You're listening to LifeKit from NPR.

Hey there. I'm LifeKit reporter Andy Tagle, and I'm here to tell you that you, LifeKit listener,

are perfect. That's right. You're perfect exactly as you are, but maybe not exactly the way you

might be thinking. When we think of the word perfection, and if you take it to its Latin root, it means

completely done. It doesn't mean flawless. That's Catherine Morgan-Shaffler, a New York City-based

psychotherapist and author of the Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control, a path to peace and power.

I don't think anybody's flawless, but I do think everyone is born into the world as a whole human being

who, from that moment on, deserves as much joy, love, connection, freedom, and dignity as any other

person could ever be. You don't earn those things.

Catherine has spent years in private practice on Wall Street, a location that attracts a lot of

high-powered, high-achieving women with careers in things like big law and finance.

Many of those clients, perhaps unsurprisingly, are perfectionists. What she's found through her work

is that perfectionism, like the word perfect itself, is misunderstood. I think that we try to squeeze

perfectionism into this little ring box. The colloquial definition of being a perfectionist is

someone who wants things to be perfect at all times. They want the weather to be perfect, they want

themselves to look perfect, you know, they want to achieve their goals perfectly, etc., etc.

And that's just not accurate. It's an oversimplification of a really complex, fluid, individualized

force and a force that can be constructive and also destructive, depending on how you manage it.

But perfectionists can be type A, intense and rigid and meticulous. That's usually what I think of

when I think of perfectionism. But they can also be messy or forgetful or lousy fair. They can

procrastinate or up-and-quit whole projects entirely. What do different types of perfectionists

have in common? For one thing, potential, says Catherine. Perfectionists see how the world around

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