Bring it into the room, and give the person somewhere concrete to go before you narrow the channel.

That order matters. The instinct when a line starts carrying crisis contact is to close it — stop replying, silence it, block. That is the one move that is both tempting and dangerous, because a channel that has been answering and then goes silent, without explanation, lands on the person as abandonment at exactly the moment they are least able to interpret it charitably.

So: name it in session as clinical material, because that is what it is. Say plainly what the line is and is not. Give the alternative in specific terms — names, numbers, and what happens when they call — rather than "call a crisis line". Write it down for them. Then hold the boundary consistently, which is the part that actually changes the pattern.

Practitioners who have been through this describe doing exactly that: not responding to the crisis contact itself, while sending a message that explains what the boundary is and why. It is uncomfortable and it works more often than the alternatives.

Why it happens

Rarely because someone is trying to take advantage. The two common versions are much more ordinary.

You are the person they have. For a client with few supports, the therapist is the only relationship in which distress has ever been met with a helpful response. The line is not a crisis service, but you are the one who has picked up before.

The channel invited it. A text thread is casual by nature. Therapists who have opened one describe watching it become something other than scheduling — a supplementary session, or a friendship register — and describe it as a boundary test in disguise. That is not a character flaw in the client. It is what an always-on informal channel does.

Either way, it is information about the work, and it belongs in the work.

What to say

In session, first. "I noticed you've been texting me in the evenings when things get bad. I want to talk about that, because I care what happens on those nights and this line isn't going to be able to help you on them."

About the limit, plainly. What hours you check, how quickly you respond, and that the line is not monitored for emergencies. This is easier to say when it is already written in a communications policy that both of you signed, which is the strongest argument for having one before you need it.

About the alternative, in detail. This is the part most often done badly. A person in distress cannot use a vague instruction. They need the specific service to call, the number, whether it is there overnight, and what happens when they reach it.

The national one is 9-8-8, the Suicide Crisis Helpline. It takes calls and texts, runs around the clock in English and French, and is available to anyone in Canada — a network of around forty local, provincial and national crisis lines rather than a single call centre. 911 stays the answer for immediate danger. Add a local service after that if there is one you would genuinely send a client to, and check that anything you name still exists and still runs the hours you think it does before it goes into a safety plan.

About what you will do. Make the safety plan together, in session, while everyone is calm. A plan the client helped write is one they might use.

The messages you have already read

There is a real bind here that therapists raise repeatedly: once you have seen an after-hours message, you are in a different position than if you had not. One practitioner describes being ethically bound to respond to certain content once read — a text about suicidal thoughts cannot be met with "let's talk about it in session".

The response to that bind is not to avoid looking, even though avoiding looking is what a lot of people do. It is to decide in advance what you will do when it happens, write that into your policy, and make sure the client knows what the line will and will not do.

What the published standards say is narrower than the worry, and more useful. The psychotherapy College treats a significant risk of serious harm as a limit to confidentiality rather than as a response deadline, and where the risk is imminent it says there "may be a professional and legal duty to warn the intended victim, to contact relevant authorities such as the police or crisis intervention services, or to inform a physician who is involved in the care of the client" — with its own footnote adding that the law on the duty to warn "is complex and evolving" and that registrants are advised to consult their legal advisor (CRPO Professional Practice Standards, Standard 3.1).

The social work College is more concrete about the preparation. When communicating virtually, registrants are to develop "a safety plan with the client, which includes asking them for the contact information for, and permission to contact, another person in the event of an emergency or service interruption" (OCSWSSW, Interpretation 5.3.2).

Both point the same way. The decision gets made in advance, with the client, not at midnight in a thread.

What actually helps operationally

Quiet hours on the line, not selective silence. A line that is consistently quiet after a set hour teaches something. A line that sometimes answers at 11pm teaches the opposite, and intermittent response is the pattern most likely to increase contact.

An outgoing message that does the work every time. A greeting and an automatic reply that state the hours, state that the line is not for emergencies, and name the alternative — so the person hears it at the moment they need it, not just in a consent form they signed months ago.

Documentation. What was sent, when, what you did. This protects the client's care as much as it protects you.

Your own support. This is genuinely hard, it accumulates, and it is a reasonable thing to bring to supervision or consultation rather than absorb.

Where the boundary ends and the clinical decision starts

If the pattern continues after all of that, the question is no longer about the phone. It is whether the current arrangement — this frequency, this level of acuity, this amount of between-session contact — is the right level of care. Sometimes the honest answer is that it is not, and the conversation to have is about additional or different support rather than about text messages.

That is a bigger conversation than a boundary. It is also the one that helps.

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.

See what's included · Start the trial