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Will Storr, in 'The Science of Storytelling,' proposes the sacred flaw approach to writing fiction.

Sacred flaws are protagonists’ long-term ways of thinking and behaving that work well—until they don’t.

Storr’s sacred flaw approach offers vocabulary and metaphor for framing real people’s real-life struggles.

Is it better to cling to flawed ways of thinking and behaving or risk change and growth?

I was recently working with the parent of a young adult who has identified as autistic and transgender, ways of being in the world this parent struggles to understand and for which acceptance does not come easily. This parent is heroically striving to repair their strained relationship. They emailed this to me recently (quoted and lightly edited with permission):

I have been thinking about our conversation about changing a story we tell ourselves when it’s not working anymore. It helps me see why so much that my adult kids do shakes me to the core, even when it shouldn’t: all of it contravenes the narrative I keep trying to keep alive . . . a narrative that I didn’t even consciously embrace. . . It’s good to give it up. Freeing, I think.

“Changing the story we tell ourselves when it’s not working anymore,” “the narrative I keep trying to keep alive,” “a narrative that I didn’t even consciously embrace,” “It’s good to give it up”—versions of this way of thinking have, since early in my professional career, been an important part of my clinical work. It is consistent with multiple therapy orientations, such as cognitive therapy (changing “schema” or beliefs about self, others, or the world), as well as Buddhist practices and Stoic philosophies (e.g., giving up attachments, differentiating what one........

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