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Everything you know about perfectionism is probably wrong

At the very least, it’s probably a flawed belief about perfectly coordinated office supplies, rigid rules, and high blood pressure. Perfectionism is a spectrum, and no matter where you exist on that spectrum, your story is important. 

So many women specifically are assigned the moniker of “perfectionist” as a way to diminish their worth or, worse, exploit their gifts. So when our Email Marketing Manager, Elizabeth, came across “The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control,” by Katherine Morgan Schafler, we were intrigued to learn more.

In this episode, Katherine dives in to:

• Why perfectionism has been uniquely weaponized against women

• The two main types of perfectionism and what they look like

• Whether or not you can have a “perfectionist phase”

• Why perfectionism is a spectrum and not a monolith

Katherine’s Links:

Perfectionistsguide.com

Katherinemorganschafler.com

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Transcript:

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

If you think about when perfectionism is acceptable for women, you might think about a Martha Stewart or a Marie Kondo, women who are publicly very ambitious, focused, perfectionistic, who have extremely high standards, but they have high standards being expressed in archetypal homemaker interests, which are not in direct competition of men. And so in those instances we say, “We love your perfectionism. We are going to syndicate it and monetize it and celebrate it.”

Tori Dunlap:

Hello, Financial Feminist. Welcome back to the show. I’m Tori Dunlap, your host, financial educator behind your favorite personal finance book, also called Financial Feminist. We love brand cohesion and Her First $100K, which is a financial education company that helps you fight the patriarchy while getting fucking rich. We are so excited about today’s guest, if you are really anybody, but especially somebody who identifies as a woman. And if you’ve ever been called a perfectionist and felt like it was a dirty word, it was like more an insult than a compliment or you felt like I don’t know if being a perfectionist is a good thing. This episode is for you. Katherine Morgan Schafler is a psychotherapist, speaker and author who recently released the Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control, A Path to Peace and Power. Katherine wrote this book for all the women who have just been told to pull back on their perfectionism and instead provides another path to embracing themselves as they are.

This episode truly blew my mind. I have always believed, especially after listening to multiple people talk about how perfectionism is the reason we can’t get shit done as women, or the reason that we’re holding ourselves back. It was actually so refreshing to talk to Katherine, who has a completely different idea, and she 100% convinced me. It turns out I have a very different definition of perfectionism than what it actually is. And Katherine dived into all different types of perfectionism, including adaptive and maladaptive, and you’re like, “I don’t know what either of those are.” Cool. Listen to the episode and some of the other types she discusses in her book. We get into how perfectionism is actually a superpower if you harness it correctly and how our views around perfectionism are of course incredibly gendered and biased against women.

We also talk about the downsides of perfectionism and especially how it can affect our relationship with our money. This is a delightful conversation. She also has the most soothing voice. Put it on as you’re falling asleep at night. It was just so comforting. You could tell she’s a fucking therapist. I was just like, “What do you need? I will tell you anything.” So I hope you enjoy this episode, and whether you’re a perfectionist or not, you’re going to learn something valuable about self-acceptance and about getting shit done. So let’s get into it. But first a word from our sponsors. Who’s blowing the bubble behind you?

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

I don’t know.

Tori Dunlap:

Are you in a hotel room?

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

No, I’m in my apartment.

Tori Dunlap:

Oh, it’s beautiful.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Thanks. It’s the gift of wallpaper.

Tori Dunlap:

I need you to come and decorate my house. This is gorgeous.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

I love decorating. I have a no beige rule.

Tori Dunlap:

No. Tell me why no beige.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Because color is so much more fun than beige, and especially if you live in New York City, you’re usually working with small spaces. You have to punch them.

Tori Dunlap:

Right. I tend to be more minimalist and maybe, I mean, I like color in the house. I don’t wear a lot of color, so that’s the difference for me. Do you feel like your interior design is similar to your fashion, your style?

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Well, today I am wearing a colorful thing, but no, my favorite uniform is jeans, like torn at the knee, worn in, and this really long, super oversized white shirt, and I can just wear that every day. Every season I throw a coat on if it’s cold, I wear sandals if it’s hot and I’m good to go.

Tori Dunlap:

That’s perfect. It’s very French. I like the person who’s googling French capsule wardrobe and it’s just basics are great. We’re so excited to have you here. You were an onsite therapist at Google. What got you into therapy in the first place? And then how did you end up at Google specifically?

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Well, I’m so excited to be here too, so thanks for having me. I’ve been really looking forward to this conversation for a while. I always wanted to be a therapist since I realized that that was a job and I had the language for it. I think a lot of kids would be so well served to just hear the names of different jobs, understanding that you can be a creative director or a sneaker designer or something other than these Halloween costume jobs, which are police officer, teacher, fireman, whatever. It’s like there’s so many options. And I was obsessed with Oprah from a really, really young age. I used to switch watching Oprah and Batman because both came on at four o’clock and Oprah trumped Batman, but on the commercials of Oprah, I would watch Batman, the cartoon. And she just had on so many therapists and their job seemed so interesting to me.

And so that is what kind of planted the seed. I got into Google because they were creating a pilot program where they wanted to see what would happen if we offered 10 sessions of free counseling on site to our employees, would they take advantage of it? And the answer was a resounding yes. The program was extremely successful and they launched it all over the world and London and Mountain View and everywhere else. So that was really fun because Google’s a really international population and the age ranges are all over the place and everybody there thinks in a particular way, typically outside of the box. And so it was wonderful work.

