What You Need to Know About Avoidant Personality Disorder (AVPD)
Live Webinar: 14th Mar 2026
About This Webinar
Avoidant Personality Disorder (AVPD) shows significant symptom overlap and comorbidity with generalised anxiety disorder and is frequently mistaken for social anxiety. Despite a well-established prevalence of around 2%—and its association with substantial psychosocial impairment, distress, and reduced quality of life—AVPD has received remarkably little clinical attention.
In this webinar, Dr Joan Haliburn will outline the different types of AVPD, exploring how the disorder reflects a constellation of relational anxieties: fears of dependency, control, engulfment, and the emotional risks of closeness and commitment. She will also examine the underlying psychodynamics of avoidance and discuss why these processes must be understood for meaningful diagnosis and effective therapeutic intervention.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this webinar, participants will have increased awareness of:
The different types of AVPD, including distinctions between pathological avoidance and healthier avoidant tendencies.
The relationship between AVPD, depression, and other common comorbid disorders.
Key defence mechanisms that underpin avoidant functioning.
The psychodynamic foundations of AVPD and how they inform clinical assessment and treatment.
GLOBAL EXPERT SERIES
Refine your understanding of AVPD dynamics
Enhance your diagnostic clarity by learning to distinguish AVPD from anxiety disorders
Webinar Details
Venue: Online on Zoom. Includes access to video recording for 90 days
Dates: Saturday, 14th of March 2026
Time: 11.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. (Sydney/Melbourne Time)
Cost: A$79
CPD Certificate: 2 hours.
GLOBAL EXPERT SERIES
Expand your clinical toolkit
Learn how AVPD develops and presents across relational contexts
About Dr Joan Haliburn
Dr Joan Haliburn is a Consultant Child, Adolescent and Family Psychiatrist, trained in the Conversational Model of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, in the Systems Model of Family Therapy and in Attachment Strange Situation. She is in private practice and is a faculty member of the Complex Trauma Training Unit, University of Sydney at Westmead Clinical School. She has been involved in psychotherapy research and writing since graduating in 1987. Her most recent book ‘An Integrated Approach to Short Term Dynamic Interpersonal Psychotherapy: A Clinician’s Guide’ 2017 is used in the short-term therapy training course. She has also co-edited “Humanising Mental Health Care in Australia” 2019 and has authored numerous papers in local and international journals.