My friend just told me this story.

I just had this borderline argument on the phone with someone I recently befriended — who is an older lady — who is a kind of New Agey therapist with numerous clients and who insists, among other things, that she cured herself of cancer without any of the traditional treatments (surgery, radiation, chemo), but simply by mind control.

I told her that I knew a friend of a friend who got breast cancer, tried to cure herself with alternative treatments but, when that didn’t work, decided to try traditional ones, by which time it was too late. I also told her that, because of her position of trust in relation to other people, that if one of her clients came to her saying he or she was afflicted of cancer, it was grossly irresponsible of her, who has no medical training whatsoever, to suggest that alternative cures were viable, and that if someone opted to forgo traditional treatments and opt for alternative ones based in whole or in part on discussions with her, and that if they died as a result, that she was partly responsible for killing them by virtue of her “authority,” I also told this person that she was either delusional or, worse, exploiting the gullibility of people, though that I was inclined to think the former.

She completely and utterly dismissed everything I said by basically saying, “Well, this reflects your reality, and therefore is perfectly legitimate for you. But my reality is completely different.”

How do you deal with someone like this? She, to my mind is dangerous, but it is difficult and dangerous to confront people’s belief systems.