Tori Dunlap:

Does that feel different than what you do now or did that somehow confirm what you wanted to do? Because I find that so interesting of, I think there’s maybe this stereotype of who goes to therapy, or at least maybe I believe there’s a stereotype of who ends up in therapy
. A lot of my male friends will not go to therapy and they just won’t do it. So what did that clientele look like at Google that was different maybe than what we all assume the kind of person that would be attracted to therapy is?

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Well, so I live in New York City and I had a professor in grad school who said, “Raise your hand if you are from New York.” And a couple people raise their hands and he said, “Raise your hand if you are a citizen of New York.” And people are like, “what do you mean?” And he’s like, “If you’ve had a therapist since you’ve been in middle school.” New York City and therapy, it’s just so common here and embraced that everybody kind of goes to therapy who lives in this city. But that said, I have worked in a lot of different clinical settings. I’ve worked in a rehab, I’ve worked with kids who are wards of the state in California who’ve been severely abused and neglected in foster care and are then put in residential treatment. I used to have a practice on Wall Street. I worked in a lot of different settings.

And once you get past maybe two or three barriers of entry, which include affordability and the gender thing is huge because there is a lot of shame around men seeking help. I mean, I could write a whole book about what happens when men cry in front of me in therapy. I mean, I’m not even going to allow myself to start talking about it because it would eclipse this whole conversation. But what was interesting about Google that I really learned from was that nobody had to seek me out. So nobody had to do the research to find me. Nobody had to commute to get to my office and nobody had to pay for this session. And at Google, most of the people were really into it and committed, but I would say like 30% no showed and canceled a lot.

And that never happens in my private practice when people are commuting and investing their time and also paying for it and have also done the legwork to find me. So I really learned a lesson about allowing people to invest in their own healing and help and not doing every single thing for somebody. And Google incorporated that into their intake process of making it just a touch harder so that people could feel more invested in the process. So that was one interesting element that made working at Google different than anywhere else.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah. It’s so interesting to think about if all of the barriers or some of the barriers are taken away, you have to be of a certain privilege to work at Google and to get those services in the first place. But yeah, the cost isn’t there. It’s not prohibited. Yeah. I am just having trouble finding a therapist in Seattle, especially at post COVID or hopefully at the end of COVID, everybody’s going to therapy, which is great, but very difficult to find a therapist. Very difficult to find one who takes my insurance, and I am in the financial position where I could afford one if they didn’t take my insurance. But then if you don’t have any of the barriers anymore, you don’t have skin in the game’s, right? You don’t have skin screen to necessarily show up. So yeah, it’s really interesting. It’s like when I started of my fitness journey would pay to go to bar classes, and that was my way of like, well, I’m so frugal that I don’t want to waste this money, and that’s how I got my ass to go and actually do it.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I really want to echo that sentiment of it is hard to find a therapist. There’s a real shortage right now, and anyone who’s looking to find the right fit has all my empathy. And I just want to say to, even if it’s just one person listening, keep going. Even if it takes you four times as long as you thought it is worth it to find the right fit. And I know that it’s hard. Every single person has echoed that sentiment to me.

Tori Dunlap:

So you wrote The Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control, hell of a title, love it. You wrote this specifically for women. What do you notice this differences between men and women who identify or who are identified as by others as perfectionists? And do you feel like women are more often named perfectionists?

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

So the difference is sense of blame and subsequent sense of shame. And when women are identified as perfectionists, it is immediately problematic. It comes along with a subtext of let’s talk about how to level you out. Let’s talk about how to help you define balance. Let’s talk about why you’re doing so much. Why can’t you just relax and take it easy and… And when men are identified as perfectionists, it comes with the subtext of he is such a visionary, God he’s focused, God he’s professional, he is on it. And so there’s this immediate cliche, annoying, raggedy, just like are we still talking about this double standard when it comes to ambitious women who are seeking power or influence in any way? And the word perfectionist is a highly gendered term, and it is an implicit marker of how we are expressing misogyny in our culture for all the reasons that I dedicate a whole chapter to in the book called Perfectionism as Disease, Women as Patients Balance as Cure.

And if you think about when perfectionism is acceptable for women, you might think about a Martha Stewart or a Marie Kondo, women who are publicly very ambitious, focused, perfectionistic who have extremely high standards. But they have high standards being expressed in archetypal homemaker interests which are not in direct competition of men. And so in those instances we say, “We love your perfectionism. We are going to syndicate it and monetize it and celebrate it. And it’s amazing because you are talking about wedding planning and brunch in a pinch and how to tidy up.” But if you look at a Serena Williams or an Anna Wintour or any kind of woman that is not immediately trying to be bubbly, palatable, who’s trying to hide or subvert in some way, her sense of assertiveness, her desire to win her nature, you can see just the risk is bypassed into immediate cost.

