Yesterday I was talking to my friend Peter in Colorado. Peter used to work for an online therapist.

Peter mentioned that therapists in the US are regulated by the states, and so a therapist in one state will be following different regulations than a therapist in another state.

By the way, I found this conversation about how online therapy is regulated in the US absolutely fascinating. I realize many would not find it as fascinating as I did, but I, as many of you know, will happily spend hours learning about the ins and outs of arcane subjects. That trait has endeared me to some, but at the same time has bewildered more than one girlfriend. Oh well, as they say, “live by the sword, die by the sword.

To dig further into the conversation, I decided to begin using myself as an example. So I asked Peter, what if, like me, the patient lives outside the country?

Then, Peter said, all bets are off. If the patient is outside the country, most regulatory agencies won’t even touch that.

In a case like that, a lot is up to the therapist’s discretion. Some therapists, Peter told me, will play it safe and decide not to touch that patient at all. Other therapists will see it as a loophole and decide they are free to do whatever they want.

In other words, what the therapist does with you is entirely up to the therapist, even though they may be using regulations as their excuse.

You might wonder, and rightly so, what this has to do with your presentations. And it is this:

Often, the way you are received has absolutely nothing to do with you. We humans tend to take things personally, to think that if our idea is not getting full buy-in, there is something we did wrong. But sometimes, it’s just that in the audience member’s mind, your subject pales in comparison to that fact he had a fight with his wife this morning.