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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 perfectionist myself.
The cliché of it all bothers me still-I never realized how attached I was to control until I started to lose so much of it. In the exact moment that my personal and professional life began skyrocketing, I was diagnosed with cancer. I lost a pregnancy and had no opportunity to freeze my eggs before chemotherapy. I lost an extraordinary amount of time to the busyness of being sick. I lost my pretty brown hair. I lost confidence in my brand-new marriage. I lost professional opportunities I had spent years working towards. I lost control over the life I had painstakingly, perfectly constructed.
One moment I was riding the rapids, then the next it was as if something yanked me by the stomach into the still, quiet, and unseen place behind the waterfall. I was looking at what I'd always been looking at (perfectionism) but from a different vantage point. Why was I in a different position? Because in a misguided effort to be more balanced and healthy, I was resisting my own perfectionism.
I was sick, so of course I should've been relaxing, doing the bare minimum. It all made sense on paper. So I tried, I really did. And it was terrible, it really was. I was plopping pink bath bombs into my tub and sitting there watching them fizz away, bored out of my fucking mind, when I would've much rather been working, pushing, doing. Not pushing from a compensatory or avoidant place, not pushing to the extent that it disrupted my healing, but pushing because I enjoy being intensely engaged in my work and in my life.
The energy my perfectionist clients brought into the room presented in stark contrast to what I had started to feel in my private life. Their energy was charged, magnetic, brimming with infinite potentialities, destructive and constructive all at once. In noticing the burgeoning differences between myself and my clients, I simultaneously recognized the similarities that had been there the whole time.
I saw perfectionism for the power that it is, a strength I wanted to reclaim. It was a dynamic energy I had been helping my clients harness and exploit to their advantage for years, without having the language I have now for what I was doing. It wasn't until I tried to suppress the drive of my own perfectionism that I realized what I had in it.
I also realized that if I could be a perfectionist, me, the woman who could never find her phone and who extolled the work of social scientist extraordinaire Dr. Brené Brown to people behind her in line at the grocery store, then anybody could be a perfectionist and not even know it. What exactly was happening here?
I started to reverse engineer perfectionism, turn it inside out. In examining my own perfectionism and diving into the years I spent working with perfectionists, clear patterns emerged-five distinct presentations of one core concept, the five types of perfectionists.
Because perfectionism operates on a continuum, all perfectionists can embody aspects of each type within them. Though one type is usually dominant, it's also possible to experience contextually specific manifestations of perfectionism. For example, you can be a messy perfectionist when it comes to dating but a classic perfectionist during the holidays. Since I'm not a procrastinator perfectionist and can easily pick an entry point, let's start our discussion of the five types at the beginning: classic perfectionists.
The Five Types of Perfectionism
Tuesday, 10:58 a.m.
I opened the door for my 11:00 a.m. session. Claire was standing in the waiting room, hovering around four empty chairs, finishing an email on her phone. "And, done," she said as she efficiently gathered her small army of belongings to bring into my office: a jacket, two phones, a laptop bag, an indiscriminately labeled commuter bag for her heels, a not indiscriminately labeled Prada bag, and two grande, unsweetened, iced passion teas from Starbucks.
"We talked about this," I said after noticing the extra drink. "Can I help you with any of that?"
"I got it," she replied, modern-day juggling act in motion.
Claire entered my office seamlessly, swaying through the door like a red velvet curtain at showtime on opening night; gloriously on cue. As is the case with classic perfectionists, there was something ceremonious about Claire, who at twenty-two had legally changed her name because the original spelling didn't include the e at the end, a detail that irked her intolerably. As she described to me, "From second grade on, every single time I wrote my name, I died a little on the inside. Cumulatively, I'm sure it's taken two years off my life, but it's fixed now."
She pulled some kind of highly absorbent towelette out of her bag and wiped the water beads off the sides and bottom of her clear plastic Starbucks cup before setting it on the coaster. "I love these coasters; I don't want them getting wet," she explained (in fairness, they were really pretty coasters).
Claire repeated the water-bead sweep with the cup she had brought me before setting it down on my desk and saying, "I know we talked about it." Switching her tone to a perky whisper and with a half wink, she added, "But I also know you'll drink it after I leave." Then she sat in the exact same place on the couch that she sat in every week, but that's not a classic perfectionist thing; everyone does that.
The difference between putting your phone down next to you and setting your phone down next to you, that is a classic perfectionist thing. Classic perfectionists tend to be extremely deliberate about the way they handle physical objects; for example, they might set their phones down-meaning they take both hands, lay the phone down, and then take half a second to just kind of tilt it a bit, officially designating its otherwise arbitrary placement on the couch. This micro ritual that so many classic perfectionists perform always looked to me like tucking the phone into an invisible little bed with no covers. In a way that never got old, noticing the idiosyncrasy gave me a sweet dot of private joy.
