My Therapist Forgot About Me

Alternative title: WHY AM I TRIGGERED ABOUT THIS

I’ve been looking forward to therapy because I’m coming off of an emotional week with seeing my mom and her side of the family last weekend. 

While I’ve been processing the event with my friends, through writing, and in my own journal, my therapist helps me see parts of myself that I repress.

I fucking love that kind of innerwork. He’s great.

So I was excited for our session today at 8:45am PST. I finished sunrise yoga at 8 and left feeling light as a feather and on top of the world. I walked over to a coffee shop with outdoor seating, grabbing a table far away from the other people, in the sun. 

As 8:45am crept up, more people began to grab tables outside in earshot and I’m 100% ok with strangers hearing about my trauma but I started to empathize with them, thinking they’d be like they’d be “wtf happened to this girl?” so I scurried to a little courtyard behind the cafe where 1 employee was taking his break on the picnic table.

I found a concrete ledge on the perimeter of the courtyard, hotspotted my laptop, and dialed into our Zoom waiting room. I opened my journal in front of me with the agenda I prepared for therapy since we had a lot I needed to cover. I went to toggle on Do Not Disturb when I saw texts from my therapist apologizing and correcting me that he meant 11:45am PST not EST.

I exited out of the Zoom, grabbed my stuff from the ledge, and walked back to the outdoor tables feeling like someone took the wind out of my sails for the day. I was rocked.

I felt unimportant and forgotten.

It’s an honest mistake he made (and I’ve done it myself) but for some reason I was gutpunched. I walked back to the same table I was at before (grateful it was still available) and just sat there stunned, latte getting cold.

I was observing the stir of negative emotions in me and could feel the start of tears behind my eyes. I was curious about why this felt so intense to me. He didn’t forget about me but I felt like he did.

I’ve had this feeling before

When I was 23 working at Sprinklr, our Head of Revenue Enablement held an internal offsite for our team of 5 of us. He asked each of us to prepare a deck about our work and what our goals were for the upcoming H2 with a review of H1. We didn’t get a lot of time but I pulled an all nighter and assembled a clean, impressive presentation about the work I had done and the initiatives I was excited to take on.

I made sure to memorize all the numbers and metrics so that I didn’t have to look back at the screen when I got up there. I felt proud about my slides.

Next afternoon, we started each of our presentations with my direct manager going first and then the senior manager and so on. I was the most junior one on the team. Between their presentations and all the questions and discussions, I patiently sat at the table excited to go next but we were also reaching the end of day. 

Then the Head of Revenue Enablement wrapped us up and said to me, “Kaila, I trust you’re good on this,” and skipped me and my presentation and we left for team dinner and happy hour.

Any employee would feel elated that they don’t have to get up there and present their work.

I went to the 4th floor bathroom and started to cry. I was upset about how I felt and UPSET about being upset at work. Kaila Lim, hold it together. 

I felt like I didn’t matter

Again, right, I know that he likes my work and values me on the team 100% but I could not shake the feeling of being forgotten– feeling small and unimportant. I lost a lot of motivation the next couple of weeks and cried after the team dinner when I walked home in the snow

Where does this feeling come from??!

I don’t want to invalidate myself. I feel what I feel.

We’re rescheduled to talk at 11:45am PST, in a couple hours.

This has been added to the agenda.