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Personality Disorders: Diagnostic Features, Clinical Challenges, and Treatment Implications

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Personality Disorders: Diagnostic Features, Clinical Challenges, and Treatment Implications

Practical Personality Disorders Training for Therapists

Aug. 1, 2026

10:00 AM - 1:15 PM (EST)

Virtual Event
3 CE Credits
Why do some clients with personality pathology feel so difficult to engage — and what actually works? Personality disorders are often misunderstood and can present significant challenges in diagnosis and treatment, leaving many clinicians feeling stuck or ineffective. This practical and engaging webinar will help clinicians recognize key diagnostic features, understand the underlying functions of personality pathology, and apply evidence-based strategies to improve engagement, strengthen the therapeutic alliance, and support meaningful change.

Personality Disorders Training

Personality disorders present unique diagnostic and clinical challenges that can leave clinicians feeling uncertain, overwhelmed, or ineffective in treatment. These enduring patterns of emotional, interpersonal, and behavioral dysregulation often impact therapeutic engagement and progress when not fully understood. This webinar will provide a clear, practical overview of the diagnostic features of personality disorders, common clinical challenges that arise in treatment, and key implications for effective intervention.

Drawing from evidence-based approaches, including Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), participants will gain greater diagnostic clarity, strengthen their understanding of the underlying functions of personality pathology, and learn actionable strategies to improve engagement, enhance the therapeutic alliance, and support meaningful, lasting change.

Session Highlights
  • Build a clear understanding of the core features of personality disorders to improve accurate clinical identification and case conceptualization.
  • Learn how to confidently differentiate personality disorders from trauma-related and mood presentations to guide more effective treatment planning.
  • Explore common clinical challenges — including emotional reactivity, interpersonal sensitivity, and engagement barriers — and how to navigate them skillfully.
  • Understand the underlying functions of personality-driven behaviors to reduce clinician frustration and support more compassionate, effective care.
  • Apply practical, evidence-based strategies, including DBT-informed interventions, to strengthen the therapeutic alliance and improve outcomes.
Key Takeaways For Clinicians

“Personality Disorders Training is essential for understanding complex patterns of behavior, emotional regulation, and interpersonal difficulties in clinical settings. This Personality Disorders Training helps clinicians identify key diagnostic features and differentiate between various personality disorders while improving clinical decision-making.

Through this Personality Disorders Training, professionals gain practical strategies to manage challenging cases and improve therapeutic outcomes in real-world practice. The course emphasizes applied techniques, making this Personality Disorders Training highly valuable for modern clinicians seeking to enhance their skills—learn more about professional development opportunities through Clinical Events.

By completing this Personality Disorders Training, clinicians strengthen their ability to assess, diagnose, and treat personality-related conditions effectively, while also staying aligned with best practices supported by organizations like the National Institute of Mental Health. Overall, Personality Disorders Training equips clinicians with structured, evidence-based tools to deliver better outcomes and maintain long-term effectiveness in clinical care”.

This live interactive webinar is designed for behavioral health professionals, including:

  • Counselors
  • Social Workers
  • Psychotherapists
  • Marriage & Family Therapists
  • Psychologists
  • Substance Use Disorders Counselors
  • Case Managers
  • Physicians
  • Other Mental Health Professionals
Lexi Mulee, LMHC, CASAC-T, C-DBTLexi Mulee, LMHC, CASAC-T, C-DBT

DBT, BPD & Personality Disorder Training Expert

Lexi Mulee, LMHC-D, C-DBT, is a licensed mental health counselor, DBT clinician, speaker, consultant, and founder of Wise Mind Counseling, a New York City–based practice centered on practical Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Her clinical and educational work focuses on emotional dysregulation, borderline personality disorder, eating disorders, substance-use concerns, self-harm, impulsive behavior, relationship difficulties, and recurring patterns that interfere with stability and well-being.

Lexi Mulee, is known for teaching DBT in direct, accessible language. Rather than presenting the model as an overwhelming collection of acronyms, worksheets, and rigid instructions, she helps clinicians understand why a skill is being used, which clinical problem it addresses, and how it can be integrated naturally into a client’s everyday life. Her instruction balances acceptance and change, encouraging clinicians to validate the reality of a client’s experience while helping that person develop safer and more effective behavioral responses.

Her approach is collaborative, individualized, and grounded in practical application. Across therapy, skills groups, consultation, and professional training, Lexi emphasizes that clients need more than intellectual knowledge of coping strategies: they need opportunities to practice those strategies during emotional activation, interpersonal conflict, urges, shame, avoidance, and other situations in which familiar patterns are most likely to return.

