A review by jaina8851
The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power by Katherine Morgan Schafler

Did not finish book. Stopped at 28%.
This book just REALLY wasn't jiving with me. I took the quiz at the beginning and didn't see myself in any of the five archetypes of perfectionism that she laid out. Which isn't the end of the world, I could see how one could blend all of them, even though she was being really rigid about how you are definitely one of five types. But then as the book progressed, she started using a very broad brush to describe ALL perfectionists that is the exact antithesis of who I am as a person. I am *not* a driven, constantly striving, miserable if not working towards an out-of-reach goal type person. And that doesn't mean that I'm not a "true perfectionist". I also really didn't care for the way she was drawing lines in the sand between diagnosable conditions (esp OCD and OCPD, the way she was describing the former in particular felt very minimizing) and perfectionism, like a person diagnosed with those conditions couldn't possibly have both, or that perfectionism in and of itself couldn't possibly be a constellation of symptoms stemming precisely FROM OCPD and/or autism, the latter being notably omitted in the part of the book that I read, I don't know if she returns to it later but I definitely spent a lot of the three hours being like "... is this perfectionism or just autism?" I'm glad that this book is super helpful for so many people but I just don't feel like spending another seven hours listening to it.