Personality Disorders Counseling Training Program

Personality disorder presentations can leave even experienced clinicians feeling frustrated, stuck, and disheartened—especially when symptoms overlap with other conditions, self-report is incomplete, and long-standing patterns shape the therapeutic relationship. This 12-hour certificate program brings assessment, management, case conceptualization, and treatment into a coherent, evidence-informed framework for working with DSM-5 personality disorders with greater structure, clarity, and realistic expectations.
If you’ve wanted a practical way to understand what may be driving difficult-to-manage behavior—and to choose responses that fit the client’s needs, readiness, functioning, and treatment context—this training offers a clinically grounded path forward. It connects diagnostic criteria with cognitive profiles, the 18 early maladaptive schemas, and relevant developmental, biological, cultural, and contextual influences.

$317 for 2 CE courses · 12 CE hours · save up to $43 today

Key Takeaways

• Clearer assessment and case conceptualization: Distinguish enduring personality patterns from episodic symptoms and organize complex presentations into a workable clinical map.
• Management matched to the presentation: Pace feedback, communicate, set limits, address safety, and support movement toward goals without treating every diagnosis—or every client—the same way.
• A coherent treatment framework: Use DBT, CBT, and schema-focused strategies to select realistic targets, address in-session patterns, and plan for sustained gains.

Why this course?

• A realistic, evidence-informed perspective: Clarify what research does and does not establish, recognize that progress may be gradual, and avoid overstating likely outcomes.
• Broad assessment and treatment coverage: Develop management strategies for all 10 DSM-5 personality disorders, then apply an integrated framework across a range of personality presentations.
• Practical tools for clinical decision-making: Use conceptualization diagrams, worksheets, relational strategies, and relapse-prevention planning to keep care focused, collaborative, and connected to a clear rationale.

Learning Objectives:

After participating in Assessment and Management of Personality Disorders: Understanding the Hidden Agenda participants will be able to:

• Analyze the diagnostic criteria and explain key differential diagnosis considerations for each of the 10 DSM 5 personality disorders.
• Identify etiological and epidemiological factors associated with each.
• List the 5 characteristics that differentiate PDs from other psychological conditions.
• Assess the treatability of each of the 10 personality disorders.
• Describe the 18 early maladaptive schemas driving target behaviors, including historical, cultural, and other environmental risk factors influencing them.
• Plan management strategies for all 10 DSM 5 personality disorders.

After participating in Evidence-Based Treatments for Personality Disorders participants will be able to:

• Discuss 8 evidence-based treatments for personality disorders.
• Describe 5 characteristics unique to treating these diagnoses effectively.
• Explain 18 early maladaptive schemas driving target behaviors, including historical, cultural, and other environmental risk factors influencing them.
• Design case conceptualization diagrams to drive treatment planning, agenda setting, and documentation.
• Describe 3 schema modes in narcissism and design mode work strategies. 
• Compare the 2 types of relapse prevention sessions with the typical course of care sessions.

By the end of this certificate program, you’ll have a more organized and clinically nuanced approach to recognizing personality pathology, discussing diagnoses collaboratively, selecting management responses, and planning treatment. If you’re ready for clearer direction when entrenched patterns affect assessment, safety, engagement, or the therapeutic relationship, this training is designed to help you respond with greater structure and deliberateness.