Professional Background

Lexi Mulee, earned her undergraduate degree in Psychology and Community Health from Hofstra University. Her official professional biography explains that her undergraduate experience also strengthened her interest in serving LGBTQIA+ communities. She later completed a master’s program in Mental Health Counseling at the University of Miami, where she began clinical work in an inpatient setting with women experiencing eating disorders and borderline personality disorder.

Her career has included inpatient and outpatient behavioral healthcare, individual psychotherapy, DBT skills groups, consultation, treatment-team collaboration, and between-session skills coaching. These experiences inform her ability to discuss DBT as both a comprehensive treatment model and a source of focused interventions that clinicians may integrate responsibly into other forms of care.

Lexi Mulee, founded Wise Mind Counseling to provide DBT-focused psychotherapy that is practical, flexible, and connected to clients’ real-world needs. The practice works with clients experiencing emotional overwhelm, unstable or painful relationship patterns, body-image concerns, harsh self-criticism, personality-related difficulties, eating disorders, substance use, trauma-related distress, anxiety, depression, and impulsive or self-defeating behaviors. Current services include individual care and virtual DBT skills groups.

Her current professional materials identify her as an LMHC with New York diagnostic privilege and as a Certified Dialectical Behavior Therapy professional. Wise Mind Counseling uses the credential line LMHC-D, C-DBT. Psychology Today also continues to list CASAC-T, but because her official practice profile no longer includes that designation, Clinical Events should confirm its current status before retaining it as a primary credential.

In addition to her clinical work, Lexi presents DBT education for mental health professionals. Her programs address DBT foundations, mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, validation, behavioral analysis, culturally responsive adaptation, personality disorders, and therapeutic engagement. PESI identifies her as a national DBT instructor and documents her experience in inpatient and outpatient care.

Lexi Mulee, is also the author of the forthcoming book DBT Made Doable: A Clinician’s Guide to Teaching Skills That Stick, scheduled for publication by PESI Publishing on October 6, 2026. The book organizes DBT interventions in a practical format and addresses the four core modules, common implementation difficulties, clinician language, adaptable examples, and client worksheets. Because the publication date is still in the future, the page should describe the title as forthcoming rather than already published.

Areas of Expertise

Dialectical Behavior Therapy. DBT is the central focus of Lexi’s practice and teaching. She emphasizes the dialectical balance between accepting present reality and working toward behavioral change. Her programs help clinicians understand mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness while also considering validation, behavioral targets, treatment commitment, and the therapeutic relationship. Clinical Events’ article on how DBT supports trauma and emotion-dysregulation treatment provides complementary context for clinicians using DBT skills to support stabilization.

Emotion Regulation and Distress Tolerance. Lexi Mulee, teaches clinicians to help clients identify emotions, understand their functions, reduce vulnerability to overwhelming reactions, and respond more intentionally. Her instruction includes practical applications of checking the facts, opposite action, radical acceptance, crisis-survival strategies, mindfulness, and physiological regulation. The goal is not to suppress difficult emotions but to help clients experience them without automatically turning to behaviors that create additional harm.

Borderline Personality Disorder and Personality Pathology. Lexi’s background includes work with borderline personality disorder and other persistent patterns involving emotional reactivity, identity instability, impulsivity, relationship conflict, sensitivity to rejection, and difficulty recovering from distress. Her approach discourages stigmatizing labels and asks clinicians to examine the purpose of behavior, the client’s developmental and relational history, existing strengths, risk factors, and skills deficits. Clinical Events’ discussion of how CBT, DBT, and schema therapy address personality-related patterns offers related treatment context.

Behavioral Chain Analysis. Lexi teaches clinicians to examine what happens before, during, and after a high-risk or ineffective behavior. A chain analysis may identify vulnerability factors, triggering events, thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, urges, actions, and immediate or delayed consequences. This process helps the clinician and client identify specific points where a new skill, environmental change, request for support, or alternative response could interrupt the sequence.

Eating Disorders and Body-Image Concerns. Lexi’s clinical background began in an inpatient setting serving women with eating disorders and BPD, and her current practice continues to address eating-related concerns, body image, shame, self-criticism, and comparison. DBT-informed work may support emotion regulation, urge management, mindfulness, interpersonal skills, and the identification of functions served by disordered behaviors. Treatment should remain coordinated with appropriate medical, nutritional, and specialized eating-disorder providers when indicated.

Substance Use and High-Risk Coping. Lexi works with clients whose substance use, self-harm, impulsivity, or other high-risk behaviors may function as immediate attempts to escape distress, regulate emotion, avoid painful memories, or manage interpersonal crises. A DBT-informed approach validates the problem the behavior is trying to solve without endorsing the behavior itself. SAMHSA identifies DBT as a researched approach that has been adapted for co-occurring borderline personality disorder and substance-use disorders.