And not just the cost of the emotional weight of being perceived and treated like there’s something wrong with you, but also literal costs like Serena Williams that’s literally incurs penalties for asserting herself to, I don’t know, sports stuff, but whatever the tennis person is, the umpire or referee or whatever. Whereas I use so many examples in my book of men who have done and said so many worse things and they have incurred zero consequence at all. So I hate that I had to address that. And I had this conversation with my editor, maybe we’re moving past this because I wrote it in the pandemic and it felt like so much was changing and there was so much-

Tori Dunlap:

I don’t think we have.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

No, I know, I know. But there were moments when I was like, “Maybe I don’t need to dedicate 50 pages to this one thing,” because I wanted to talk about so much in the book and everything you dedicate a page to is a page you cannot write about something else. And so I really had to weigh how heavy do I want this to be? And it ended up being it has to be heavy because it’s real and we’re really having to contend with all this stuff still on a daily, hourly, minute basis
.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah, I think there’s no way you can remove gender and stereotypes around the masculine and feminine roles in society and perfectionism. You talked about this feeling of shame, I literally say probably on a weekly basis to somebody, the quote from Elizabeth Gilbert that perfectionism is fear and stilettos. Is that something you also subscribe to that this idea of perfectionism is the thing we’re doing because we’re afraid or scared of failure, afraid of looking like we’re a fraud? I feel that in my own life when I had perfectionist tendencies, it was me just striving for excellence because what happens if I don’t achieve that?

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Yes, I understand that perspective and I think that it is true in part, but I take a much broader elastic approach to perfectionism and that’s a research based approach. And in the research world for the past few decades, we have been studying what’s called adaptive perfectionism. So there’s adaptive perfectionism, which is a healthy kind of perfectionism, and then there’s maladaptive perfectionism, which is what Elizabeth Gilbert is talking about, the kind of perfectionism that’s really destructive. And if you go back all the way to when perfectionism first popped up in psychological literature, it presented as this really wonderful thing. And that’s what I subscribe to. I flip the entire paradigm. I want people to forget everything they think they know about perfectionism, what it means to be a perfectionist and get on board with a new idea, which is that this is the starting place for the idea. Let’s assume as women that there is nothing wrong with us.

So let’s just start there on that wild crazy assumption that there might not be anything wrong with you. And that not only is there nothing wrong with you, but the thing that you think or that because everybody keeps fucking telling you is so bad about you that you’re focused, that you have this sometimes myopic desire to get something done, to pursue a goal that you can’t let it go. That that is your strength. And being a perfectionist is just being a romantic or an activist or an artist. These are enduring identity markers. And the research backs this up. If you identify as a perfectionist, it is more likely than not that you will hold onto that identity throughout your whole life. That’s why people don’t say, “Oh, I went through a kind of perfectionism this week,” in the same way that we’re like, “Oh, after college I went through kind of a depression or I was depressed ish over the holidays.”

Tori Dunlap:

Or I went through a funk. That’s always the one. Yeah, I was in this funk this week or today.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

But perfectionism is experienced in much more of a visceral, deeper way. It is part of who we believe we are. And so when you talk about perfectionism in this totally binary, it’s bad, evil, toxic, we need to get rid of it, we need to exercise it, you’re actually talking about the person. You cannot separate the construct from the person. And I don’t believe in eradication as a strategy for growth. It is not a smart or efficacious strategy. It doesn’t work to try to get rid of parts of yourself that are just parts of yourself in the same way that I wouldn’t tell someone who’s a romantic to just don’t believe in love so much. Just believe in love 75% of the time, not all the time. That’s what people tell perfectionists and it drives me nuts. They’re like, “Just don’t have such high standards. Just don’t sweat the small stuff so much or be laid on purpose or get a be on purpose.”

It’s like you go be late on purpose. That’s not what I want to do with my life. Being able to understand that the way I see perfectionism is that it is natural and innate human impulse that every single person has. We see the realities plunked down in our laps. We see an ideal ahead of us, ways to improve something, make it better, change it. And perfectionists are people who see that gap and have an active compulsion to try to bridge the gap more often than not. So calling yourself a perfectionist speaks to a pattern of doing that in one or more areas of your life. And there are lots of ways to express perfectionism. That’s another myth about perfectionism that we get wrong. We think of it as a type A person is the perfectionist, and that’s one kind of perfectionism, that’s behavioral perfectionism. But perfectionism can also play out emotionally.

It can play out interpersonally, wanting to be perfectly liked or perfectly understand others. It can play out cognitively, wanting to perfectly understand why didn’t I get hired? Why did that person leave me? It can play out in all these different ways that we don’t understand. And we talk about perfectionism like we know it so well and we totally get it when we are in the infancy of understanding this construct. And so that’s why I tell people that it’s not that everything you think about perfectionism is wrong. It’s that it is wildly incomplete.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah. But I think I would’ve identified, I know I identified as a perfectionist, probably high school, college, and then it was really becoming an entrepreneur where I realized I didn’t have the quote unquote luxury of perfectionism fellow author to author. At some point, you have to submit a draft, you have to submit the book. And is it the most perfect book? No. And weirdly, releasing that idea of being perfect allowed me, I think to be more successful. So how do you see people like me for example, being this high achiever, but also there’s certain amounts of probably perfectionism that I still have inside of me, but also I don’t have this for me, what feels like a disillusionment that everything’s going to be perfect, but maybe my definition’s wrong. I don’t know. How do you see that juxtaposition?

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Yeah, it’s a great question. And I think that’s the colloquial definition of perfectionist is a perfectionist is someone who wants all things to be perfect at all times. And that’s not true. That’s not true. Perfectionists, for example, are 100% with average with certain stuff, just not the stuff that they most care about. So one thing that we get wrong about perfectionism, perfectionist and mental health in general is that we think it’s pervasive, that it applies to everything and it’s not. It’s highly context dependent, which is why you can be a perfectionist and have exacting standards at work and then come home to a place that looks like it just got ransacked.

