You need a second number that can send SMS. That is the short answer, and it is short because the alternatives mostly don't work.

The reason texting specifically drags therapists onto their personal handset is structural. Clinic phone systems route calls and often cannot send texts at all. Practice management software sends one-way appointment reminders the client cannot reply to. Secure messaging inside a client portal requires the client to log in or install something, and a meaningful number of them won't. So the only tool left that reaches the client where they already are is the phone in your pocket, with your own number on it.

One therapist describes this exactly: working in a group clinic with call routing but no text capability, and finding that for a couple of adolescent clients the only way to reach them at all is text — while being uncomfortable using a personal line to do it.

The fix is a second number that can send and receive texts.

Why doesn't the portal solve this?

Because the client has to go there, and the client is not going to.

The question gets asked in almost those words — is there a way to text clients securely without requiring them to sign into an account? Everything portal-based answers no by design: the security comes from the client authenticating, so removing the login removes the mechanism.

Secure messaging apps that therapists like tend to have the same shape. One practitioner sums up a popular option bluntly: it's only properly secure if the client also installs it. That is fine when the client will. It fails at exactly the population that most needs texting — teenagers, people in unstable housing, people who reply to a text in ninety seconds and would never open a portal.

The result is a gap that is genuinely unserved by practice software: an ordinary SMS conversation, from a number that isn't yours, that lands in a record you can retrieve.

What are the actual options?

A second line or eSIM on your phone. SMS works the way SMS always works. The client gets a text from a number, replies to it, done. The cost is a line on your plan, and the limitation is that both numbers arrive in the same messages app — your client thread sits next to your mother's.

A second handset. Same as above with real separation. Overkill if texting is the only reason you're doing it, correct if you also want to be able to put it down.

A virtual number app. The common answer in American threads and the one that gets complicated north of the border. Some apps require a business registration number before they will send SMS from a Canadian account. Some have had outbound features blocked by Canadian carriers. And at least one Canadian therapist looked at the two most-recommended options, found one privacy policy unacceptable and the other written entirely for US law, and concluded a cheap second phone was simpler.

Practice software that includes two-way texting. Some does, most doesn't, and what "texting" means varies enormously — one-way reminders and a real reply thread are both marketed with the same word. Check whether the client can reply, and check where the reply goes.

What do I have to sort out before I start texting?

Two things, and neither is about the technology.

Consent, in writing. Get it before the first text, not after. What goes in it is a separate question, but the short version is: what the channel is for, what it is not for, how quickly you reply, and what the client should do in an emergency instead.

Where the messages live. Texts about a client are part of how you worked with that client, and a thread trapped in a consumer messaging app on a personal phone is the version of this that causes problems later. One practitioner's rule of thumb from these threads is that any text should have a clinical note attached to it.

What the psychotherapy College asks for is a notation rather than the thread. Its contents of the clinical record include "a notation of all in-session and out-of-session contacts with a client or their authorized representative," with the published examples being "letters, emails, texts, and telephone calls," and where a practice involves written communication, registrants "include copies of correspondence and treatment-related communication in the clinical record" (CRPO Professional Practice Standards, Standards 3.4 and 5.1).

The social work College is looser on the same point and worth reading carefully. Correspondence and messages appear in the list of what a record may include, not what it must — but once they are placed there, "these tools cannot be removed and shall be managed in the same way as other documents in the record" (OCSWSSW, Interpretation 4.1.2).

Neither of which is satisfied by a thread you can only see on one handset.

What if I genuinely can't afford another monthly bill?

Say so out loud, because you are not alone in it — one therapist in this conversation says plainly that colleagues pay for a second line on their phone plan and they can't.

Two things that cost nothing:

Use email for everything that isn't urgent. It is slower and less likely to get a reply from a sixteen-year-old, and it is free and already yours.

Block your outbound caller ID and take inquiries in writing. This doesn't get you texting, but it does stop your number spreading while you decide.

And one thing that costs a little: a prepaid line is usually the cheapest real second number available, and it does SMS without any software evaluation at all. If your only requirement is "text from a number that isn't mine," that is probably your answer and you can stop shopping.

The short version

The personal handset is not a choice most therapists made — it's the residue of every other option failing. Portals need a login. Clinic systems don't text. Reminder SMS can't be replied to.

Fix it with the smallest thing that gives you a second number capable of sending SMS, sort out consent before the first message, and decide deliberately where those messages are going to live.

About Rivet

Rivet is a Canadian practice line built for therapists — a separate number for calls, texts and voicemail, with video sessions and clinical tools in the same place. Your data stays in Canada, and transcription runs on Rivet's own hardware rather than a third-party AI service.

One plan, $65 CAD a month, everything included. Fourteen-day trial, no card.

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