Potentially — but not because bravery cures hot flushes or gratitude replaces medical treatment.
Character strengths give us another way of thinking about women in midlife.
The menopause conversation understandably asks:
What’s changed?
What’s wrong?
What hurts?
What needs treatment?
Wellbeing science allows us to ask another question alongside those:
What’s already strong in this woman?
I think that question matters.
Because women don’t arrive at menopause as collections of symptoms.
They arrive with decades of skills, relationships, knowledge, coping strategies and lived experience.
Character strengths are positive qualities expressed through the way we think, feel and behave.
The VIA Classification used in positive psychology describes 24 character strengths, including curiosity, bravery, perseverance, honesty, creativity, love, kindness, social intelligence, leadership, humour, gratitude, hope and perspective.
We all possess them in different combinations and degrees.
Strengths-based work isn’t about pretending problems don’t exist.
It’s about recognising the psychological resources we already possess while dealing with those problems.
Because by your 40s or 50s, you’ve already done things.
Hard things.
You’ve probably navigated some combination of relationships, work, parenting, loss, change, responsibility, success, disappointment and the occasional family WhatsApp group.
You’ve adapted before.
And how you’ve done that contains useful information.
One woman uses humour under pressure.
Another uses curiosity.
Another perseverance.
Another social intelligence.
Another perspective.
Another leadership.
None of those qualities eliminates menopause symptoms.
But they can influence how we solve problems, seek support, connect, adapt and make decisions when life changes.
Strengths-based approaches begin with the idea that people can identify psychological capacities they already possess and learn to use them more deliberately.
This is an area I’ve explored directly in my wellbeing-science work at the University of Melbourne: how strengths can be intentionally applied under pressure rather than viewing wellbeing only through stress and deficit.
And that’s the distinction I keep returning to.
Wellbeing is more than the absence of symptoms.
Not enough.
And this is where it’s important not to make the research say more than it does.
The 2026 scoping review of 181 menopause-and-wellbeing studies searched across concepts including strengths, hope, optimism, purpose, meaning, resilience, mindfulness, psychological flexibility and personal growth.
But the evidence was concentrated much more heavily around areas such as resilience, self-compassion, optimism and emotional wellbeing.
Only eight studies used comprehensive multidimensional flourishing measures.
The researchers specifically called for more work into multicomponent positive-psychology interventions.
So the conclusion isn’t:
Character strengths are a proven menopause treatment.
It’s:
This is an interesting and plausible area that deserves more research.
That’s a less exciting headline.
It’s also science.
Another framework I find useful is Self-Determination Theory.
It identifies three basic psychological needs associated with healthy functioning and wellbeing:
Autonomy: feeling you have meaningful choice.
Competence: feeling capable and effective.
Relatedness: feeling connected to other people.
Now apply those questions to menopause support.
Does the information you’re receiving increase your sense of choice?
Does it make you feel more capable of navigating your health?
Do you feel supported and connected?
Or do you leave feeling frightened, deficient and dependent on the next expert telling you what to do?
That’s a wellbeing question worth asking.
Very easily.
We spent decades telling women almost nothing about menopause.
Now we’ve apparently decided to compensate by giving them a full-time curriculum.
Take this.
Don’t eat that.
Lift this.
Track that.
Use these hormones.
Never use those hormones.
Optimise your sleep.
Optimise your glucose.
Optimise your cortisol.
Optimise your morning.
At some point, “empowerment” starts sounding suspiciously like another list of instructions.
Expert guidance is incredibly valuable.
But informed choice is different from instruction without context.
Good menopause information should make a woman more capable of making decisions, not more dependent on being told what to do.
The VIA Character Strengths assessment is one option.
Or begin with your own life.
Ask:
What qualities have helped me through difficult periods before?
What do people consistently come to me for?
When do I feel most capable?
Which parts of myself have helped me adapt?
Which strength am I not using enough?
And which might I be overusing?
That final question is important.
Perseverance can become refusing to stop.
Kindness can become chronic self-sacrifice.
Leadership can become controlling absolutely everything.
Curiosity can become researching menopause online until 2am and ordering six supplements from somebody called Moon Goddess Health.
Strengths need context too.
No.
Character strengths do not replace healthcare.
Positive psychology and medicine aren’t competing philosophies.
They simply ask different questions.
Medicine may ask:
What needs treating?
Wellbeing science might additionally ask:
What helps this person live well?
I want both questions in women’s health.
The menopause conversation has become very good at cataloguing loss.
Hormones.
Bone.
Muscle.
Sleep.
Energy.
Confidence.
Some of that information is essential.
But it’s incomplete.
Because women also arrive in midlife carrying decades of strengths, skills, relationships, knowledge and lived experience.
Let’s put those into the health conversation too.
Don’t only ask what’s wrong with a woman in menopause.
Ask what’s strong in her.
By Lisa Walker, Co-founder of Eir Women. Lisa’s postgraduate wellbeing-science work includes positive psychology, character strengths, psychological needs and approaches to flourishing under pressure.