Therapeutic Rapport and Validation. Lexi’s teaching places substantial emphasis on psychological safety, accurate empathy, active listening, collaboration, validation, and rupture repair. Validation does not mean approving every belief or behavior; it communicates that the clinician is trying to understand the client’s internal logic and circumstances. Clinicians can connect this work with Clinical Events’ material on therapy ethics, boundaries, confidentiality, and competence, particularly when warmth and accessibility must be balanced with clear professional limits.

DBT Skills Training and Clinical Consultation. Lexi trains professionals to introduce DBT skills in language that feels natural rather than scripted. Her education uses demonstration, case examples, humor, rehearsal, practical worksheets, and discussion of common implementation problems. She supports clinicians in understanding when a specific intervention fits, how to adapt examples without changing the skill’s purpose, and how to maintain a structured treatment direction while remaining responsive to the individual client.

Authored Publications
  • DBT Made Doable: A Clinician’s Guide to Teaching Skills That Stick

After this training, participants will be able to:

  • Identify the core diagnostic features and distinguishing characteristics of personality disorders across Clusters A, B, and C.
  • Differentiate personality disorders from other clinical conditions and understand their developmental and functional origins.
  • Apply evidence-based treatment principles, including DBT-informed strategies, to improve therapeutic engagement and clinical outcomes.

10:00 -10:05 am – Introduction
10:05-10:30 am –What Are PDs?
10:30-11:00 am – What is the History of PDs?
11:00-11:30 am -Cluster A: Paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal
11:30-11:45 am – Break
11:45-12:15 pm – Cluster B: Borderline, Histrionic, narcissistic, Antisocial
12:15-12:45 pm – Cluster C: Avoidant, Dependent, Obsessive-compulsive
12:45-1:05 pm – Clinical presentation
1:05-1:15 pm – Q&A

All levels. This presentation will provide foundational knowledge for newer clinicians while also offering deeper clinical insight and practical treatment considerations for more experienced professionals.

Registration Cost

Registration $67 | Aug. 1 | Virtual Event | 3 CE Credits | 10:00 am – 1:15 pm ET

Registration Deadline:  Aug. 1, 2026

Cancellation Policy

All registrations are non-refundable. However, you may request a full credit toward a future training if:

  • You notify us at least 72 hours before the event starts.
  • Credit is valid for up to 6 months from the original event date.
  • No credit will be issued for no-shows or cancellations made on the same day.
  • When you register for an event, you agree to these terms

Please email [email protected] to request a credit or reschedule.

A total of 3 CE credits are available.

Additional Approvals Pending.


ASWB ACE

Clinical Events, LLC, (provider # 2201) is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 11/01/2025 – 11/01/2028.

NBCC

Clinical Events, LLC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved   Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7643 Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Clinical Events, LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

NAADAC

This course has been approved by Clinical Events, as a NAADAC Approved Education Provider, for educational credits. NAADAC Provider #320899, Clinical Events is responsible for all aspects of the programming.

NY State Board of Psychologists

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0292.

NY State Board of Psychoanalysts

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #P-0073.

NY State Board of Social Workers

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0828.

NY State Board of Mental Health Counselors

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0329.

NY State Board of Marriage & Family Therapists

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed marriage and family therapists #MFT-0140.

NJ State Board of Social Workers & Professional Counselors

The New Jersey Social Work Examiners Board accepts ASWB ACE Provider credits. The New Jersey Professional Counselors Board accepts NBCC-approved CE provider credits.

All Other States Social Workers & Professional Counselors

All other states accept ASWB ACE Provider credits and NBCC-approved CE provider credits. Licensees are responsible for determining whether courses meet the CE requirements in their jurisdictions. States and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for credit.

Florida Certification Board

Clinical Events is approved by the Florida Certification Board (FCB) to offer continuing education programs (Provider # 5527-A).

Canada Social Workers

BC, AB, SK, MB, ON, and QC accept ASWB ACE-approved provider programs to meet licensure renewal requirements.  Licensees are responsible for determining whether courses meet the CE requirements in their province. Provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for credit.

Canada Counsellors

Clinical Events is an NBCC-approved provider.  Licensees are responsible for determining whether courses meet the CE requirements in their province. Provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for credit.

Please contact us if you would like to inquire about applicable approvals for your continuing education (CE) needs.

Each professional is responsible for understanding and meeting the specific CE requirements set by their individual licensing board or regulatory agency. We encourage you to reach out to your licensing body directly to confirm how our programs apply toward your licensure renewal.

Questions:  [email protected]

In accordance with continuing education standards and requirements, the presenter discloses that they have no relevant financial relationships, affiliations, or conflicts of interest to report.