The Author Revealed!

I’ve had a great many very kind comments about this blog. So to all the people who’ve said nice things, “Thank you!” And for all the people who’ve wanted to discuss, debate, criticize and clarify, I thank you too: that’s the way that we’re going to move forward and create a more comprehensive science-based approach to personal growth, health and wellness.

I’m also constantly asked who writes all these blog items, the podcasts, the articles and the book reviews at Amazon? It can’t be one person can it? Well, it actually is all one person: C’est moi, a.k.a. RP.

So I take full responsibility for everything that I write. And, of course, any errors of omission or commission are my own.

Though I try exceptionally hard to ensure that all the entries are as accurate as I can make them. That being said, I also give you follow up resources and things like the Healia.com search box so that you can check on what I say. I want to guide, educate, help and support you, so that you can make you own decisions. And if you are working with someone else, then I would like your next meeting with your health care provider to be even better informed.

This weekend I was horrified to hear a fairly well known doctor give a very glib and somewhat inaccurate summary of a new medicine that’s just just been given "approvable" status by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Several people challenged his evaluation: “Where did you get that from?” they asked. “The Wall Street Journal,” was the response. Now I like and respect the WSJ, and the doctor was, in fact, misquoting the article. But that’s not the point: nobody who has responsibility for providing medical care or advice should be doing it without carefully reviewing the evidence. What we call examining the “Primary sources.”

An important study was published a year ago, and we saw an extraordinary spectacle: some doctors and psychologists began making statements about how patients should be treated, and about how healthcare policies should be changed. Based not upon the evidence, but on newspaper reports of the evidence. In the end, the National Institute of Mental Health issued a press release to clarify what the study did and did not say.

On the topic of evidence and primary sources, let me turn to one of the other pieces to our work, and that is self-help.

There are many people in the self-help movement who have revolutionized the lives of millions. But there are some others who have not.

The days of people being able to get away with telling others how to live their lives or how to achieve health or success, based only on their personal opinions, rather than on something tangible, are finally coming to an end.

When a self-help guru says, “If I can do it anyone can,” they are just plain wrong. They are dismissing so many factors in a person’s life and then claiming that one size fits all. It’s so sad that many people who have failed to fulfill all these gurus’ proclamations and promises blame themselves rather than the bad advice. And as a result some end up being much worse off, for they feel that they have failed.

I have seen countless people racked by guilt because they had bought into the idea that all illness is self-created. I recently read something outrageous: that all depression is caused by unexpressed anger. So according to this nonsense, if you stop being angry, you’ll stop being depressed.

I have no idea where the writer got this from, and of course, sometimes a person’s depression can be traced back to anger about trauma, abuse or a failed relationship. But as a generalization it’s utter bovine excreta. I’ve seen people attempt to kill themselves because of profound depression, and it most assuredly had nothing to do with unexpressed anger!

Attitudes and emotions can have a huge impact on health, but people certainly don’t need to be made to feel guilty because they are ill!

This website and blog and the many others that I highlight are quickly transforming the world of self-help, health and wellness from hyperbole and opinion to an empirical science. Naturally enough, there are people with vested interests who want to keep things as they are, but they are like King Canute whose courtiers believed that he could turn back the tide!

With your help, I’m going to continue to do this work, and I would like to thank all the people around the world who are already helping us to introduce, what a great Sage has called:

"The Prophecy of a New Dawn in Health and Healing."