Do therapists truly care about their clients or do they act like they care?

Because you want to doubt it?

I don't imagine people getting into the therapy field unless it is in their nature to be caring. That doesn't mean that all T's and clients are a good fit. I believe that my T genuinely cares about my well-being and is concerned for my mental stability, but it is a purely professional type of caring. The same way I believe my doctor genuinely cares about my well-being. I am not looking for more than someone to lead me on the journey to healing so I was very comfortable when he told me he cared about me as a client. I guess it boils down to how you define caring...

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
~ Maya Angelou

Wow, Protoform, have you noticed that you ask a question and then actually begin to analyze and challenge every response you don't particularily like? It's pretty evident that you had a shearingly painful therapeutic experience, but that doesn't mean that everyone who is experiencing their therapeutic experience as positive and helpful is being conned or that they are in total denial. Maybe their relationship with their therapist has been truly helpful, supportive and healing. It's fine to question what happened during your difficult therapeutic relationship, but I think you need to stay focused on what YOU felt and what YOU experienced rather than question the validity of other individual's therapeutic relationships. Believe me, if they feel a need to bring their own concerns about what their therapeutic relationship means, they will post a thread about it.

I sure hope you're able to find a therapist that will assist you in addressing your concerns. Someone suggested DBT--this might not be a bad idea for you. It's more about developing a set of skills to deal with emotional dysregulation, anger management/assertiveness, mindfulness and dealing effectively with cognitive distortions (you learn to analyze your own cognitive thoughts). You stay in control in the sense that it's cognitively based rather than an attachment style form of psychodynamic therapy. Good luck!

I think this is a great question/topic. The first way I think about approaching an answer is to define "care". If your idea of feeling cared for is getting a hug and being told so, then I suppose that's a pretty easy criteria to fulfill.

For me, I think there's many different kinds of care - like love, it's a big word and it encompasses a lot. There's family love, friendly love, romantic love, even loving an inanimate object (like loving sunsets or the ocean). Care is the same way to me. There's different levels/types of care.

A hug and a kind word is a low-level of care to me. A higher level of care from a therapist might be if I told them I was feeling bad because I love music, and I want to play guitar, but I couldn't find a guitar for $75 or less (my budget), then I come back next week and the T has four printed ads from craigslist with guitars for $75 or less. That's an entirely different level of care. They had to work a little to help me on that one - they worked harder than a hug and word.

To answer your question, no, I have never felt cared for by a T. I keep hoping I will find one that does, but so far, no luck. But I'm harder to please than most (no I don't need a guitar, I already got two thanks). The closest I have felt to being genuinely cared for by a T is when I had an MD tell me that there were a lot of bad therapists out there, in addition to the good ones. I liked that guy. He told me that without insurance, I was going to have a much harder time finding a good therapist, because the good ones want to make money, and many of the ones that are paid by social services or government agencies are burned out, overloaded, or just plain low-quality. His honesty and pragmatism impressed me. He didn't care about me, per say, nor did he tell me anything I didn't already know, but he was honest. And being honest like that - well, that to me approaches "caring" in some tangential/abstract way. Cheers.

Usually therapists have a good pool of clients and there are many clients with lighter sessions/issues and some with heavier sessions/issues. Sometimes there are a select few a therapist "actively" worries and thinks about...but that is not to say she doesn't genuinely care about all of her clients.

I know it is hard to grasp and believe, though. T's are special people!

I am certain they do genuinely care. Most of them anyway. However, I think sometimes human flaws can get in the way.

my t cares for real. she wont work with people she doesnt care about. and she spends so much time on me and does so many things for me , goes way above and beyond. it isnt an act.

My T has never told me that she likes me or cares for me, but I feel those things anyway. In fact, I feel those emotions from most of the people in my life-- family, friends, co-workers, etc. I think that how I feel about those things has little to do with others in my life, and mostly to do with me-- whether I am open enough to accept the caring that people offer me, in tangible as well as intangible forms.

Yes, mine has told me that she does, and has taken time to make sure I know it has nothing to do with me paying her.

I can't imagine going into this field and not genuinely caring about clients. It actually doesn't make any sense to me, since what satisfaction would a therapist get from their work if they didn't genuinely want to help their clients? I can see frustration, but that still involves caring.

Whether or not your therapist cares about you in the way you want them to is a different story. All T's will like some clients more than others and some may identify with the issues of certain clients and have a stonger connection, but that is just human nature. But I do believe they care very much about the wellbeing and want the best outcome for all of their clients.

I think some T's are more prone to showing emotion and affection (the warm and fuzzy type) than others, but that says more about personality than level of caring. I don't think a T who hugs is more necessarily more caring than one who doesn't at all. But I understand many people interpret actions this way, so I can see how some people can feel like their T doesn't care as much as they'd like. Honestly, until I came on PC and read so many posts about about T's that hug and say I love you, I never doubted that my T or Pdoc cared about me. It never occured to me that they would actually come out and tell me that they cared, so I've never expected that type of relationship. A person's actions can tell you a lot and if someone doesn't care anything about you, I tend to think it is pretty easy to tell.

I can't imagine why it would matter what the therapist actually does. For those who seem to want or need it -it is the belief of being cared about that would seem the important part of it.
I frankly do much better with the belief the therapist does not care. IF they actually do, they have been kind enough to keep it to themselves. I can imagine all sorts of reasons people would do the job without actually caring.

I go into therapy with the assumption that the T is a businesswoman first (all my T's have been female). They own a practice and need to maintain a healthy client level to survive, and will care as much as needed to make this possible. I am sure my past Ts cared about me to an extent, but mostly saw me as income.

This level of cynicism and assuming everyone is as emotionally vacant as I am is one of many traits I wish I could change about myself.

I think they really care. Maybe not for everybody.
I am nurse and I also have patients, sometimes I am really interested in them or too much interested in some of them, sometimes I care only about it how to help them but it's nothing personal and sometimes I don't like some of them but I still care for their health cos it's my job.
But I am the same to everyone of them in their eyes, they don't know what's in my mind.
I was even searching for some of my patients on facebook but they don't know it.

I think they are probably just doing a job, one that is better done when one cares. Maybe its an ego thing to do a good job and therefore pretend to care just to do a good job.

My T told me he couldn't do his job if he didn't find something to like or appreciate about every single one of his clients. Of course he's said some can be more difficult than others, but he wants nothing but the best for all of us, in the end.

Do I think he cares about me, personally? Yes. To what degree, I have no idea. Obviously a little, if he's taken time out of his busy life to entertain (most) of my ridiculous thoughts via text every so often.

I think about it like this: I'm a teacher. I want my students to do well--I care about that, because it's good for them, and also because it means that I'm doing a good job. So I care about them in a professional kind of way. For a therapist, I imagine it's the same, except he cares professionally about my life. If I make progress, he'll be glad. But I'm his work; he shouldn't have to think about me outside the office.