Can we get a chant for perfectionism?

New Lunar New Year, new main feed episode and bonus episode

Author

Yowei Shaw
February 07, 2025

Hello!

Last Saturday, I hosted my friends’ Lunar New Year party during which I led a very serious ceremony where I forced people to dunk a dumpling into a basketball hoop throughout the night. We were dunking to celebrate defeating a plan to build a basketball arena in Philadelphia’s Chinatown. We were dunking to summon that in your face we-did-that energy for the new year. We were dunking to amuse ourselves, to feel good together, for at least a night. 

Practicing my dumpling dunking before the big night

I hope you’re taking care of yourselves and each other and remembering to find pockets of communal joie where you can. We’re going to need it, to sustain ourselves for the long run. 

To that end, do you have a niche emotional conundrum about this moment, you’d like investigated by proxy? 

Like: Are you a young person studying to become an artist and confused about what to do with your life right now because you’re not sure if you’re panicking and catastrophizing or not taking this moment seriously enough

Are you someone who dedicated a lot of time to political organizing in 2016 but now feel like all your energy is zapped? 

Alternatively, did you grow up in another country that went through similar dynamics and have wisdom to share with the rest of us? 

Get in touch at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you. 

Ok. On to regular programming.

LISTENER SURVEY

By now you might think of me as an intrepid reporter on the “emotions beat.” But for the past year, I’ve had to pick up another beat, too. It might not be the sexiest beat, but it’s an important one. Basically, I’m trying to read everything I can, making calls left and right, to try to figure out how to make a successful show in today’s terrible podcast economy. By “successful” I mean: make enough money to cover all the show’s production costs without dipping into my own pockets anymore. 

Pitching sponsors is not something I’ve done yet, but it’s one of the primary ways podcasts can make money. And, as I’ve learned on the beat, it’s important to know your audience so you can accurately pitch your show. 

So: Would you help us by filling out this short survey? 

*bats fake eyelashes that were treacherous to apply*

The survey also has questions about things like merch, topic suggestions, and feedback for the show - all information that would help us figure out how to give you more of what you want. 

Thank you for helping us. You’re the best. 

MAIN FEED DROP

Juicy piece of Proxy news for you: Season 1 drops this April. 

Until then, we’re sharing a few shows on the feed that feel like friends of Proxy. This month, we’re featuring Basket Case, a new podcast that digs into common but totally confusing mental health experiences, like grieving the death of a parent, taking psych meds to feel better, or dealing with an autism diagnosis. What I love about the show is how host Nicole Kelly (otherwise known as NK) tries to sort out which parts of the shitty feelings you’re experiencing are socially constructed and if there are other approaches that might be more helpful. 

In this particular episode called “I felt too seen. Um, dragged.” NK takes on perfectionism and goes beyond the (not helpful) advice to just “stop being a perfectionist.” 

“Perfectionism is really a shorthand for a kind of mental process,” NK explains in the episode. “It’s not something you are, but something you do. It’s a way of thinking, a narrative about yourself and the world. It’s a story in which you are uniquely, frighteningly inadequate. And it’s easy to feel that way when you live in a culture that demands constant maxing in nearly every arena of your life.” 

NK attends a workshop with somatics practitioner and community organizer B Stepp, who teaches students how to program a different story into their bodies, one that replaces shame with dignity. 

Here are some things B Stepp said to NK that struck me from the episode.

On the connection between perfectionism and shame

“Perfectionism and shame. They go hand in hand with each other … Shame is really telling us that we're not enough or too much. And perfectionism is really this pursuit of ‘If I do enough, if I hustle enough, if I try more, if I become more, then somehow I will outrun that shame’ … and they operate with each other in this feedback loop. And that feeling, not trusting at your core that you are inherently enough, can make you more attentive to what other people expect of you than to what you really want.”

On our bodies as sites for dignity

“What I want to highlight from a somatic perspective is if our bodies are the sites of our dignity, if our bodies are the sites of our agency, if our bodies are the sites of where we learn and where we connect … to really cut us off from those ways of knowing … that fundamentally serves power. At the core of somatic practice is a search for that lost dignity, a sense of self respect that comes from being true to yourself and to your own desires. That sense of self regard has implications not just for ourselves, but for the communities we belong to.”

On physically embodying dignity

“The literal ground—we might feel the connection to that ground. And then we might just feel, ‘Oh, how do I get a little more long in relation to that ground? … How do I feel … length in the back of my neck or how do I feel the spine, the vertebrae of the spine moving away from one another? And that's the kind of the physical shape or embodiment of more dignity … Even if you try it on in your own body right now, it's like hard to hide from here. … Shame really wants us to hide. Shame is really asking us to stay small, to hide. Dignity and shame are kind of opposites of each other in many ways.”

BONUS EPISODE

In this month’s bonus Patreon episode, I talked to NK about our own relationships with perfectionism and how we found a way through. The answers involve forced fun (yes, FORCED FUN) and a punk podcast called bitchface. 

THIS WEEK IN PLUGS

I’m speaking on a panel about the audio job market on Feb. 13 at 7pm EST. You can register for the free Stony Brook University webinar here. Spoiler: Things aren’t looking great.

And then here are two more podcast stops on my Layoff Girl tour (still not over sorry) - with The Anxious Achiever and Attach Your Resume.

That’s it from me. I’ll be dunking the dumpling for all of us. 

Your emotional investigative journalist,

Yowei

Edited by Juliana Feliciano Reyes. 

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