I am sorry that your therapist responded to a deeply felt confession in such a superficial way. This is a hard question to answer for a T though in any satisfying way and I guess many of them actually try to avoid addressing it directly (might be why she did not respond with "let's talk about this next week").

I never told any of my therapists that I love them because that would be a strong overstatement, but I do tell them (often in email after sessions) when I appreciate something we do and when I find what they do helpful. They almost never reacted to these statements. I never confronted them about these things as it's not particularly important for me, but I quite direct and upfront about stuff that they seemed to be avoiding at times. Sometimes this was an entree into an interesting and helpful discussion and other times they got defensive.