The Professional Counselor | Volume 12, Issue 1 61 counseling programs have also suffered from a significant amount of childhood adversity. This may have implications for how we educate counselors to work with trauma. Trauma-informed training generally focuses on the effects of trauma on the life of clients and supports evidence-based practices that aid in recovery, resilience, and improved quality of life. Training that is trauma-attuned may focus more on the counselor’s awareness of how their own history of adversity may shape their professional stamina. This may also lead to more research on trauma-attuned supervision. Considering the substantial percentage of MHCs who may have four or more ACEs, it is possible that many clinical supervisors have also been greatly affected by their personal histories. Traumaattuned supervisors will continually reflect on how their past adversity may be influencing the supervisory relationship while also monitoring both their own as well as their supervisee’s levels of burnout and emotional reactivity toward clients. As Zyromski et al. (2020) posited, the use of ACEs as a construct can provide clarity and focus to the harmful experiences that may impede the healthy development of a client. Likewise, knowledge about ACEs and PCEs can help supervisors and counselor educators train counselors who are at greater risk for burnout. It is important that the privacy of the counselor’s childhood experiences be protected, but trainees can be given the ACE and PCE assessments and told of the risk factors that high ACE and low PCE scores have with regard to burnout and CS. Furthermore, clinical and faculty supervisors can provide assessments for CS and burnout at key points during a trainee’s internship or first few years of postgraduate experience. Counselor educators and supervisors may then help trainees develop a self-care plan that will help to foster CS. Directions for Future Research Future studies may further examine the difference between demographic groups based on gender, race, and education in relation to potential protective factors that female and minoritized MHCs have that may decrease the likelihood they will experience burnout. Further research may also examine which ACEs, if any, may have higher correlations with burnout and which PCEs are more likely to serve as protective factors. Furthermore, our results indicate a need to study the CS and burnout of minoritized counselors, female counselors, and those coming from lower childhood SES. Examination of potential cultural and protective factors of these groups may contribute significantly to the literature on burnout prevention. Given the percentage of counselors who have ACE scores that fall within the range of concern, future research may examine potential differences of counselors who are trauma-attuned and not simply trauma-informed. As stated above, ACEs were not significantly correlated with STS. It may be helpful for future researchers to use different measurements of secondary stress to further assess whether there is any correlation between ACEs and STS. Conclusion The purpose of this study was to examine personal factors in the developmental history of clinical MHCs that may influence their likelihood of experiencing professional burnout. This is the first known study we can identify using the ACE Study Questionnaire as a measure to inquire about a potential relationship between the counselors’ developmental adversity and their rates of burnout, CS, and STS. Results indicated that higher ACE scores correlate positively with burnout, and yet PCEs may serve as protective factors. Finally, we found that women and minoritized counselors were less likely to experience burnout than males and White individuals. This was true for minoritized counselors despite their having slightly higher rates of ACEs and lower rates of PCEs. We recommend that counselors become aware of how their own experiences of ACEs and PCEs may be impacting their current practice.
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