How to Set Boundaries With Clients Around Email and Messaging

Tell new clients in session one how between-session messages will be handled, in writing, with the exact wording you want them to read.

The reason wording matters is that emails between sessions don’t go wrong at the receiving end. They go wrong at the reply. A logistical question can pull a long, thoughtful reply that does unpaid clinical work, and once a channel works that way the expectation embeds. Replies cost time and they thin the next session, because the clinical content has already been half-processed by email.

The wording worth giving new clients reads roughly like this:

“You can email me between sessions about scheduling or to send me something for our next meeting. I read these the next business morning and reply within a day. The work itself, the thinking together, happens in session. If something feels urgent before then, please call the crisis line at [number] or go to your nearest emergency department.”

That paragraph tells the client when you read messages, what you read them for, and what to do in a crisis. It doesn’t refuse anything. It describes how the channel functions.

Replies during your next business window stay short and limited to logistics. Move the appointment, confirm the document received, point at the next session. The clinical content waits for the room. The pull to engage with it on email is real, and resisting the pull is the actual boundary.

In my-cbt, the in-portal messages save into the case file, attached to the assignment they relate to. They surface when you open the file to prepare for the next session, which is when they belong in your attention. The notification doesn’t reach your phone outside work hours.

Set the wording in session one. The channel becomes what you described. The boundary holds because the structure makes the right move the easy one.