Walking on Eggshells: Understanding Relationships with System-Involved Youth Who Have Borderline Dynamics

Brooke Hailey, PhD, LMFT

Training Description

This training helps service providers and caregivers understand the relational patterns that emerge with system-involved youth exhibiting borderline dynamics, including splitting, fear of abandonment, and rapid idealization-devaluation cycles. Participants will explore these behaviors through an attachment-based, trauma-informed lens rather than a purely diagnostic one, examining how early relational disruption shapes a young person’s expectations of caregiving relationships. The training introduces Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)-informed validation strategies and a mentalizing stance to help participants respond to relational ruptures without escalating them or absorbing blame. Attendees will leave with concrete tools for maintaining connection, consistency, and promoting stability among system-involved youth whose relationships can otherwise feel unpredictable and destabilizing.

Learning Objectives

• Identify at least three relational patterns commonly associated with borderline dynamics in system-involved youth (e.g., splitting, abandonment testing, idealization-devaluation cycles).

• Apply two DBT-informed validation strategies to de-escalate relational ruptures during role-play practice.