those other human beings talking about that problem and how difficult it is and what it looks like for them is curative in itself because you start to be you start to have this experience of like oh I'm really not a lot of. You know, that's why AA is so curative in a way, because you're sitting in a room listening to other people who are struggling in so many of the same ways you're struggling and you understand like, oh, my problem that feels so uncommon and maybe even shameful is actually very common. It's a part of humanity. That's what common humanity means.

So that's why it's also healthy to talk about crises and problems like suicide and sexual abuse and things like that in the public forums so that people who are suffering with those things that are often taboo to talk about in our culture can understand that they're not alone. Well, we're coming to the end of our time. Are there any final thoughts that you want to leave with this community? Yes. The thought is about the Latin root of the word perfection. And that root is per facetre, per meaning complete and facer meaning done. And so what perfection means is completely done, whole, not flawless. And I don't believe that anybody is flawless, but I do believe that all human beings are whole. We all are completely done. We all have wholeness inside of

ourselves. There's perfection inside of yourself. And think of yourself as perfect in the same way that we talk to our kids or see nature or our best friends and say, this was perfect. This was the perfect day. Oh my God. She's so perfect. But we deny perfection in ourselves. I would like people to consider hitting the brakes on that denial and saying that I am already whole. And what that means to me is that when you were born, you were already complete as a human being. You didn't become more of a complete human being when you learned to spell or walk or when you became valedictorian or whatever fancy thing you did didn't make you more of a whole human being. And whole human beings have birth rights. And those birth rates are that you deserve all the joy, love, connection, dignity, and freedom.

right now as you are listening to this show as the most ideal, accomplished, shiniest version of you could. That version of you and you listening right now are both equally worthy of those things. That's what it means to have self-worth and to be whole and to be perfect. Thank you to psychotherapist Catherine Schaeffler. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Number one, perfectionists often procrastinate. And if you are the type of perfectionist who procrastinates, that means you might not get started

on your savings goals, your investing goals, your rental property goals, your side hustle building goals. You might not get started because you feel like the timing, quote unquote, isn't right. But that's a mistake. The simplest way to describe it is that they, want the conditions to be perfect before they start, which of course never happens, right? So, this is on the pro side, such a wonderful orientation because procrastinate and perfectionists are really thoughtful about everything they do. They are not impulsive, which is such an asset.

They take major efforts to prepare and come ready, and they see a situation from a 300-6, 60 degree angle. On the con side, this type can work towards, you know, all their preparative measures can run past the point of diminishing returns and they never actually end up executing because they're not perfectly ready. So remember, the timing will never be perfect. Throughout the years, I've received literally, I mean, not just hundreds, literally thousands, cumulatively, thousands of emails, DMs, messages from people who say, you know, I really want to do X, but I feel like it's just not the right time for all of these reasons. And it's never the right time.

It is never the right time. But so often people will look back and say, you know, I should have done that five years ago. People were emailing me in 2017 saying, hey, I really want to buy a rental property, but it's 2017. I should have done it five years ago. It would have been so much better if I had done it back in 2012. And now it's 2023. And people are saying the same thing. Oh, it's 2023.

I should have done it back in 2017. Five years ago was always the best time. Why not today? So key takeaway number one is perfectionism can lead to procrastination. and that is a form of self-sabotage. Don't let that hinder your goals or your ability to lead your best life. Now, key takeaway number two, there's a distinction between restoration and punishment.

Punishment looks like doing something that you know is going to hurt you. So I'll give you a really common example, which is staying up way past the time you mean to go to bed and you're watching TV. I don't have the stats on this, but I think 100% of human beings in the United States, at least have done this at some point where it's like, okay, I know I'm supposed to go to bed. I'm so tired, but I also need me time. So I'm just going to watch TV. But you've been doing this for the past few nights, for the past few weeks, which, oops,

it turned into months. And you're like stuck in a cycle that makes you feel like, and because, because, because, you're, Because you keep doing it, you keep feeling worse about doing it, and you keep feeling stuck. And the way to tell the difference between whether you're punishing yourself and whether you just need a moment of restoration to watch TV past your bedtime is that restoration feels good and punishment feels bad. if it were true restoration, you would feel restored, you would feel good. If you were doing a behavior and you don't feel restored and you don't feel good, you might want to examine whether you're actually in a cycle of punishment. Recognizing the difference between punishing yourself versus granting yourself a moment of restoration is often non-obvious.

Sometimes the exact same action or behavior could be. be punishment or restoration depending on the way in which you approach it. But recognizing the things that you do to sabotage your own progress versus the things you do to enhance your life, it's hard to recognize, but it puts you on a much stronger and more sustainable path. So that is the second key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three, there are two guiding questions that you should ask in order to understand whether or not your perfectionism is healthy. There are two guiding questions. How are you striving and why are you striving?

And if the how is you're striving in a way that hurts you or others around you, that's maladaptive perfectionism. And if the why is you're striving because you think achieving your goal is going to certify your belonging into some group or make you finally lovable or make you worthy of the kind of person who gets to go abroad or whatever it is, that you're attaching to your performance, that's maladaptive perfectionism. I call this phenomenon a thousand daggers.

This is backed in the research. And perfectionists who are in a maladaptive space get what they want when they achieve their goals. Even when they surpass their goals, this wild thing happens, which is that they are not only not pleased, they are less happy and more displeased because there is no sense.

substitute for self-worth. These two guiding questions are fantastic thought exercises for perfectionists or for people who suspect that they might have perfectionist tendencies because it helps you figure out what's driving your behavior? How do you strive in a way that's healthy? And how do you also get out of your own way in the moments in which you are sometimes unconsciously sabotaging your own progress? Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with psychotherapist, Catherine Morgan

Schaeffler. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please do three things. First, subscribe to the show notes. They're free. Affordanything.com slash show notes. You'll get a synopsis of the episode delivered hot and fresh to your inbox. Second, please share this episode with a friend or a family member.

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Gretchen Rubin is going to be on this podcast coming up very soon. She is absolutely brilliant, Yale-educated former attorney who, has written multiple New York Times bestselling books. She's been a guest on this podcast. She was one of our earliest guests back when a double-digit episode number. And she is returning. So make sure you are subscribed to the podcast. Make sure you're subscribed to the show notes. So you don't miss that upcoming episode. Really looking forward to it. Thank you again for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast. And I will catch you in the next episode.