The key ideas

The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control

Katherine Morgan Schafler, 2023

All your life you've been told that perfectionism is a sickness to be cured. Psychotherapist Katherine Morgan Schafler is sure of the opposite: it's a strength, and fighting it is pointless. She lays out five types of perfectionists, explains why your real problem isn't your high standards but your habit of punishing yourself, and teaches you to trade shallow control for genuine power.

Who it is for

For anyone who is tired of waging war on their perfectionism and being told they need to "do something" about it. And for everyone who holds themselves to a high bar and pays too dearly for it.

Your problem isn't that you're a perfectionist. Your problem is that you're not living at full strength.

The Night Before the Wedding

Katherine spent the night before her own wedding not resting but working through a to-do list. She walked the dogs while answering emails, got in a workout, rewrapped the bridesmaids' gifts because the store wrapping struck her as too sloppy, and fell asleep well after two in the morning. In her own words, it was a perfect night.

Katherine Morgan Schafler is a psychotherapist from New York who has worked with perfectionists for years. One day she fell seriously ill and, for the first time in her life, tried to live "the right way": to relax, to do nothing, to toss fizzing bath bombs into the tub. And she realized it only made her feel worse. That's how her central idea was born: perfectionism isn't a sickness to be cured but a strength to be learned and steered.

For years we've been told that a perfectionist will only be happy once they stop being a perfectionist. Schafler is certain that it never works that way. Your problem isn't that you're a perfectionist. The problem is that you're not living at full strength.

Ahead lie five types of perfectionists and how to find yourself among them, the difference between control and genuine power, and why all this time you've been solving the wrong problem. If you've spent years fighting your own high standards, this book suggests not fighting but making peace. And the very fact that you're reading it is a good step.

Your Problem Isn't Perfectionism

Just as Katherine's personal and professional life was taking off, she got a serious diagnosis: cancer. Treatment took her time, her hair, her confidence in her new marriage and the very life she had worked so hard to build. The doctors advised her to rest, and she honestly tried: she sat in the bath watching the pink bath bombs dissolve, dying of boredom. What she wanted was to work and create something, not out of spite toward the illness, but because that was how she felt alive.

That was when she first looked at perfectionism from the outside and saw in it not a flaw but a powerful energy, the very one that had carried her clients forward for years. Perfectionism is a wonderful servant and a terrible master. The more you try to crush it, the harder it pushes back.

Picture the pressure of water in a hose. Clamp it shut and pretend the water isn't there, and sooner or later it bursts. But aim the stream and it waters a garden or puts out a fire. The force isn't to blame; direction decides everything.

You can't get rid of perfectionism, and there's no reason to. You can stop fighting it and finally turn it to your advantage.

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About the author

Katherine Morgan Schafler is a psychotherapist from New York who worked as an on-site therapist at Google and studied at Berkeley and Columbia. For many years she has run a private practice with perfectionists.

All books by this author: Katherine Morgan Schafler

Terms from the book

  • Fredrickson
  • Lauren
  • Classic perfectionist: The author's type, not a diagnosis. Someone who loves order, structure and predictability, is deeply reliable, but struggles when plans suddenly change.
  • Parisian perfectionist: The author's type. Someone for whom being perfectly loved matters most; warm and attentive, but at risk of pleasing everyone except themselves.
  • Procrastinator perfectionist: The author's type. Someone who waits for perfect conditions before starting, and so puts off for a long time the very thing they want most.
  • Messy perfectionist: The author's type ("messy" in the original). Someone in love with beginnings: they grab at many things at once and scatter their energy without finishing.
  • Intense perfectionist: The author's type. Someone who lives for the result: direct and honest, but merciless toward themselves and others when the goal isn't reached.
  • broaden and build: A theory by psychologist Barbara Fredrickson: in a good mood a person's list of possible actions broadens, and in a bad one it narrows.
  • Martha Stewart: An American entrepreneur and TV host who built a media empire around recipes, the home and the holidays.
  • Steve Jobs: Co-founder of Apple, often held up as an example of a leader demanding of perfection.
  • Maya Angelou: An American writer and poet, author of the famous line "when you know better, you do better."
  • Claire: A character in the book, an example of a classic perfectionist. The client stories in the book are fictional and composite.
  • Layla: A character in the book, an example of a procrastinator perfectionist.
  • Pei-Han: A character in the book, an example of a messy perfectionist.
  • Dawn: A character in the book, an example of an intense perfectionist.
  • Ava: A character in the book from a group at a rehab center; her story explains what self-punishment is.

All terms

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