So what you are describing is healthy relationship with perfectionism. I imagine that after you wrote your book and completed that goal, you did not chill and relax and say, “Now I want to coast in life.” You continued to strive because perfectionists are striving towards an ideal. They are not striving towards goals. They set goals and they want to achieve goals, but the goals that they set represent the ideals that they hold. And healthy perfectionists understand that ideals are just meant to inspire. They are not meant to be achieved. By definition, they cannot be achieved. And so research shows it’s not the striving, it’s not perfectionistic, strivings, which endanger our wellbeing, it’s our perfectionistic criticisms. It’s the way that we lacerate ourselves when we don’t do the thing. So in the example that you gave me, it might
have hurt you in some way to say, “Oh, I wish I could just spend an eternity on this book, but I’m going to turn it in.”

That is healthy perfectionism. But even if you turned in the book on time, everything was fine, whatever else, the book comes out and the whole time you’re just lacerating yourself with, “It’s not good enough. I’m not good enough. I should have done that faster. I should have done it better. I should have done it in this way. I should have done it in that way.” That’s what makes perfectionism unhealthy, it’s whether you punish yourself or not.

Tori Dunlap:

It’s almost like, it just occurred to me, it’s not I want to be the perfect version of myself. For me, it’s like I want to be the best version of myself, and I am not delusional enough in thinking there’s going to be a perfect version of me and that I’m going to get it right 100% of the time. But my goal is to show up tomorrow, hopefully slightly better than I did the day before, or at least I’ve learned something about how to strive towards that. So yeah, that’s a really helpful definition for me because yeah, I was working under perfectionism is just I want to be perfect and I don’t feel that way.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Yeah. No, perfectionism is, I want to dedicate my life towards achieving an ideal that I know is never going to be achieved. And Dr. Alfred Adler, who’s the person who first… You know him because he came up with the idea of the inferiority complex. He’s like from back in the day, Freud psychology, he called that a final fiction. And so he said, “Perfectionists are all striving towards this final fiction, and they will strive towards it until they die.” So an example I give is if a perfectionist wants to solve world hunger and they move that needle from 30% of people in the world are starving to only now 2% of the people in the world are starving, a perfectionist will still meet that 2% with the same vigor and dedication and energy as they did when they had achieved nothing. Because that’s what makes a perfectionist feel alive is that that notion that I have found something worthy of a lifetime of striving.

That’s why I always gravitated towards perfectionists in my practice because I love being around that energy. And I love that you can’t get rid of your perfectionism because it’s the kind of thing that if you could at first, because it’s so hard to learn to manage, we would all get rid of it, right? Because it’s like it’s the same as love in a way. It’s our first relationships are rarely clean and healthy and good, and it takes a while to learn who we are, what we need, what the boundaries are, what we want, what our style is. But once you do, it’s such a celebrated thing. And so that’s how I feel about it anyway.

Tori Dunlap:

You mentioned this earlier, but I wanted to come back to it. You’ve said your problem is not that you’re a perfectionist, your problem is how you respond to your perfectionism. Can you talk to me more about that?

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Yes. So most people default to punishment as a way to discipline themselves. And we conflate punishment with accountability. We conflate punishment with discipline. We conflate punishment with rehabilitation. And punishment is none of those things. Punishment doesn’t work. Punishment makes everything worse. And the way that I define punishment is a punishment just lays pain on whatever is already there. So punishments are designed to create more pain with the idea that if we are in enough pain, that’s going to wake us up and we’re going to emotionally whip ourselves into shape, and that’s what’s going to make us better people. And what actually happens is that when you don’t feel good, you don’t make good choices. And so the more pain we’re in, the more we contract, instead of expanding and taking risks and being more of ourselves, we just become smaller and smaller and smaller.

And it’s like if you imagine waking up and let’s say you’re trying to quit smoking, you wake up, you run five miles, you get home, walk in the door, you’re not going to light a cigarette because you feel good. You treated yourself well, you’re in a healthy space, you’re making healthy choices. You want to keep that momentum going. When you punish yourself, all you’re doing is disrupting momentum and making yourself feel like shit. And when we feel like shit, we make bad choices because we feel like we have nothing to lose. It’s the same as if you smoked one cigarette, then the next hour you might be like, “Well, I’ll start over tomorrow.” That’s what everybody does in a way because it’s like I already messed up and punishments or anything that you do to withhold something that will help you or any time you do something that is going to hurt you. And punishments are largely unconscious. That’s the other part of them. It’s not like we’re walking around going, “How can I punish myself today?” It’s that-

Tori Dunlap:

Literally beating your head against the wall or something. I think of Dobby from Harry Potter where he’s like, “I have to punish myself,” and he beats his head against the wall.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Right. It’s like we think that, let’s say we didn’t get to use your book example, let’s say you meant to write one morning and you didn’t get to writing, and then you feel bad. And your perfectionism is the thing in you that makes you want to write. It is compelling you to write, and it is making it so that if you don’t write that book, you’re not going to feel whole. In the same way that an artist who can’t create art, it doesn’t matter what else they do or how successful they are, they’re never going to feel like their full selves unless they’re creating art. So your perfectionism is the impulse that makes that desire in you. How you respond to it, if you say for example, “Oh, I didn’t write today, I am a bad person. I messed up. I’m being lazy. I’m being this.” Speaking to yourself badly is one way to punish yourself, and it’s usually the most popular way.

