It is apparent that many traumatised individuals, as well as those individuals who live with severe mental illness, have suffered, and continue to suffer from symptoms directly caused by perceived threats to their personal power. Their complex problems require creative, individually-tailored approaches synthesized from the examination, deconstruction, and reconstruction of multiple knowledges accessed from the point of resistance (POR) perspective. POR is defined as the point in time and place where questions like “Who am I? Why do I feel so terrible? Can you help me to feel better?” are first posed.
A creative and reflexive interdisciplinary framework recognises that where there is resistance to oppression, there is the opportunity to learn. By supporting clients to approach their self-narrative with curiosity, the therapist and the client may collaboratively perceive the crucial point at which discourse renders the client simultaneously vulnerable and powerful: the point of resistance. The POR is the starting point for questions, exploration, and dialogue that provides the compass and the means for new direction and change.
Many multidimensional trauma-informed approaches exist “to feeling free to know what you know and feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed or collapsed” (van der Volk, 2014). Personal experience, peer-reviewed literature, and Lisa’s practice-based evidence working with clients with complex diagnoses informs the origins and theoretical development of her Points of Resistance Theory (PORT). Her experience working with PTSD and trauma, schizophrenia and trauma, attachment trauma, personality disorders and dissociative disorders, indicates that the primary objectives of trauma-informed therapy are the restoration or instillation of hope, self-worth, psychological safety, empowerment and relational connection with self. To help the client know what they know and feel what they feel, Lisa will introduce a new, interdisciplinarian practice framework (PORT). She will discuss a case study that demonstrates how PORT may be integrated into all health professionals’ practice, thereby offering their trauma patients/clients a portal to hope, transformation, and post-traumatic growth.
Video Lecture: Points of Resistance
PPT Slides: Points of Resistance
Assessment Component
Lisa is an accredited mental health social worker, psychotherapist, and author of Finding My Invisible Sun: Overcoming Trauma. Lisa has lived experience of trauma (childhood sexual abuse), mental illness and institutionalised discrimination. Lisa has practised therapy for 15 years: 11 years within the D&FV prevention service and 4 years as an accredited mental health social worker. Prior to practising therapy, Lisa taught English, history, and drama to secondary school students and transitioned to teaching students with special needs. As a self-professed idealist and opportunistic dissident intellectual, Lisa encourages people to grasp every opportunity to challenge the status quo.
