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The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control
Cover of The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control
The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control
A Path to Peace and Power
From psychotherapist Katherine Morgan Schafler, an invitation to every “recovering perfectionist” to challenge the way they look at perfectionism, and the way they look at themselves.
We’ve been looking at perfectionism all wrong. As psychotherapist and former on-site therapist at Google Katherine Morgan Schafler argues in The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control, you don’t have to stop being a perfectionist to be healthy. For women who are sick of being given the generic advice to “find balance,” a new approach has arrived.
 
Which of the five types of perfectionist are you? Classic, intense, Parisian, messy, or procrastinator? As you identify your unique perfectionist profile, you'll learn how to manage each form of perfectionism to work for you, not against you. Beyond managing it, you'll learn how to embrace and even enjoy your perfectionism. Yes, enjoy!
 
Full of stories and brimming with humor, empathy, and depth, this book is a love letter to the ambitious, high achieving, full-of-life clients who filled the author’s private practice, and who changed her life. It’s a clarion call for all women to dare to want more without feeling greedy or ungrateful. Ultimately, this book will show you how to make the single greatest trade you’ll ever make in your life, which is to exchange superficial control for real power.  
From psychotherapist Katherine Morgan Schafler, an invitation to every “recovering perfectionist” to challenge the way they look at perfectionism, and the way they look at themselves.
We’ve been looking at perfectionism all wrong. As psychotherapist and former on-site therapist at Google Katherine Morgan Schafler argues in The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control, you don’t have to stop being a perfectionist to be healthy. For women who are sick of being given the generic advice to “find balance,” a new approach has arrived.
 
Which of the five types of perfectionist are you? Classic, intense, Parisian, messy, or procrastinator? As you identify your unique perfectionist profile, you'll learn how to manage each form of perfectionism to work for you, not against you. Beyond managing it, you'll learn how to embrace and even enjoy your perfectionism. Yes, enjoy!
 
Full of stories and brimming with humor, empathy, and depth, this book is a love letter to the ambitious, high achieving, full-of-life clients who filled the author’s private practice, and who changed her life. It’s a clarion call for all women to dare to want more without feeling greedy or ungrateful. Ultimately, this book will show you how to make the single greatest trade you’ll ever make in your life, which is to exchange superficial control for real power.  
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  • From the cover 1

    Expect to Be Graded on This

    The Five Types of Perfectionists

    When an inner situation is not made
    conscious, it happens outside as fate.

    C. G. Jung

    A procrastinator perfectionist would experience immense difficulty writing this sentence because it comes at the beginning of a book about perfectionism and, accordingly, needs to be perfect (and there's no better first sentence than the one a procrastinator perfectionist imagines in her head but never actually writes down).

    A classic perfectionist writes the first sentence, hates it, tries her best to forget it ever existed, but is inevitably haunted by it for a minimum of eight years.

    An intense perfectionist writes it, hates it, and then channels her frustration into aggression about something entirely unrelated.

    A Parisian perfectionist pretends not to notice she wrote a first sentence, affecting an air of, "Oh yeah, I guess I did. Huh." Then she secretly, desperately hopes everyone loves it and, as a result, loves her. Who wrote that first sentence? I must be friends with her immediately!

    A messy perfectionist writes the first sentence, loves it, and then writes seventeen other, very different versions of the first sentence and loves each one of those and couldn't possibly pick just one because you can't have a favorite child, and those are all her sentence babies.

    One thing they all have in common: they might not even know they're perfectionists, nor appreciate all the ways perfectionism can hold them back or allow them to soar, depending on how it's managed.

    In the most basic sense, managing your perfectionism looks like becoming aware of the core impulse all perfectionists reflexively experience: noticing room for improvement-Hmm, this could be better-and then consciously responding to that reflex instead of unconsciously reacting to it. Perfectionists are people who consistently notice the difference between an ideal and a reality, and who strive to maintain a high degree of personal accountability. This results in the perfectionist experiencing, more often than not, a compulsion to bridge the gulf between reality and an ideal themselves.

    When left unchallenged, the perfectionist mindset hooks itself on the motive to perfect (as opposed to improve upon or accept) that which could be made better. This impulse to enhance evolves into a belief that urgently wallpapers itself on all sides of the perfectionist's mind, including the ceiling and floor: "I need something to be different about this moment before I can be satisfied."

    Perfectionism is the invisible language your mind thinks in, the type of perfectionism that shows up in your everyday life based on your personality is just the accent.

    I built my private practice around perfectionism because I so enjoy the energy of the perfectionist. Always pushing limits, forever poking the bear, unafraid to travel to the depth of their anger or desire, eternally seeking a connection to something bigger, to more.

    Acknowledging that you want more is an act of boldness, and every perfectionist (when they're being honest, which people generally are in therapy) flaunts a bold streak I'm magnetically drawn towards.

    I work mostly with women who can present well, who can seem completely put together when they want to seem that way, and whose problems aren't immediately apparent to others. This is exceedingly nuanced work because, as I suspect you know all too well, no one can hide their suffering better than the highly functioning person. I thrive on the constant challenge because, as I realized during one of the most disorienting moments of my life, I'm a...
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    November 7, 2022
    “What if your perfectionism exists to help you?” asks psychotherapist Schafler in her eye-opening debut. The author suggests that perfectionism is a “strength” to be harnessed and outlines the five types of perfectionist: classic, Parisian, procrastinator, messy, and intense. Parisian perfectionists, she contends, want everyone to like them but are embarrassed about how much they care, while messy perfectionists love to start projects but usually don’t finish because they become frustrated that the execution isn’t flawless. She posits that the line between the types is porous and that some individuals may display different types based on context: “You can be a messy perfectionist when it comes to dating but a classic perfectionist during the holidays.” Contrasting adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism, Schafler urges readers to emulate the former, which recognizes that perfectionism will always be out of reach but finds value in the striving, while the latter believes in the possibility of achieving perfection and feels discouraged by the inevitable failure to do so. Schafler’s thoughtful treatment of perfectionism offers a fresh perspective, and the client anecdotes enlighten, as when she describes a “classic” perfectionist who was “so clean and crisp” that it looked “as if she’d purchased all her belongings earlier that morning.” The result is an insightful guide on how to sweat the details.

  • Library Journal

    December 16, 2022

    As a therapist and self-proclaimed perfectionist, Schafler pulled inspiration from her private practice and personal experience to create this thoughtful guide. Though the client vignettes are fictional, they serve to help readers connect to the information presented. The book begins with a quiz to determine which of the five types of perfectionism the reader may identify with, chances being that they relate to some. The author posits that perfectionism is not a disease to be cured, but rather a gift that can be harnessed and managed in a healthier way. She offers useful tips to change perfectionist thought patterns by providing a list of new thoughts to stop overthinking, and a list of new tasks that will stop readers from overextending themselves. VERDICT Practical application of the concepts is missing from the book, and journaling opportunities or exercises at the end of each chapter would help readers incorporate Schafler's tools into their lives. Even so, the writing is engaging, and the title will be eye-catching to library audiences.

    Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control
The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control
A Path to Peace and Power
Katherine Morgan Schafler
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