You cannot do therapy as usual 💬

Why clinical work today demands more, and 4 ways we're keeping admin at zero

Lorraine Guyagon
April 22, 2026

April is National Counseling Awareness Month. There'll be plenty of content for people who seek therapy, but we wanted to create one for you, the people who provide it. How are you doing?

Because nowadays it seems —

Your clients are carrying things that no longer fit neatly into intake forms
Your hours bend around their lives... Evenings, weekends, whatever the crisis demands
You're reading body language through a screen, building trust without a physical room
You’re also holding space across time zones

That's a lot. And it's exactly why we built ReachLink the way we did. We handle the parts that shouldn't be taking your time and energy, so more of it goes to the work that actually matters.

Starting today, we’re also sending you a bi-weekly email like this one. Inside: platform updates, clinical conversations, and tools for your practice.

BETWEEN ONE SESSION AND THE NEXT

You show up for your clients every session. We’re here to make sure none of the tasks in between (billing, credentialing, care coordination) fall on you too.

Our team is always looking for ways to make your experience on ReachLink better. Here are a few changes we made recently:

File Uploads. Upload and manage licenses, certifications, and insurance documents directly from your profile. No more emailing them to support.

Caseload Tab. Access your caseload under a new name. "Clients" is now “Caseload,” matching the language you already use to think about your work.

Work Status Filtering. See where each appointment stands with a new status dropdown. View your full caseload without opening individual records.

Dark Mode. View your entire dashboard in full dark mode. Appointments, support desk, availability, payments, revenue, engagement, stats. Every card, every screen.

FROM ONE PROVIDER TO ANOTHER

ICYMI: Dr. Suzette Fagan was recently on our podcast, Therapist Voices. Hers is a story of making room for what therapy actually asks of you.

During COVID, her practice in Roselle, New Jersey went fully telehealth. Like everyone else's. But her clients weren't like everyone else's.

She was working with emergency doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists... People who couldn't say "I'll meet you at 6:00 because that's when I get off." They didn't have normal hours.

So she started taking sessions at 11 PM, 6 AM, 7 AM. Whenever they were available.

That experience changed how she thinks about the work:

❝

Therapists should not necessarily always have mainstream hours, because life is happening all of the time. We have to make room for going outside of the norm. You have to be able to look at the system and actually go outside of the system. You cannot do therapy as usual, because we're not living in usual times.

She took that same thinking to how she treats. She supervises interns at local colleges, and one of the things she pushes back on hardest is the instinct to run every client through the same framework:

I don't like factory-oriented therapy. It has to be unique, because people are dealing with some real things. People are hurting.

She also trains other therapists to think differently about telehealth. Not as a lesser version of in-person, but as something that demands more intentionality. The goal is making sure it's not just proximity, but presence:

When we get on the screen, the presence that you and I have is reachable wherever you are. It's huggable.

FOR WHEN YOU HAVE THE CAPACITY

Not everything needs to be read today. But if you’re sitting with the weight of the work or thinking about how to keep showing up in it, these are worth saving:

Emotional Labor: Why Holding Space Exhausts You. The work doesn't end when the session does. It lives in your nervous system. This is about what that looks like and how to recover from it.

Healthy Boundaries in Therapy. Bringing your full self into the room takes intention. So does knowing where the line is.

Balancing Self-Care While Supporting Others. Late sessions, early sessions, crisis sessions. That pace has a cost. This one is about recognizing it before it catches up.

Therapeutic Approaches in Clinical Social Work. If you don't believe in one-size-fits-all therapy, here's a rundown of the modalities that let you tailor the work.

Therapeutic Questions: Building Meaningful Connections in Therapy. Presence is one thing. Knowing what to ask once you're there is another. A practical look at the questions that open people up.

BEFORE YOU GO

We do our best to write about therapy, but we're not in the room. You are. If we open our advice column to providers, would you want to contribute?

You're receiving this because you're a ReachLink provider. And because the work you do isn't usual, we didn't want this email to be either.

We'll be in your inbox every two weeks with conversations, updates, and tools that make sense for the way you actually practice. Until then, take care of yourself the way you take care of your clients.