Beyond the Label

 Earn 3 CE Contact Hours

This training will teach you to understand Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) from a systemic and attachment-based perspective. You will learn how to move beyond pathologizing labels and recognize symptoms as adaptive relational responses. Through interactive discussion and case examples, you’ll develop skills for identifying how early attachment injuries, trauma, and family dynamics contribute to emotional dysregulation, relationship struggles, and identity issues.

This training will provide you with practical frameworks and tools to reframe challenging behaviors and conceptualize BPD within a broader relational context, allowing for more effective and compassionate clinical practice.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Participants will be able to conceptualize BPD symptoms as adaptive relational responses rooted in early attachment injuries, trauma, and family dynamics rather than fixed pathological traits.
• Participants will identify how early attachment disruptions, family systems, and contextual factors contribute to emotional dysregulation, identity struggles, and relational difficulties in individuals with BPD features.
• Participants will apply practical frameworks to reframe challenging behaviors associated with BPD within a systemic and relational context.
• 4. Participants will demonstrate increased clinical effectiveness and compassion when working with clients presenting with BPD features across individual, couples, and family modalities.

Who Should Attend:

Mental health professionals, therapists, social workers, counselors, psychologists, marriage and family therapists, and students interested in systemic and attachment-based approaches to understanding personality development and relational functioning. This workshop is especially valuable for clinicians who work with clients presenting with emotional dysregulation, attachment trauma, identity struggles, and complex relationship patterns, and who wish to deepen their ability to conceptualize and treat BPD features through a relational, non-pathologizing lens.

Meet Dr. Francis:

Lastenia Francis, PhD, LMFT, is a therapist, supervisor, and faculty member specializing in trauma, couples therapy, military families, and intersectional family dynamics. She developed the Bidirectional Intersectional Supervision (BIS) model and researches power in Black female breadwinner couples.