Just watched this guy Steven Dawkins's show 'enemies of reason'. It is very good and it is hard to argue with his reasoning. I am trying to reconcile his obvious good sense with some of the beliefs I have developed over the years.

The thing that came over to me was that if you do not understand the science behind something such as an illness it is easier to believe explanations which could not possibly be true. Dawkins said that bringing back Aryuvedic medicine is like bringing back bleeding with leeches, it was developed before we had a concept of germs and so on. He completely seemed to dismiss the chakras even though apparently they do correspond with plexii in the body which are bundles of nerves I think (see how scientific I am!)

The thing is that of late I was listening to Hay house radio (a spiritual/self development radio station) virtually every day online! I knew a lot of the stuff on it was nonsense but i still liked listening to it and I do really admire Louise L Hay who is the founder of Hay House. I still believe that our thoughts create our reality but it is quite complex. It is obvious that just because you think something does not necessarily make it true, you might have a disease you don't know about and think you are perfectly healthy and then die of it. So does that mean that our thoughts create our reality but sometimes they don't? that kind of means they don't then really doesn't it?

Richard Dawkins interviewed someone who believes that the rituals and systems of alternative health practitioners serve to trigger the body's own healing powers like a placebo. I suppose that is somewhere close to what I believe. It seems to me that when Doreen Virtue talks about her Angels on Hayhouse and when Summer Mcstravick and her mother - the charmingly nutty Venus Andrecht - talk about 'the Beings' they aren't literally true but are symbolic ways of understanding the world. It is a bit like having a dream: a dream is real in the sense it is a real experience but it does not exist in the real world, in fact, a thought is a real thing even though it can't be seen and it can effect the real physical world by prompting action. What I am trying to say is that believing in the angels or whatever might have a real positive effect and you don't have to believe that they are real but only that they represent something - a quality such as courage or support - which is real and can hep you. I suppose you could say it is a bit like reading a book or watching a film which inspires you even though you know it is fictional.

A woman on the Dawkins show said human beings had different DNA during the time of Atlantis - and that she can change your DNA back by waving her hands around. It would be fairly easy to check this by taking samples of dna before and after but i doubt anyone can be bothered. It is a cause for concern when people like that are charging to heal people who are sick because a lot of it is patently untrue. I remember somebody I knew was paid by the NHS to do energetic healing in hospitals and I said at the time that I thought it should have been tested scientifically - needless to say he got very angry and said that there are a lot of operations and drugs used that don't improve the lives of patients. It is a fair point but I don't think it overturns my point.

All these years I have thought that if I could only clear various thought patterns and emotional crap out I would no longer have the stomach and chest pains that i have had for so many years but what if I am wrong? I suppose for one thing if I had ever had a diagnosis from a doctor and some recommended treatment I would do it but no one has ever given me much of an explanation at all. I think a lot of people who try alternative treatments do it because there is nothing standard medicine can do. It scares me to think that maybe I just have something wrong with me that the doctors could not identify and all this soul searching is a waste of time. Even so I have to say that when it was at its worst I was far more unhappy and frightened than I am now and was also very unaccepting of myself. You might say that as I have become happier and more confident the symptoms have lessened but maybe they have just lessened over time.

Recently I went to see a woman who told me to do this technique of tapping your body - EFT - to release various patterns. It has seemed to work quite well with things from the past and in my opinion it works because you are doing a task which you associate with clearing a pattern and it is psychological. However, at the weekend I tried the technique to clear my compulsion to seek casual sex and then went straight on another bender and did it all again so I guess it didn't work then! (I didn't actually have sex because i was too drunk but woke up with a stranger in my bed)

God I will have to remove all this stuff when I am famous! the tabloids would know all my secrets!

I suppose I am making it sound like none of the stuff I do really works but actually I have found it very helpful a lot of the time. One of the most important things I have learned is that often when you have irrational hang ups or fears or don't want to do something and you don't know why, it often helps if you are able to trace it back to your early life. When you realise you are not dealing with the reactions of an adult but a frightened child it becomes easier to understand your own irrational behavior.