Abrahams, Sean
What if the pathway to flourishing was not about seeking more positive experiences, but about mastering the forces that actively work against them?
Positive psychology has long sought to understand the mechanisms of flourishing through frameworks like PERMA (2011), which maps the conditions that foster wellbeing. This paper introduces the inverse of Professor Martin Seligman’s model: NARMA (Negativity, Apathy, Restriction, Meaninglessness, and Adversity). It identifies the five psychological forces that consistently undermine happiness and poses the following question: does sustainable flourishing actually require active engagement with the forces that inhibit it? And how do we equip individuals with the cognitive and emotional tools to navigate, counteract and strategically leverage the oscillations between flourishing and stagnation?
Abrahams, Sean. (2025). The NARMA model of Languishing. Zenodo.
