My marriage counselor has specifically said, on multiple occasions, "I care about you" (or in one case "I genuinely care about you"). I took that to mean he cares about me as a person. I had said to him at one point that he only cares because we pay him. He said we could pay him to do his job, but we can't pay him to care. As in, he chooses to care. When discussing termination, I said I worried that, if we terminated, there would be one less person who cared about me. He said that wasn't the case, that he'd still care. So that suggests it's about me as a person, not just as a client (though I doubt he would have said, "Yep, when the money stops flowing, I stop caring!")

When I mentioned to T those fears about MC no longer caring about me once we terminate, he said he doubted that would be the case. How for him, with former clients, he doesn't think about them as often because he isn't seeing them regularly, but he still cares. That suggests to me that he cares about his clients as people, too. (I've never directly asked if he cares about me--seemed too soon to ask that, as it's only been a little over 4 months, but I can tell that he does.)