160 The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 2 the processing of trauma and acute stress (e.g., EMDR, cognitive process therapy, STAIR Narrative Therapy). Though childhood adversity is not synonymous with trauma, the high rates of ACEs of counselors as evidenced in this study and that of Brown and colleagues (2022) indicate that traumainformed education may be necessary. The 2024 CACREP standards (CACREP, 2023) say relatively little regarding requirements to educate about trauma, yet it will be important for counselor educators to equip counselors-in-training with knowledge concerning both how to care for traumatized students and also to care for themselves. Limitations This study is limited by the nature of survey research such as self-reporting bias and inability to assess all factors that may be influencing the relationship, specifically external factors that previous studies have explored. It is important to note that this study did not examine organizational factors that previous research has shown to be impactful regarding PSCs’ burnout, such as school counselor caseload, PSCs’ supportive relationships (e.g., supervision, mentorship), and the role of school climate (Holman et al., 2019; Mullen et al., 2017; Rumsey et al., 2020). Research has indicated that years of experience (Rumsey et al., 2020) and organizational variables (e.g., non-counseling duties, role ambiguity, supervisor support; Fye, Bergen, & Baltrinic, 2020; Holman et al., 2019) are mitigating factors in PSCs’ experience of secondary traumatic stress. Qualitative research may provide a richer understanding of the phenomena of these outcomes for school counselors. For example, why do PSCs with higher childhood SES have higher levels of secondary traumatic stress? Splitting the sample in half (PSCs with three or fewer ACEs and PSCs with four or more) produced two groups (n = 119 and n = 121), which individually did not meet our required power analysis (N = 138). While we believe in the potential of the results to shed light on the issue of PSCs’ compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress, further research may confirm or elaborate upon the findings. Furthermore, because the sample in the current study did not match previous samples’ reporting rate of reported ACEs scores (e.g., Felitti et al., 1998; Riedl et al., 2020), this study may be replicated on a different sample to contribute to trends in ACEs scores among the PSC population. A significant limitation to our study included our lack of racially minoritized counselors. As a result, we combined racially minoritized counselors and compared them to White counselors, which limited our ability to distinguish between the unique strengths and struggles that may exist within a given racial group. More research needs to be conducted on counselors from various ethnic and cultural groups both within the U.S. and globally. It would be helpful to know what protective factors may exist for school counselors from racially or ethnically marginalized backgrounds around the world. We believe that the results of this study should not draw attention away from numerous studies that have shown that systemic and organizational factors such as school work environment and school counselor caseload have a significant impact on the professional resilience of PSCs (Bardhoshi et al., 2014; Holman et al., 2019; Mullen et al., 2017; Rumsey et al., 2020). The results of this study do not suggest that the problem of burnout is solely or primarily a result of the personal history of PSCs. Future Research Exploring more demographic variables, personal variables, and work characteristics may be beneficial in understanding the relationship between these factors and the presence of compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress. In addition to investigating the aforementioned variables, future research may focus on an experimental pre-/post-test design providing a group of school counselors training regarding secondary traumatic stress, burnout, and wellness practices. This may be particularly helpful for those who have experienced four or more ACEs due to the research that childhood trauma is
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