The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

by Katherine Morgan Schafler

we are all in enough pain already. We don’t need to invent more pain for ourselves through self-punishment.

Pay attention to those who describe themselves as “recovering perfectionists.” Notice that they aren’t people who have lowered their high standards, learned to want less, or stopped chasing the ideal. They’re people who have committed to self-compassion as a default emotional response to pain. That throbbing thorn in your brain isn’t perfectionism; it’s self-punishment.

If you’re determined to find a loophole for why you don’t deserve your own empathy, you will find one.

The fact that the learning process involves a lot of repetition is frustrating. We hate repetition. We automatically assume repetition means we’re failing. Repetition can also mean we’re learning. If repetition weren’t necessary for our learning, that would mean we were robots.

It would look like you remembering that not only do we all make mistakes, we all repeat mistakes, sometimes for years.

Infomercial healing is so tempting, if only it worked.

If you think the fact that something is always breaking and in need of repair is about you—I say this from a place of love—then you need to get over yourself. The world is not revolving around you. Without exception, everyone experiences unforeseen setbacks big and small.

An instinct telling you that you’re not ready to decide is just as valid and vital as an instinct broadcasting a bold yes or no.

“Truth, like love and sleep, resents approaches that are too intense.”

There is no other way to rise towards your potential than on your own terms. Letting go of a goal that isn’t aligned with your values isn’t quitting-quitting, it’s power-quitting.

realize that you’re in a powerful liminal space.

“The Usefulness of a Pot Is in Its Emptiness.”

Boredom is a good sign that you’re in a liminal space. Liminal spaces are necessary for personal growth. When you’re in a liminal space, you have to allow yourself to exist in between dichotomies without putting pressure on yourself to pick a side. For perfectionists who are losing control and gaining power,

“Don’t give up five minutes before the miracle happens.”

The most powerful perspective shift you could ever make is understanding that you’re already whole and perfect. While you may sometimes need medication or coffee or music or therapy or some other kind of ameliorative tinkering to get you thriving, that doesn’t mean you’re broken; that means you are a human being alive in the world.

Healing is a series of tiny evolutions, born from ostensibly negligible choices, carried out day after day; it’s most often expressed in moments that have no witness other than yourself. These invisible “nothing” moments are where the magic happens.

When you’re isolated, whether you know it or not, you don’t feel safe. Clients often protest that statement with an explanation that goes something like, “No, I do feel safe when I’m isolated. When I’m alone, no one can hurt me.” Feeling “less in danger” is not the same as feeling safe. Safety requires connection. When you’re isolated and you don’t feel safe, you make every decision from a posture of defense.

accurate nonetheless.) It was never the terrible things that happened to you that made you stronger; it was the resiliency-building skills you engaged to process the terrible things. What doesn’t kill you can make you stronger, but only if you feel your feelings, process your experience (i.e., figure out what the experience means to you), and engage the

protective factors around you—mainly, the power of connection.

Maybe life does give us more than we can handle so that we have no choice but to reach out to one another and connect. Otherwise, we might only connect when it felt easy or instantaneously good. Maybe God never gives us more than we can handle together.

Anything you do to protect, save, restore, and build your energy is productive. Productive activities include but are not limited to sleeping, listening to music, lingering in bookstores, taking a bath, washing your car, completing the work assignment, good conversation, cooking, redecorating, watching a movie, getting a manicure, playing basketball, reading, walking, and singing in the shower.

You are not on the earth to complete tasks and then die. You are not a bar graph of output. You are a human being.

Sleep, make some art, work, have sex, walk through the park in the fall—productivity is anything that energizes you without hurting you. What energizes you without hurting you? How might your life change if you did more of that?

when we say we want closure, what we’re really saying is that we’re grieving.

The demand for closure is an expression of cognitive perfectionism. Seeking a complete list of reasons “why” is an analytical approach to grief. You can’t apply analytics to grief. You can’t perfectly understand grief.

Healing is less about establishing resolution and more about being able to center yourself in the parts of your life that remain unresolved.

not everything is a “teachable moment.” Some moments are devastating, retching, abominable, horrible. Period. We don’t need to transmute every uncomfortable emotion into something shiny and useful.

We grieve in every season. Moving in the direction of your potential requires a perpetual loosening of your grip, a constant letting go. We’re all grieving something all the time.