Then you adopt an identity on a narrative of someone who is bad. It’s a false identity that’s not true. And what we believe about bad people is that they don’t deserve good things. So you’re unconsciously now thinking of yourself as a bad person who does not deserve good things. And so you make it harder for yourself to get up the next day and write, because that would make you feel good to do that. And again, so much of this is unconscious, and that might look like having two glasses of wine at dinner, even though that’s going to disrupt your sleep and then you sleep in for the hour that you were intending to write and…

Tori Dunlap:

Right. I mean, that’s being human. Yeah. I think the interesting thing that you said is the difference between I did this versus I am. Right? The I am is the identity, the I did is potentially statement of fact, right? Yeah. I did drink two glasses. I did not write today, versus I’m a failure because I didn’t write, or I’m lazy, or I’m not committed.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Exactly. Exactly. One is an event and the other is an identity. And the opposite of punishment is being compassionate wi
th yourself. And another reason why we punish ourselves is because we don’t understand what the alternative is. Perfectionists and people who really have strong dreams, goals, whatever, they’re accountable people, they want to do the right thing. And so we want to find discipline. And we don’t realize that self-compassion is the entry point to accountability. We think self-compassion is letting ourselves off the hook, and that’s not true. And so I use Dr. Kristin Neff, who’s this brilliant researcher, her three-pronged model of self-compassion, and really try to drill down on the notion that self-compassion is a three-pronged skill. It’s a resiliency building skill that you must learn if you want to grow. It’s not optional. You have to learn how to do this. And it’s not just being super polite to yourself or letting yourself off the hook, and it’s so effective, it’s so effective.

Tori Dunlap:

Something you said that struck me that I didn’t expect to ask you, but you said the difference between accountability and punishment. And as someone who is a public person in the age of social media where it feels like a lot of people get quote unquote canceled or get screamed out for… I have a lot of people with a lot of opinions every day tell me what they think. And some of that is very necessary. And I’ve watched either other friends or other people I follow, get really good feedback from people, and sometimes it just feels like I want to watch this person burn. And so I just want to call out accountability versus punishment.

Accountability, it seems to me is like, I want you to be better because I want to see you succeed. So here’s something that you might want to try differently versus punishment, which is actually, I just want to see you burn. I don’t care. You did this thing and I think it’s horrible and I just want to see you suffer. And of course, there’s certain variations of this like Harvey Weinstein, yeah, rot in hell. But there’s other people that are not doing, of course, as egregious things. And my hope is that if you are given this feedback or this opportunity that you do learn and you do engage, but from people who want to see you be better as opposed to tear you down. So I just thought that was really interesting of accountability versus punishment.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Yeah, I mean, it’s a great point that you’re making in terms of if we want to guide ourselves away from punishment, asking if we’re being punitive with others, am I doing this to bring this person more pain. And with ourselves because you can help someone, like pain is not a necessary agent for change. It is not necessary at all to be accountable. If we even just take punishment is always 100% of the time reactive whereas accountability is proactive and reactive. So you do not have to be a miserable suffering person to be accountable. And in fact, so much of the work of accountability is beforehand is that preventative nature of ourselves. And so I spell out the differences in the book, but I think language is really powerful. And being able to get away from punitive patterns with yourself and other people is about being able to anchor yourself in new language that really helps guide you towards what you actually want, which is to inspire change in others or to be helpful and to do the same with ourselves. And you can do that really compassionately.

Tori Dunlap:

Because we want to see ourselves or others succeed. It’s not we want to watch them suffer. And I think that often gets inflated as the same thing as it’s like, oh, well, this person said something racially charged, and so I need to torch them. I’m like, “I hope that hopefully people have enough grace for me that they understand that typically honest mistake if something happens and I want to be better and I want to have this community want me to be better as opposed to burning.” And then the same thing with me personally, right? I’m doing it because I want myself to be better, not because I believe I am shit and worthless and deserve punishment. I think that’s really interesting.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Yes. Can I say one more thing that you’re bringing up which is important, which is that punishment doesn’t teach anyone anything except how to avoid the source of the punishment. If you hit your kids because they stole something from the pantry, when they’re not supposed to take something from the pantry, they’re not going to not take stuff from the pantry anymore. They’re going to not take stuff from the pantry when you’re watching because you punished them. And so punishment is lazy. It doesn’t do anything but add pain and teach the person who you’re trying to punish to avoid you. And if you’re punishing yourself, the way that you then avoid yourself is by engaging in numbing behaviors, behaviors that just numb you out to everything you’re thinking and feeling so that you can have respite from this person, which is you, that is just laying in on you.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah, no, it’s so powerful. Or yeah, you shut down. I’m thinking of punishment, whether that’s physical or emotional. Again, if we’re using this metaphor of getting canceled on the internet, and again, all of this is with an asterisk, which is that there’s variations of this, right? There’s variations of behavior that is cancelable versus non-cancelable. But I have plenty of friends who have withdrawn from public life, who have seriously, they can’t bring their full selves because they’re so scared of making a mistake again. And I feel this sometimes too of I, yeah, don’t want to show up on the internet sometimes as the full me, because just any other human being, I’m going to make a mistake. And what if somebody sees that mistake and decides to not allow me grace for it? So yeah, it’s something that I think about a lot. And you’re exactly right.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Yeah, the internet is the source of your punishment, and so you want to avoid that.

