I agree nobody quite knows what anybody else is feeling or thinking, unless they are explicitly and honestly talking about it. And I think those kind of connections are rare - probably you can count them on the fingers of one hand, and they are not all the time. The level of true contact comes and goes.

However - I don't think pretty much everything is an act. I'm not a therapist, but I have cried for clients of mine, for the trauma they suffered. I have felt grief for them, and I have felt so ****ing proud of them and their victories. I have experienced huge happiness from the work we did together. None of that is an act. I have to behave appropriately (like nipping to the ladies for a few tears during one particularly moving evening, rather than crying in their face) but my feelings about them were real.

There are clients I might never see again, but I will always, always remember them. They have genuinely touched my soul, and enriched my life, and I will remember them and their stories and the work we did together for the rest of my life. Perhaps that sounds trite, but it's genuinely how I feel.