The 10 Referrals I Missed, And Why I Only Just Found Out, building my caseload back up (Part 2)
How not to make the same mistake as me!
This is Part 2 of my series documenting, in real time, how I’m rebuilding my own caseload. If you’re new here, start with Part 1: My Caseload Has Gone Quiet. Here’s Exactly What I’m Doing About It. I thought Part 2 was going to be about Google Reviews, or maybe the home page of my website. Then this happened, and it jumped the queue.
I want to tell you something that still makes me wince to type out: over the last couple of months, I have missed around ten enquiries from people who were trying to reach me for therapy. Not because my website was broken. Not because the contact form didn’t send. But because every single one of those emails went quietly into my spam folder, where I wasn’t looking and they had never gone to before!
These people reached out, waited and heard nothing back from me. That thought has been sitting heavily. They were ready to take a meaningful step and my silence will have meant something to them, probably that I wasn’t interested, or wasn’t available, or wasn’t the right fit. None of which is true.
My worry is that I don’t think I’m the only therapist this is happening to.
What actually happened
Here is the short version of what is going on behind the scenes.
In October 2023, Google announced a significant tightening of the rules for how email gets into a Gmail inbox. Their stated aim was to cut down on spam and spoofed messages. The first set of requirements came into force in February 2024, and they apply in their lightest form to everyone who sends an email to a Gmail address, not only to big marketing senders.
In November 2025, Google began ramping up the enforcement. Up until then, messages that didn’t quite meet the new rules were often still delivered.
Why does this hit small therapy practices so hard
Here’s the trap. A contact form on a typical therapist’s website works like this: a prospective client fills in the form with their own email address and the website then emails me to let me know. The “from” address on that message is often made to look like it’s coming from the enquirer themselves, or from the website’s own server, rather than from my authenticated business email.
Under the old rules, Gmail was reasonably forgiving about this. Under the new rules, that kind of message sent on behalf of one domain, but from a different sending system starts to look exactly like the sort of impersonation Google is now trying to block. So it gets filtered. Into spam. Silently.
The maddening thing is that nothing is broken. The form sends. The server delivers. The email technically arrives. It just arrives somewhere where i’d never needed to look before.
The thing that genuinely saved this situation from being worse was my web designer, Sophie. I messaged her the moment I realised what had happened, and she was on it the same day. That matters. It is a very good argument for having a web person you trust and can actually reach — not a faceless hosting company, not a platform you’ve never spoken to, a person. If you don’t have that, please consider it part of your professional infrastructure, the same way you’d have a supervisor or an accountant.
The rest of this post is for full members and is the practical checklist I’m now running every month.
