Hey, don't worry! Ts are trained to keep their distance from patients, and they are trained on how to handle emotions both on their end and on the client's end.

While Ts genuinely *do* care about every one of their patients (or at least I hope so!), they typically don't invest a whole lot of emotion into each therapeutic relationship. They do this because they want to avoid (or at least minimize) any sort of emotional attachment on their end. But, that's not to say that your T *doesn't* have some sort of emotional attachment. They *are* human after all; they just won't outwardly express it because they don't want to cause (or worsen) attachment on anyone's end.

So what I'm trying to say is: I don't think she's necessarily as hurt as you may think she is (or she may not be hurt at all... maybe she's proud of you for understanding what kind of help you need... ever think of it that way? ), and this is because she knows she has to "step back". I'm not saying she's a total desensitized b_tch who never cared for you. Rather, I'm saying that she has some sort of understanding about how emotions work and, because of her training, she knows how to work through things like this. It's the nature of her profession. She'll be okay -- I promise! No hard feelings! (And if it makes you feel any better, I recently terminated T #2 (1 month ago). Then I saw him again about a week ago as I was in the waiting room at my counseling office and he gave me a beaming smile and enthusiastically said "Hey, how are you doing?" No hard feelings.)

All that said, I wouldn't invest too much thought into the termination letter. I think she was just trying to take a step back and keep things strictly "business". And if it makes you feel any better, I didn't get *any* termination letter from T #1 or T #2. So I think the fact she sent you a termination letter with positive words means that she does care for you on some level. And if she TRULY disliked you, she would have closed the door on you and said (in a formal way) "I'm not seeing you ever again".

Oh, and for the text message smileys: This is just a random theory of mine (and it's totally possible I'm wrong because I'm going out on a limb here), but maybe she realized that she was pouring too much emotion into the relationship and she was trying to take a step back. So it might not have anything to do with you at all. Again, "keeping things strictly business".

Sorry for rambling