Yep, absolutely. It smells fishy. Maybe she will give you more information when you talk to her, but from what you've said, it sounds like she's planning to see clients "under the table" and not report those earnings either to her disability insurance provider (Soc. Sec. or private disability or both) and probably not report them to the IRS either, since that information is available to Soc. Sec.

I don't know what her personal financial situation is; she may be having a cash flow crisis if she's going to be losing most of the income from seeing clients.

I imagine she will do what she thinks she needs to do to manage her finances. If that involves asking you to pay more than you can afford in order to see her, that puts you in a tough situation.

I would decide how much you can afford to pay her per session, even if it's only your $10 co-pay, and refuse to budge from that. It would then be up to her to accept or reject that offer.

My perspective is that of someone who's been dealing with spending and debt issues for years, though, and I know how easy it is to let emotional reasons lead you to spending more than you can really afford for something.

It stinks that she said things to you in the past like "the money doesn't matter". I would imagine that when she said that, she wasn't expecting to be diagnosed with a serious illness.

She very likely is seriously stressed about her finances and her future earning power and her cash flow during the time that it takes to be approved for disability benefits.

Once you get approved, you can work some, but it's very difficult to get approved if you're working. Advice on that varies from place to place in the US, depending on the mindset of the Soc. Sec. judges in that area, but when I was applying initially, my lawyer told me "no work while you're being evaluated", which can easily be a two-year period.

Almost anyone is going to get a little freaked out about how they're supposed to survive for two years without working if they have been working up to that point.

It's possible that your therapist has private disability insurance, too, and that has another set of rules.

Regular Social Security disability looks at your income from "work". For example, you can have investment income, and they don't care about that at all.

I hope I haven't repeated things you already know. I suppose I was motivated to leave a reply on this thread because I do hold therapists to a high standard of honesty and professional conduct, and what yours is proposing sets off alarm bells for me.

Best of luck for sorting out what you need to do.