Positive Psychology and Perimenopause: How to Flourish, Not Just Survive, at Midlife

Surviving Isn't Enough. You're Allowed to Thrive.

Most advice around perimenopause focuses on managing symptoms. Reduce hot flashes. Improve sleep. Address anxiety. All of that matters. But what about actually flourishing? What about building a life you find meaningful and satisfying during this transition, not just one you're coping with?

Positive psychology is the science of what makes life worth living. It doesn't dismiss difficulty. It asks, alongside addressing what's hard, how do we cultivate genuine wellbeing? For women navigating perimenopause, it offers a framework that goes beyond symptom management.

What Positive Psychology Actually Is

Positive psychology was formalised by researcher Martin Seligman in the late 1990s. It shifted the focus of psychology from fixing dysfunction to understanding and building flourishing.

Seligman's PERMA model identifies five elements of wellbeing: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Achievement. Research shows that deliberately cultivating all five leads to higher life satisfaction, lower rates of depression, and better resilience across challenging life events.

Perimenopause is exactly the kind of challenging life event where these tools become most relevant. The research on positive psychology and menopause is growing, with several studies finding that women who report higher levels of meaning and engagement in midlife navigate the transition with significantly less psychological distress.

Finding and Using Your Signature Strengths

One of the most evidence-backed interventions in positive psychology is identifying and using your character strengths in new ways. The VIA Institute on Character (viacharacter.org) offers a free, research-validated assessment that identifies your top character strengths from a list of 24, including curiosity, perseverance, kindness, creativity, humour, and others.

Studies show that deliberately using your signature strengths in new ways each week significantly increases wellbeing and decreases depression. For women in perimenopause who may be questioning their identity or feeling diminished by their symptoms, reconnecting with strengths that have always been core to who you are is genuinely stabilising.

If creativity has always been a strength, find ways to express it even during low-energy periods. If connection is core to you, prioritise relationships even when social energy is lower. Using your strengths isn't a performance. It's a way of remembering yourself.

Meaning-Making During a Time of Transition

One of the most powerful predictors of wellbeing across the lifespan is a sense of meaning and purpose. Research by Victor Frankl and subsequent positive psychologists found that meaning is not something you find like a lost object. It's something you construct through the way you engage with your experience.

Perimenopause, despite being physically demanding, often prompts genuine reconsideration of what matters. Women frequently report that this period, difficult as it is, led them to make changes they had been delaying for years: leaving jobs that diminished them, prioritising relationships they had been neglecting, or pursuing creative or intellectual interests they had shelved.

Asking 'what do I want the next chapter to look like?' is not a luxury during perimenopause. It's a psychologically productive question that can transform a difficult transition into a meaningful one.

Building Positive Emotions Without Bypassing Reality

Positive psychology is sometimes misunderstood as toxic positivity, the idea that you should always look on the bright side and suppress negative feelings. That is the opposite of what the research recommends.

Barbara Fredrickson's 'broaden and build' theory shows that positive emotions broaden your attention and thinking in ways that build long-term psychological resources. This happens not by eliminating negative emotions but by ensuring there is genuine positive experience in your life alongside them.

Practical ways to build positive emotions during perimenopause: savouring small moments deliberately, practising gratitude with real specificity, spending time in nature, creating beauty in your environment, and investing in activities that produce flow, the state of being fully absorbed in something that matches your skill level.

Relationships and the PERMA Model

The R in PERMA, relationships, is consistently one of the strongest predictors of wellbeing across all life stages. Perimenopause can strain relationships, particularly partnerships, when communication about what you're experiencing has been minimal or when changing needs haven't been articulated.

Positive psychology research suggests that 'high-quality connections' (even brief, positive interactions with people you encounter regularly) have measurable effects on wellbeing. You don't need a huge social circle. A small number of genuine, positive relationships is more protective than many superficial ones.

If you've been pulling back socially because of low energy or symptoms that feel unpredictable, this is worth addressing. Connection during perimenopause isn't a nice-to-have. It's part of the architecture of wellbeing.

This Chapter Has Real Possibilities

Perimenopause is often talked about in purely loss-based terms. But positive psychology invites a different question: what can this chapter make possible that the previous one couldn't? Greater self-knowledge. Clearer values. Permission to stop performing and start living closer to who you actually are.

None of this erases the difficulty. But it widens the frame. And in that wider frame, there is real room to flourish.

This content is for informational purposes only and does not replace medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider about your specific situation.