My marriage counselor has said that he "genuinely cares" about me. At one point, when I was kind of upset with him, I said that I was basically paying him to care. And he said that I could pay him to do his job (be a T), but I couldn't pay him to care. In other words, he chooses to care--or he just does because that's who he is.

And my individual T, I used to think she was fairly detached, but then she told me how her colleagues actually think she cares *too* much about her clients. That she's thinking/worrying about them on the weekends, stuff like that. And I've come to realize in the past year or so (been seeing her for 4 years) that she really does care quite a bit about me.

The way I think of it is, if someone didn't care about people in general, wanting to make their lives betters and wanting them to feel better, then why would they choose to become a T at all? Sure, there's some money there, but there are other, more lucrative careers. If you choose to spend your days listening to other people's problems and trying to help them, I feel like you have to care at least at some level. Sure, there are some T's who might be burnt out, who might be overextended and not care as much as they used to about clients in general. Or some might be really good at leaving the caring in the office and compartmentalizing their work. So that they might care about a client in session, but not think of the client outside of it. But I think the majority of T's do genuinely care about their clients.