Tori Dunlap:

And it’s just a matter of grace. Grace for yourself, grace for other people, and also an assumption of positive intent of assuming, I hope people assume and I hope of people, you’re trying your best, you’re trying your best. I’m assuming that you meant something that if this was harmful, I’m assuming you didn’t mean to harm me.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

And that you want to learn, that you want to learn, and that you don’t need to be raked across the coals to learn a lesson. None of us do, and it doesn’t make us remember it more or anything. It impedes our learning and it makes us say, “This isn’t worth it. This isn’t worth it because this hurts me so much.” And then we just get stuck and we don’t actually grow.

Tori Dunlap:

Can we put a financial lens on this? Because this is another thing I hear a lot is I’m very outspoken about Dave Ramsey. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Dave Ramsey’s work, but it’s very shame-based. And one of the things he does a lot is just shame people for their choices. And some people have told me, “Oh yeah, Dave Ramsey, he’s terrible, but it works.” And I’m like, “But you also have unresolved financial trauma that he has caused you.” So I think the
re’s this narrative in a financial context that’s like, I have to be really strict with myself and then I punish myself when I don’t spend money mindfully or when I overspend or go over my budget. So is there a better way to deal with specifically financial perfectionism?

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Yeah. Well, I think understanding the mechanics of shame, guilt says, “I feel bad about what I did,” and shame says, “I feel bad about who I am.” And if the metric that you’re using to gauge your success is just behavior. So let’s say you want to change the fact that you are overspending and you shame somebody, you might change their behavior, but that’s not a useful question to ask, is the behavior changed? The useful question to ask is what is the point of managing your money so that you feel empowered so that you perhaps enjoy your life so that you empower others so that whatever the reason is for you to have financial autonomy and choices over your spending, you are inhibiting that still. When people feel shamed, they might stop doing one behavior. I really learned this working in a rehab, you might stop drinking because you feel ashamed, but then you’re going to start overeating or you’re going to start picking back up with this toxic person.

So it’s not the behavior that you’re looking to change as much as the dynamic of I am doing something that does not reflect my values and the person who I want to be. And so when people say, “Oh, this works. They got them to stop doing this.” You have to think about cross addictions and cross damage and what your goal is. You’re not a lab rat. The goal is not to just get you to stop doing something, it’s to help you to be all of who you are, which is a very complex expression, and you need freedom to do that, and you cannot be free and be in shame at the same time.

Tori Dunlap:

Totally. Yeah. It is this feeling of almost tough love, and it’s like that’s again, the accountability versus punishment that you were talking about before and also shame.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

One of the best compliments someone gave me about this book was this feels like the difference between strong love and tough love.

Tori Dunlap:

What do you define as the difference?

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Well, I mean, I wasn’t defining it. It was this person and they were saying, “I feel that you really care and that you’re trying to get the message across, and there’s boldness in that expression, but you’re not trying to do it in a way that makes me feel beat up afterwards.”

Tori Dunlap:

It’s very similar to what I try to do with my work where I’m like, “I feel so passionate about this in a way that hopefully will motivate you, but not in a way that’s going to make you feel like shit.”

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Yeah. And it’s a hard balance to strike, and I don’t think any of us get it perfectly, and that’s okay. But back to your original point of if your intention is mostly lined up with that, I mean, even just that you operate with that intention is so beautiful to me. That you hold awareness and use some of your energy to hold awareness of, I really want to try to help people understand. I do not want to do that at the cost of their wellness. That’s a really powerful place to be.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah, I can so tell you’re a therapist and you’re mirroring me, so thank you. I appreciate it. Some of the feedback when we talked with our team members about perfection, and even in conversations we’ve had with previous guests, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Tiffany Dufu’s work where she wrote a book called Drop the Ball, is that there’s even anxiety that comes up with the idea of letting stuff go.

So even if you’re like, “Okay, it’s time to manage this and talk well to myself and give myself compassion,” and also I cannot drop the ball, and I’ve talked about this with actually a guest, a couple guests. But there’s this feeling of, oh, if somebody calls me and they’re struggling, I’m like, “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. Take a day off. Be kind to yourself. But I have to keep going.” And I was talking about pandemic weight with another guest of somebody else gains weight, and they’re struggling with their body image. And I’m like, “Oh, well, pandemic’s hard. Of course you were, but my COVID 20 is absolutely unacceptable.” So how do we deal with letting go and do you have some tools for people experiencing some anxiety around that perfectionism?

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Yeah. Well, I don’t know that I would call that perfectionism as much as abandoning. I think familiarity in my opinion, is the most dangerous feeling because when something is clearly wrong for us in a way that is unfamiliar, it kind of comes into the room on a silver platter. You’re like, “Oh, I know this is bad.” But familiarity is comforting, and we don’t care if the comfort, when our stress response is activated, you don’t care if the comfort is good or bad for you. All you register is comfort. And so abandoning what’s familiar to you, which for many people, and I include myself in this, are unhealthy patterns of responding to stress and unhealthy coping mechanisms. When you let that go, that in itself causes so much friction and it causes your whole brain and system to reorganize itself. And that’s not what we’re wired to do.