Claire set her two phones next to her on the couch, only to flip them over midsentence thirty seconds later when they started lighting up. I closed the door after Claire ("with an e," as she loved to say) left. My iced passion tea was watered down by the past forty-five minutes but still as refreshing as ever.
Classic Perfectionists
Classic perfectionists, not surprisingly, present in a classic way, and Claire with an e was no exception. Everything about her was so clean and crisp, as if she'd purchased all her belongings earlier that morning and started a brand-new pop-up life. I think she made my couch cleaner just by sitting on it.
I had seen on Pinterest that if you run a lint roller along the bottom of your purse, you can easily pick up all the crumbs and bits accrued at the bottom. I hadn't checked, but I imagined that Claire didn't have any crumbs and bits, not at the bottom of her purse at least. But she was honest in our conversations together; she opened up to me about the invisible crumbs and bits in her life, the kinds of problems Pinterest hacks unfortunately can't solve for.
Only because Claire chose to let me in did I have any inkling that there was turmoil under the surface. Highly self-disciplined, classic perfectionists are adept at presenting in a uniform way, making it difficult to take their emotional temperature. Are they thrilled? Enraged? Having the best orgasm of their life? Who knows. They're either stoic or smiling as if they're about to have their picture taken. While it's easy to interpret this engagement style as inauthentic or closed off, it's anything but.
Classic perfectionists can be experienced by others as unapproachable or haughty, but the order this type builds around themselves is about reverence, not creating a wall. Classic perfectionists aren't trying to be impressive or distance themselves as much as they're trying to offer to others what they most value themselves: structure, consistency, predictability, an understanding of all the options so as to make an informed choice, high standards, objectivity, clarity through organization.
The opposite of inauthentic, classic perfectionists operate with incredible transparency about their particular set of preferences. Classic perfectionists also constantly broadcast their perfectionistic tendencies (here's my impeccable spreadsheet about restaurant options for vacation; here's my haircut that somehow perpetually looks like I just got a trim).
Reliable and predictable, classic perfectionists make it clear that they don't like disorder. For example, a classic perfectionist might say, "I don't like drinking because I don't like feeling out of control." Classic perfectionists take pride in their perfectionism. It's an ego-syntonic aspect of self (a feature they like) as opposed to an identity feature that's ego-dystonic (a feature they don't like).
Boasting a solid work ethic and patience to match, classic perfectionists can't help but be the teensiest bit smug about their style of control, which you can't really fault them for. (If I had zero crumbs and bits at the bottom of my bag, I would be beyond smug about it.)
In the cons corner, classic perfectionists have difficulty adjusting to schedule changes, big or small, and they tend to experience spontaneity as stressful. An itinerary-centered existence doesn't lend itself to discovering new and unexpected pleasures, and creating formulaic systems for dealing with family, work, friends, and more-with little room for organic expansion or any margin for error-can rob these perfectionists of the opportunity to grow in a way that isn't planned or goal-oriented.
Interpersonally, this type can be hard for others to connect with because of classic perfectionists' perceived lack of vulnerability. We tend to conflate external reliability with inner strength; that's a mistake. Classic perfectionists are as reliable in their darkest hour as they are in their brightest; just because they can always show up, that doesn't mean they're invincible or that they feel strong on the inside.
Also, the systematic way of operating that classic perfectionists default to doesn't encourage a spirit of collaboration, flexibility, or openness to external influence-qualities that help us build connections. The risk of this interpersonal style is that it can unintentionally generate relationships that veer towards the superficial and transactional. In turn, classic perfectionists can be left feeling excluded, misunderstood, and underappreciated for all that they do.
Parisian Perfectionists
Lauren texted me ten minutes before our session was set to begin: "running 10 late. sorry, worst day." Tall and beautiful (and caught in the rain), she came in soaked, looking like a Barbie doll that had been unceremoniously left in the backyard during a storm. I took her coat, and in between the time I took it and turned around to hang it, she started crying while apologizing for crying.
We discussed a meeting she'd had earlier that morning, which she perceived to have gone disastrously. When pressed, she acknowledged that the idea she presented dominated the conversation, and the team chose to spotlight her work at an upcoming conference.
I waited for her to finish before I said, "Help me understand the problem."
Lauren blurted her response out in exasperation: "Because I can tell she doesn't like me, and I hate it!"
Copyright © 2023 by Katherine Morgan Schafler. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
