Join us for an engaging and interactive virtual training exploring the transformative framework of Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT)!
Designed for clinicians working with complex and high-need populations, this workshop will provide practical tools and strategies to better understand, and respond to, moments when clients struggle to understand themselves and others.
Get ready for a dynamic day of learning, reflection, and practical application that you can bring directly into your clinical practice!
Presentation Information:
Many of the individuals seen in community mental health settings struggle not because they lack insight or motivation, but because overwhelming emotion, attachment insecurity, and chronic interpersonal stress can temporarily disrupt their ability to understand themselves and others. When mentalizing collapses, clinicians often encounter crises, treatment ruptures, emotional dysregulation, impulsive behavior, rigid thinking, and recurring interpersonal conflict that can leave both therapist and client feeling stuck.
Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT) offers an evidence-based, attachment-informed framework for understanding these moments. We understand them not as resistance or manipulation, but as understandable disruptions in reflective functioning that can be restored within the therapeutic relationship.
This six-hour interactive workshop will introduce clinicians to the theoretical foundations and practical clinical application of Mentalization-Based Therapy across a broad range of clinical populations, including individuals with personality disorders, attachment trauma, chronic suicidality, self-harm, complex PTSD, anxiety, depression, and relational difficulties. Drawing upon attachment theory, developmental psychology, neuroscience, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and contemporary MBT research, participants will learn to recognize moments of non-mentalizing, assess reflective functioning, and intervene using the characteristic MBT stance of curiosity, collaboration, and epistemic humility.
Rather than emphasizing techniques alone, the workshop will help clinicians understand how therapeutic change occurs through restoring reflective functioning and strengthening epistemic trust. Participants will learn concrete interventions that can immediately be incorporated into outpatient psychotherapy, integrated behavioral health, crisis work, and community mental health practice.
Throughout the day, participants will engage in live demonstrations, experiential exercises, structured role plays, and case consultation designed to increase confidence in applying MBT principles with complex clients.
An ethics component integrated throughout the training examines therapist use of self, countertransference, professional boundaries, cultural humility, implicit bias, and ethical decision-making when working with clients whose attachment histories and personality functioning evoke strong emotional responses in treatment.
Objectives:
- Participants will gain an understanding of the theoretical foundations of Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT), including attachment theory, reflective functioning, epistemic trust, and contemporary psychodynamic principles.
- Participants will learn to recognize clinical indicators of impaired mentalizing and differentiate common non-mentalizing modes, including psychic equivalence, pretend mode, and teleological thinking, across a range of psychiatric presentations.
- Participants will develop skills to apply core MBT interventions, including clarification, curiosity, affect regulation, perspective-taking, exploration of misunderstandings, and rupture repair, to support therapeutic alliance and emotional regulation.
- Participants will gain skills needed to evaluate ethical, cultural, and relational factors that influence mentalizing, including therapist self-awareness, countertransference, implicit bias, professional boundaries, and culturally responsive clinical practice (1:15pm to 2:15pm – Ethical Use of Mentalization).
This training has been approved for six (6) contact hours, including one (1) hour of professional ethics, by the Maine Board of Alcohol and Drug Counselors.
Agenda for the Day:
8:30am to 10:00am – Welcome, Housekeeping, and Introductions, and Presentation
10:00am to 10:15am – Break
10:15am to 12:15pm – Presentation Continues
12:15pm to 12:45pm – Lunch
12:45pm to 2:15pm – Presentation Continues
2:15pm to 2:30pm – Break
2:30pm to 3:30pm – Presentation Wrap-Up & Open Discussion
About the Presenter:
Dr. Gwendolyne Tuttle-Beaudoin, DSW, LCSW is the founder of The Coastal Institute for Psychodynamic Training & Treatment and an internationally recognized educator specializing in Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT), attachment, personality disorders, and contemporary psychodynamic psychotherapy.
Dr. Tuttle-Beaudoin earned her Doctorate in Clinical Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania, where her research examined the role of race and epistemic trust in Mentalization-Based Therapy for BIPOC with BPD.
A passionate clinician-educator, Dr. Tuttle-Beaudoin provides training, consultation, and clinical supervision to behavioral health professionals nationwide and has served as faculty for Maine Medical Center and Central Maine Health Care. She has also supervised graduate interns from the University of Southern Maine, Boston University, Smith College, and the University of New England.
Named the 2024 Maine NASW Social Worker of the Year, Dr. Tuttle-Beaudoin has presented at leading national and international conferences, including ISSPD Boston, ESSPD Switzerland, PREACH Toronto, SPPP New York, and NATSAP California, and is known for translating complex psychodynamic concepts into engaging, practical interventions clinicians can immediately apply in practice.
