Katherine Morgan Schafler
speaker
127 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Katherine Morgan Schafler’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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I think one of the worst aspects of unhealthy perfectionism is when you get what you want. And it's like, I call it in my book, being struck with a thousand daggers at once because you finally got the thing that you thought would make you you know, feel the way you want it to feel or be who you want it to be, whatever, to certify your belonging to something. And you feel the opposite.
You feel like shit because you have to confront the fact that there is no substitute for self-worth and there's no substitute for real connection with other human beings, you know?
Yeah, well, that was what I was most excited to talk about in the book because I think we're getting a lot of that wrong with this, like, just love yourself. We talk about it like a panacea and it's like, you know, someone who's struggling to love themselves hears that and they don't know what that really means.
I mean, I don't even know what that really means when people say, like, just be nice to yourself. It's like, what... give me actionable steps, you know? And I think what we, again, to go back to the emotional illiterate piece is like the self-compassion. And this is what I am so excited to talk about. So I'm so glad you asked me that question.
Self-compassion is not being really nice and sweet and polite to yourself. Self-compassion is a three-step resiliency building skill. And the framework that I use in the Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control is based on research by Dr. Kristen Neff, who was the first person to really research into compassion. She's like, for self-compassion, what Brene Brown is to vulnerability, right? She's like,
the one. And she breaks it down into these three steps. And we don't know what those three steps are. And we don't understand that when you exercise self-compassion that ushers you into a sense of real accountability for your life and real power instead of this like petty control.
I mean, that's the spine of the book is like, we are trading our inherent power for all of this control that doesn't even work and is an illusion in the first place. And it's tantamount to like trying to move a car by getting behind it and pushing it instead of just sitting in the driver's seat and driving it.
But we don't know the difference between control and power or like how to access our power. And one of the best ways to access power is through self-compassion. But we live in a culture which teaches us that self-compassion is kind of like this hippie thing to do. And especially in corporate America, it's not the move, right?
That you need to be hard on yourself and punitive with yourself and bust your ass and do all of this stuff. And that's what's going to get you across the finish line. And the research says the exact opposite. When people are punitive with themselves, they burn out. They don't operate with premium energy. They're not solutions oriented. They have less creativity.
You know, it's just negative across the board. And so the three, do you want to get into the three steps of self-compassion? Okay. So the first is self-kindness. And again, what I love about Dr. Neff is she really funnels it down to like, talk about what kindness is.
And she starts kindness in the most interesting way, which is being able to just acknowledge you're in pain and that's why you need to be kind to yourself. You're not just having a bad day. You're not just flustered. You're in pain right now and you need to
move towards yourself instead of away from yourself and have some empathy so when I think about the difference between being kind and polite empathy comes into play and empathy is about being able to understand what someone is feeling and the someone in this case is yourself and so that looks like
Let's just say you had a really bad meeting and you're starting the negative self-talk of like, I can't believe I said that. I can't believe I said that. I am so embarrassed. That was such a blah, blah, blah, all the things. Self-compassion would look like disrupting that. and saying, God, it is really hard to feel this embarrassed. I am in pain. Like this hurts. This is the worst.
And you have to acknowledge that. Whereas I think when people, when we tell people to just be nice to themselves, they have the exact same flustered meeting. And then they're like, it's okay. You're okay. And it like falls flat because we know what the truth feels like. And that's not the truth. You're not okay. Like, and it wasn't an okay meeting. You didn't do a good job. Like,
And that's the truth. And that doesn't have any commentary on who you are, right? It just means you had a bad meeting. It was not your shiniest moment. And so that self-kindness is being able to acknowledge like, God, this is hard. I'm hurting. The second one is common humanity. which is being able to say that we live amongst billions of people and billions of people have lived before us.
And hopefully if we, you know, can switch gears, billions of people will live after us on this world, which is in fire. And someone somewhere is having your exact experience and like, you're not alone in that. And that is part generating connection, part like Get out of the narcissistic mindset that like you are the only one who's ever suffered this much.
And the more you're experiencing something that is taboo in our culture to talk about, the more shame you're going to feel and the more alone you're going to feel. So, for example, sexual molestation, right? We don't talk about that. It's not okay to talk about it, you know, all the things.
So someone who is feeling that is not going to feel a sense of common humanity because it feels so uncommon to them. They're probably thinking nobody in my circle has ever had to experience something like this or if you, you know.
It's so common, you know, same with domestic violence, you know, suicide, all of these issues which are so common but are still shamed in our culture and which are still weighed down with stigma. It's like, if you're feeling that stuff, one way to kind of generate common humanity is... Just imagining yourself in a room full of people who are talking about that experience.
And that's why support groups are helpful, for example, because they generate a sense of common humanity of like, oh, I'm not the only one who's X, Y, and Z. And that's why frameworks like AA and things like that, it's a community. It's community. And what community is, is like shared common humanity. And then the last component of self-compassion is mindfulness.
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