Given the nature of wellness and well-being practices, counselor training experiences for wellness might be best served through both didactic and experiential involvements. The current study explored impacts on self-care, professional quality of life, and stress reactions in helpers-in-training who completed an eight-week experiential wellness and well-being seminar. Qualitative results reflected introduction and application themes for wellness and well-being experiences. Quantitative results indicated that participants reported improvements to self-care and stress reactions. Findings support the use of innovative experiential training practices to impact self-care, stress reactions, and wellness and well-being outcomes.

Vladimir A. Lefebvre [1, 2] proposed an algebraic model of self-reflection that predicts individuals will judge ambiguous stimuli positively with a proportional frequency of .618. While a number of studies have empirically supported this prediction [3, 4], Anderson and colleagues [5] found only partial support for Lefebvre’s model. They moreover suggested that Schwartz and Garmoni’s States of Mind (SOM; [7]) model could potentially explain the disparate findings as well as the variability of positive judgements seen across individuals. Consequently, this study explored whether ratios of psychological functioning posited by the SOM model correspond with proportions of positive judgements of ambiguous stimuli (viz., pairs of pinto beans). Results revealed that, while Lefebvre’s predicted proportion of positive judgments was again replicated, individuals with relatively high positive affect were not more likely to rate greater proportions of the ambiguous stimuli positively.

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