Your brain wants a streamlined experience. That’s why Uber is popular because you don’t have to pay at the end. It’s streamlined, right? It’s like when you disrupt the streamline, even when you’re disrupting it with something that you know is good and healthy, the disruption will cost you. And what it costs you is a sense of what you think is peace, which is actually just familiarity and numbing. And that looks like anxiety. And anxiety is just a buzzing energy that says, “What’s going on? Something’s different, something’s happening,” and that’s totally normal, and that’s a part of it, and nobody can avoid that. And so just normalizing that letting go of what’s familiar is so hard. It’s going to continue to be hard every time you do it in life. And we all do it in cycles over and over and over again. And then there’s one specific tool that you can use, which is taking advantage of something that you’re describing, which is called psychological distance.

And this is the phenomenon where your bestie can call you and be like, “I’m upset about this and I need to take a day off.” And you can clearly see, listen, just take one day off, everyone’s going to survive, everything’s going to be fine. Because you have psychological distance from that person’s issue to what you believe is the best choice. And one kind of little trick to give yourself psychological distance is instead of saying, “What do I need right now,” is you say, “What does Tori need right now?” And speak about yourself in the third person.

And when you do that, there’s a little bit of distance, just enough to where the doors open a jar where it was previously closed, and you can kind of begin to see a little
bit more from a solutions oriented perspective. But I would just say that changing is hard and it’s easier to not change. And the problem is perpetuated by this thing that drives me nuts in commercial wellness, which is talking about letting go as if it’s immediately empowering. And it has not been for me, it’s been hard to deal with the fact that people are pissed when you don’t answer their emails.

It’s hard to understand that because you weren’t very responsive or you took the day off, somebody noticed that, and now you didn’t get offered the opportunity that you’ve been working for the whole quarter. That is hard and there are real consequences. But when you get 30,000 feet in the air and look at those consequences through the lens of, why am I working in that way? Why am I doing this? Because I want to feel alive, because I want to feel my full self because I want to do all that stuff. If you want to sustain your success and enjoy it, you need to be rested. You need to feel like yourself. You need to have premium quality energy. And so it’s a real long game, short game. If you’re in something for the short game, there are moments when it’s appropriate. I believe I’m the only therapist that’s going to say this, but it’s appropriate to burn yourself out a little bit when there’s a clear time constraint and you are trying to punch to a goal.

Tori Dunlap:

I did it for my book. Yeah. I literally told myself, I’m like, “We’re putting it all out on the field. We’re never doing this again, but we are sprinting to the finish.” And that’s 100% what happened.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Yeah. And there are moments in life when you choose to do that. And I don’t believe in talking about life like it’s not real. If you’ve just had a kid and you’re trying to do this and then you want to do… Something’s going to give, and you might say, “I’m going to splice this part of my life away for a moment just in order to get this goal.” But that has to be really short term, and you can’t cheat and you can’t do that short term thing over and over again in a patterned way. There are exceptions, is what I’m saying. There are exceptions to every rule when you need to drill down on something. But yeah, it’s not immediately empowering. It’s hard. It confuses people. It costs you opportunities, and so it goes.

Tori Dunlap:

Well, and I think, like you said, you can’t sustain that long term. And that’s the thing I’ve really realized. I joke that my ambition is a drug. It’s part of the reason I am where I am. And it’s also the thing that is very addictive, where I’m like, “Okay, if I rest,” and then I’m like, “Oh, I wasn’t able to answer that reporter’s phone call when I could have been on the New York Times, or I wasn’t able to go do an Instagram live and make X amount of sales or connect with X amount of people.” And I’ve really had to, and I still continue to struggle with that of how do I balance all of my goals and my ambition and also understanding that I can’t just constantly be in production mode all the time.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Yeah. And I talk about that in the book, in the context of balance is not real. I don’t know one balanced woman. And it is an idea. It has replaced the prince in our modern day fairytales when we were all little girls, we were told that one day a prince was going to come and rescue us. And as soon as that prince got there, as long as we were virtuous and made the most out of being captured or in some terrible situation, and we did everything we would were supposed to do, we were going to be saved and everything would be happily ever after. And that’s like how we talk about balance to women now. It’s like, listen, I know you’re stressed completely the fuck out, and you’re doing so many things that you shouldn’t actually be doing because the division of labor is totally skewed.

But if you just keep doing this, one day, it’s going to feel like a seatbelt snapping into place, and you’re just going to have it together. As soon as the holidays are over, as soon as school’s out, as soon as this, as soon that, as soon as you publish the book, as soon as this. And it’s like balance is always one step ahead. It’s not real. And we don’t notice that it never arrives because we are too busy blaming ourselves for its absence. And this goes back to the idea of you’re not doing something wrong. Nobody is balanced, nobody is getting it right all the time. It just doesn’t happen, it just doesn’t work like that. That’s not life.

Tori Dunlap:

It’s the myth that we’re sold that women can have at all.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

That anybody can have it all.

Tori Dunlap:

Sure. Yeah. If I’m somebody listening and I identify as a perfectionist, what is one thing that I can start doing today, this week to relieve some of that pressure or to better manage it?

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

So I think perspective shifts are really helpful, and I offer a bunch of them in the perfectionist guide. But the biggest one is I think looking at the root of the word perfect. And if we take it back to its Latin root, you get per, complete and fectus, do or done. So when we say something is perfect, what we’re really trying to express is that it is completely done. There’s not one more thing you could add to it to make it better. So if you think of the sound of someone you love laughing, that sound is probably perfect to you. You’re not like, “Oh, that is such a good laugh except for the end part where they giggle a lot. If they could just tone down that giggle,” and no, that laugh is perfect.

