Forgetting

What if you have a therapist, you've been seeing her for a year. She listens very well and is incredibly empathetic. She's a gentle, but firm, therapist. She openly expresses an entirely appropriate and sincerely warm and loving energy. Your connection with her is strong.

The only problem is that she forgets things. For example, you've told her in advance that an important event is happening in your life before your next appointment - and she forgets about it; you have to remind her. She apologizes profusely for forgetting - but she forgets the next "big thing", too. Rinse, repeat.

What would you do?

I’ve always used cbt therapists...They’re pretty much concerned with the moment and don’t need to remember much more than the right name to call you aside from basic psychology. Idk for talk therapy they have soooo many patients idk how they remember anything.

I think it would be completely reasonable to bring up in therapy how this affected you: "When you forgot that x was happening in my life, I felt hurt - and then when you forgot that x was happening in my life, I felt hurt again."


I would expect her to then start taking more notes and to review them before your sessions, if she's having trouble with her memory.

Maybe she's juggling lots of clients, or having personal stress, or who knows what - but it seems completely reasonable for her to remember major happenings in your life, and I don't blame you at all for feeling upset when she's forgotten big things.

My T is very forgetful about day to day things. I think he relies on me to bring them up and discuss them if I need to.

He remembers the things that matter, things about my nature, things that work and don't work for me, and the progress I've made.

I can see how it would be hurtful though. If your T remembers the emotional things, are you willing to accept forgetting the day to day things?

My T from day one must read his last note before coming to get me. I’ve never really had him forget anything , but we have 9 years together so in many ways he understands my life better than I do.

Why not express to your T that this is upsetting to you , she can easily add a quite note like “ she’s got X scheduled this week “ she can spend 2 minutes reading her last notes before your in her office .. and then ask you about whatever that was ..

Wow...thanks to each of you. My T does take notes and review them and she does have my personality and issues down pat. I had no idea that most T's don't remember details. I have a good memory for details and I've been comparing her to myself. But maybe I'm being too judgmental.

My T and I had a very helpful conversation about how each of our memories work. Being a T he is very relational and remembers the “feel” of a session. T remembers generally how I was emotionally, the emotions of the topic, the connection between us and how he felt. He about fell out of his chair when I told him exactly what he was wearing the first session and could recite back most of the important things he said after a year. I can tell him about which weeks he was out of the office and what it was for. We tune in to different things in session.
A couple months ago I told him I needed to talk to him about the memories a certain song brought up. Next session I brought it up to lighten things up after some hard work. He knew the song so I didn’t play it. I told him about how wonderful that day was and all the warm feelings and the one sad part. The following session during a lull T remembered I had asked to talk about the song and asked if this would be a good time. I looked at him and smiled so he would know I wasn’t pissed and told him that we talked about it last week. Poor guy was mortified! T was so upset he was desperately trying to fix it and wasn’t able to think about how to make sure it didn’t happen again. So now at the end of session I try to review any important stuff I think he might have heard in the moment but will not remember. That way when he does his notes (he typically will not take notes in session) it was said recently.
But I know he totally forgot my great grandson being born at 1:03 when he was late for our 1:00 session. LOL.

I have a very good memory in general (sort of like that of Omers!), and my T has admitted early on that his memory isn't great. He also doesn't take notes during session (though types up a thing or two after I leave). I've just gotten used to saying something like, "So I went to that concert Friday," and he'd be like, "Oh, right! How was it?" Rather than expecting him to remember and ask me about it. He does sometimes remember and ask, which is nice, but I've found it's better if I don't expect it and am pleasantly surprised. I was bothered once when he seemed to forget something I thought of as a fairly major thing from my life, but he apologized and said he wanted me to remind him of the details. I think it had been like 6 months since I'd told him, and it's not like it was something I kept talking about. So I was OK with it.

I guess the other thing that bothered me was he seemed to keep forgetting my age, thinking I'm younger than I am. He made a comment the one time about, "I'm a lot older than you are, honey." When he's only 7 years older than me. I ended up emailing him about it, and he said it's more how he feels about his age (he's almost 50) rather than his not knowing mine. How he understands it's important for me to feel seen and understood, and he could see how his not seeming to know a basic fact about me, my age, would bother me. His explanation helped, and it actually led to a good conversation about wanting people to really see and know me. But then, he also notices some things that others don't (or don't mention), like he'll notice if I'm wearing new shoes, he can detect little "tells" that show I'm feeling anxious, and he mostly remembers the bigger picture, like why a particular thing would affect me.


