Oh that's a great idea, this is the way. I don't use emacsclient because it has weird interaction with Doom's workspaces, but your way might solve this problem. Thanks!
`alias ec="emacsclient -s console -a '' -nw -r"`
It doesn't start a new doom workspace /most/ of the time. Sometimes i'll get a new one if i've got multiple editors opening up the same file, I think. But the `-s` flag starts a console server that at least keeps those out of my main emacs window (I use the gui version from emacs-plus)