Tori Dunlap:

For me, it’s the part where I snort at the end and start crying. If you get me really laughing, I can’t breathe. And so I end up snorting and then I end up just fully crying.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

When that happens, whenever I see those noises, and that always makes me laugh more like that is the perfection of it. And so we use completeness to connote perfection all the time. When we see someone who we don’t know, we say, “That person is a perfect stranger.” You’re not saying they’re a flawless stranger, you’re saying they’re a complete stranger to you. And so perfection is about wholeness and a sense of completion. It is not about flawlessness and perfectionists are actually not seeking flawlessness, they’re seeking wholeness. And wholeness is already a part of you. It’s already inside of you.

And the way that I explain this is you are already a whole human being. That was the case the second you were born. And that means that by virtue of being a human being, you are worthy of all the love, dignity, freedom, joy, and connection that any human being could possibly deserve. So if you think of the most ideal accomplished version of you and you who sits here today listening to this podcast, those two people are equally worthy of the most best, most wonderful, love, joy, connection, dignity, and freedom. Now, I don’t think that everyone is just automatically worthy and entitled t
o everything. For example, in my opinion, respect is earned.

I don’t just give my respect away to people. I need to be impressed by your leadership, by your commitment to a value system that I think is worthy of respect. But dignity on the other hand, is not earned. Dignity means I am always going to treat you a human being. And dignity is a birthright. And to me, joy is a birthright, right? Pleasure, being worthy of love is a birthright. The idea that you are free, freedom, that is a birthright, connection, that is a birthright. And so you have no hand in your self-worth. Those are the things that we’re talking about when we talk about self-worth. What do you deserve? Another way to say, I am worthy of this is I deserve this. And we, especially as women, have a big problem with feeling like we deserve certain things because nobody wants to feel entitled.

We want to earn it. But if you’re trying to earn your way to things that are actually your fundamental birthright as a human being who is already whole and perfect to begin with, if you’re trying to earn your way to joy, let me tell you what that looks like. It looks like saying, “Oh, I really want to spend more time with my friends, but I have to finish this project for the next few months. I really want to see the world, but I can’t do that until…” And it’s making a very excellent plan to be happy later because you didn’t earn it. And it’s like I talk in the end of the book about what would happen if we gave ourselves, this is going to sound wild and crazy, but if we gave ourselves free access to pleasure regardless of how we perform, because we deserve to feel pleasure regardless of our output.

So that looks like saying, I deserve to feel good today. I deserve to encounter pleasure. Instead of looking at your output or the way you look or whatever the metrics of success that you are using which are externally based are, and saying, “Let me see how well I performed so I can calculate how much goodness and pleasure I deserve.”

Tori Dunlap:

I’ll be happy when I lose weight. I’ll be happy when I’m married. I’ll be happy when I have children. I’ll be happy when I get that promotion.

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

Yeah. And taking it to the micro level is a lot easier to do because, I mean, it’s a lot more effective, I would say. I wouldn’t say it’s easier, but it’s like we all intellectually concede to like, yeah, that’s right. I’m not going to wait until I lose the weight to go on vacation. But it’s like, well, are you going to wait until you’ve finished all of your emails to sit and have a tea by yourself or go for a walk? Because the way you live your days is the way you live your life.

Tori Dunlap:

It’s so impactful to think about. It’s so impactful to think about that we are whole already and that your perfectionism is not going to earn you that wholeness. You were born with that wholeness. Katherine, this was a beautiful conversation. So impactful. Thank you for being here. Where can people find out more about you and your book?

Katherine Morgan Schafler:

So my book is called The Perfectionist Guide to Lose and Control, a Path to Peace and Power. It’s on audible, ebook, hardcover, all the places that you buy books. And I am on Instagram, @katherinemorganschaffler, and that is also the name of my website, katherinemorganschaffler.com. And I loved at this conversation, thank you so much for having me. I could talk to you for three more hours.

Tori Dunlap:

I would love that. Thank you once again to Katherine for joining us for this episode. We’re so grateful to have so many amazing guests on the podcast. And one of the reasons that we’re able to bring on guests like Kathryn is because of support from listeners like you to borrow from PBS. So if you’re enjoying the show, please make sure to rate, review, subscribe, send this episode to your friends, grab a screenshot of you listening and post it on social media. Tag us at Her First $100K at Financial Feminist podcast. It truly makes our day. I see it, Kristen sees it. We just love when you listen to and engage in an episode and you find it valuable, and it ensures that we can continue doing the work that we do. You can learn more about Katherine and get links to her book, the Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control on our show notes page, which we have links below.

And just so you know, that link that’s here in the episode note of whatever podcast platform you’re listening to, that not only takes you to our page about this episode in particular, but also a link to a bunch of resources, including our free money personality quiz. So if you’re not sure on where to start in your financial journey, we have built this to be able to serve you best. We ask you a couple questions about where you’re at in your journey, and then we deliver personalized free resources that fit where you’re at. So if you don’t know what to do first, that quiz is six questions. It’s really easy. That’s where you get started. Thank you as always for being here, financial feminists. We’ll catch you soon.

Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields. Marketing and administration by Karina Patel, Cherise Wade, Alena Helzer, Paulina Isaac, Sophia Cohen, Kahlil Dumas, Elizabeth McCumber, Beth Bowen, and Amanda Leffew. Research by Ariel Johnson. Audio engineering by Austin Fields. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton. Photography by Sarah Wolfe and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First $100K team and community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com or follow us on Instagram, @financialfeministpodcast.