Your pain does not need a makeover; your pain needs permission to stay unkempt.

The same is true for the stories of our own lives. We’re not fulfilled by discovering perfect closure; we’re fulfilled by discovering meaning. Once you connect to your power, which is found in the self-defined realms of connection and meaning, you may be surprised at how little you care about closure. Maybe closure becomes something that no longer matters to you at all, a superficial desire completely satiated by watching a rom-com.

If you want to render a perfectionist speechless, inform them that the CDC recommends spending approximately one third of the day asleep. It continues to be a head-spinning truth for perfectionists to accept: a significant amount of rest every single day is required for human beings to function—we can’t believe it, we can’t get over it.

restoration requires decompression.

Some examples of active relaxation might include rowing, walking, cooking, indulging in your favorite part of your job, going to a party, painting, dancing, writing, making a playlist, attending a lecture, gardening, organizing, and getting dressed up.

Decompression = passive relaxation = emptying yourself out Playing = active relaxation = filling yourself up Restoration = passive relaxation + active relaxation

You relieve yourself of the responsibility to compensate for the external dysfunction that you have no control over, and so you gain the energy to encounter your internal world. You let yourself feel the sadness or undesirable feelings you were previously trying to cover up with all your organizing and perfecting. You realize how full of empathy you are. You attend to the parts of yourself that need your own loving care. You make room for the chaos life brings. You make room for the chaos inside yourself. You still love planning, you still love organizing, you still love making it beautiful—but you do it because you want to, not because everything will fall apart if you don’t. You operate from a well of desire, not a pit of desperation.

own values, with their own metrics for achievement. Perfectionism represents the natural, innate, and healthy human impulse to align with our whole, complete selves. A restored perfectionist understands that it’s not that you long for some external thing or for yourself to be perfect, it’s that you long to feel whole and to help others feel whole.

Asking for help is a refusal to give up. Thinking about asking for help as a refusal to give up makes us feel strong, determined, empowered, and more likely to ask for help.

INSTEAD OF: I don’t know what I want. TRY: I’m reimagining what’s possible for myself. INSTEAD

Let’s talk about reframing “I don’t know what to do.” I was trained to respond to that statement, frequently asserted by clients, with a simple and genuine question: “Is that true?” It turns out that most of the time we do know what to do; we just can’t imagine doing it. When a client says, “I don’t know what to do,” and they mean it, what I hear is that they’re open to trying a new strategy. Acknowledging that you need a new strategy is hard.

I don’t know what to do precedes support-seeking actions, as well as other helpful thoughts like, “Maybe I should get another perspective . . . Whom can I ask for help . . . I want to talk to someone who’s been in this position before . . . What are my instincts telling me?” I don’t know what to do is also a sign of openness, humility, and flexibility.

Others may understand how both types of perfectionists feel, in addition to having a strong sense of who they are deep down, but there’s a great deal of confusion about what these two types of perfectionists want, need, or are thinking.

At work, in your parenting, in your relationships, and most importantly, with yourself—don’t try to resolve the negative issue at the height of the negative issue.

you have the most energy, patience, and optimism, not to mention a solutions-oriented mindset. Prevention is the golden child of all the wellness strategies. Exploit moments of your highest functioning to broaden your repertoire of positive coping mechanisms and align yourself with support in every color. Having support in place, even if you never use it, can be curative in and of itself.

Just because you can function well doesn’t mean you aren’t hurting. It never ceases to amaze me how put together and relaxed some people can appear on the outside, while on the inside, they’re “ambulatory and breathing”—to

For high-functioning perfectionists, the siren will never sound, the lights will never flash. When your suffering is invisible to other people (and when you’re adept at keeping it that way), you need to be the one to fire the flare.

Sound familiar? We don’t think of sleeping as an activity, and we certainly don’t think of sleeping as being productive, yet sleep is one of the most productive activities you could possibly engage in. The

Sleep does for your brain what hydrating does for your skin—sleep makes your brain glow.

Our mental health is best honored through practical action. Breathing deeply, walking, sleeping—these are highly efficacious mental health interventions.

Your body will step in and do so much of the work of healing for you if you give it the chance.

What I do know is this: no matter what’s happening in your waking life, part of you heals in your sleep.