The main goal of this paper is to determine the correlation between traumatic experiences in childhood and adolescence and the type of motivation that plays a role in terms of choosing a profession among female social pedagogy students. Specifically the research seeks to determine whether there is a statistically significant correlation between the number of traumatic experiences in childhood and adolescence and the different types of motivation for choosing social pedagogy as a profession. It also investigates whether participants that are categorized into low, medium and high levels of risk considering the number of traumatic experiences differ regarding motivation for self-help as the motivation for choosing the profession. The research was conducted at the Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences during the period from 9th to 16th of April 2019. The data was collected through a "paper-pencil" method with a sample of N = 162 female undergraduate and graduate students of social pedagogy. Participation in the research was voluntary and completely anonymous. The instrument consisted of: 1) The questionnaire of sociodemographic data, 2) an adapted version of the Questionnaire of negative experiences in the childhood, and 3) The Questionnaire of motivation (designed for the purpose of this research), which determines the following types of motivations that are important in choosing social pedagogy as a profession: self-help motivation, motivation for helping others, motivation related to self-actualization and motivation related to the characteristics of the profession. Data were analysed via descriptive statistics (arithmetic mean, standard deviation, response frequency), Kruskal Wallis test and Mann Whitney's U-test. The results show that 73% of social pedagogy students experienced at least one traumatic experience during childhood and adolescence. That is, nearly 20% of students experienced four or more traumatic experiences, which presents an extremely high risk for negative developmental outcomes. Spearman's coefficient of correlation found a statistically significant high positive correlation between the number of traumatic experiences and self-help motivation (r = .618; p <0.05) and a statistically significant moderate negative correlation between the number of traumatic experiences and motivations related to the characteristics of the profession (r = ; p <0.05). After categorisation of participants in different risk degrees based on the number of traumatic experiences, the results show that with a higher level of risk, the level of self-help motivation increases as the motivation for choosing social pedagogy as a profession.