I'd definitely bring this up with your T. Trying to adjust how you see it, too, could be helpful. Like, this is an issue she has in general with her memory. Not a sign that she doesn't care about you. I imagine if you tell her it bothers you, she will probably try to make an extra effort to remember in the future, maybe referring to her notes, like other replies mentioned.

She has a tenancy to forget the daily stuff especially if it is an upcoming event. It bothered me for a bit but I know figure she normally remembers the important things or things we talk about at length. Recently my husband and I renewed our wedding vows. It was during her 2 week vacation. Ehen I brought it up she said oh that right. it was during my vacation tell me all about it" One the other hand we talked a bout thr terminal illness of a close family memeber and every week she checks in on the status of it.

I can barely remember my own schedule, so I'm pretty forgiving of other people who are not living my life not remembering what is going on in my own life. Unless my therapist actually wrote it down and I saw him write it down, AND I saw him look back at those notes before talking to me at the next session, I wouldn't particularly expect him to remember without some kind of prompt from me.

I tended to just start a session with "So, this week was the big (whatever it was) and start talking about it." I didn't really expect them to bring that kind of thing up on their own. They tended to let me bring things up first in session anyway, so this really wasn't much of an issue for me. They took their signals from me, not the other way around.

This thread is enlightening! Thanks for all the experienced each of you has shared.

I was a waitress for 15 years and I never wrote anything down. In fact, I'd get orders stuck in my mind.

I have heard that people with bipolar disorder have over active brains...maybe that's why I can't forget the details people share, also easily multitask.

The first woman I hired had a memory like a sieve -or pretended not to remember anything - I never knew what was acting and what was not with her and this sort of thing. I simply did not rely on her for anything that needed memory.

Regular T takes copious notes. So she remembers quite a bit usually. Former T took notes but not so much when she was with me--she would sometimes jot things down but not write out full sentences like Regular T seems to do. Both have a pretty good memory. Pastor T takes fairly comprehensive notes as well. So he remembers things pretty good. The T I saw for four sessions in between T's was terrible and couldn't remember anything about me from session to session. She even texted me to remind me to bring my new client paperwork the second session when I had already turned all of it in the first session (and had actually emailed it to her as well before the first session). That was sort of a "wow" moment for me. HUGS Kit

Tell her how much this is upsetting you and discuss, between the two of you, how to make it work.

Maybe, seeing she takes notes, she could make a point to remember the 'big' or important events. OR at your session, bring up said big event and talk about it. Basically, start a dialogue with her about it and take it from there.

Thank you all! I will bring this up with her, but I see I'm not alone!

BethRags, thanks for bringing this up! I'm really enjoying learning about how memory works for everyone else!

I had a T that had a terrible memory too. He was pretty upfront about it, and emphasized that it didn't mean that he didn't care, and that he DID remember the big, important stuff. It was a little frustrating for me, because I saw sessions as a continuing conversation, but he wouldn't remember things he had said in the previous session.

It was especially difficult, because I'd go off, think about something, and then come back and want to ask questions or get clarification. You know, "When you said X last week, what prompted that? Did you mean X1 or X2? How did you know this?" etc. And, he'd say, "X? Is that what I said? Huh!"

I decided to roll with it, and just made a mental note that if I wanted to ask about stuff, I needed to do it asap, or to recreate the context for him. Because, otherwise, I believed him and wanted to work with him. So, I took it as something to adjust to, and didn't take it personally. He also took notes, so I guess if there was something super important, I could have said, "Please write this down!"

What's interesting to me is... do you know about the Meyers-Briggs personality stuff? My guess is that this T used "extraverted sensing" (Se) as one of his primary cognitive functions. I could be wrong, but he did experiential, solution-oriented therapy and had played sports in school, and just had this... thing about him that seemed fundamentally different from other Ts.

If that's correct, it makes total sense to me that he'd have a terrible memory. Good memory is tied to using *introverted* sensing (Si), and the way the system works, if you use Se (as I think he did) in your function stack, you don't have Si in the stack at all!

(I also think someone who primarily uses extraverted intuition, Ne, as their primary function might be bad with memory, as they'd have Si as their inferior function, in 4th spot, where's it's largely unconscious and not well-developed.)

I could be wrong, but it's something I'm thinking a lot about lately as a path to self-growth.

For me, I have a great memory for some things (stories that people tell!) - very auditory and story-oriented. But, a terrible memory for visual things. I'd bet if a T wore the same clothes every single day I wouldn't even notice, let alone be able to tell you what they wore. My last T had some snazzy outfits that I'd talk to her about (I was trying to learn more about colors and style for myself!) but ... I can't really remember any of them. I think they involved black and a dark plum-like color that I love, but I have no clue what the outfit actually was or looked like.

Brains are fun!