IN HER new memoir I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You*, Miranda Hart describes her long struggle with ill-health as a result of what was finally diagnosed as Lyme disease. For years, she had suffered infections, fatigue, crippling anxiety, and other symptoms similar to those of ME or long Covid.

When the Miranda series ended, she collapsed and was bedbound for months. Her account of this, addressed to her “dear reader chums” in true Miranda style, suggested that her illness had spurred her to develop a new spiritual awareness. When the General Confession reminds us that “there is no health in us,” it speaks in its typically Reformed way of our universal vulnerability, of which awareness of sin is but one aspect. Before we can be whole, we must surrender to reality, recognise our dis-ease, whether of body, mind, or spirit, or all three.

Dis-ease leads us to consider our own long-held attitudes. Miranda confesses to a habit of workaholism and self-criticism, of apologising (as many women do) for simply existing, of not valuing her real self. She has made astonishing comedy out of this, from the char in the early editions of Not Going Out to Chummy in Call the Midwife and the hugely popular Miranda, with her falling-about humour, sly asides to camera, and dysfunctional friends and family. (Her mother, played by Patricia Hodge, comes to mind.)

Miranda is a perfect mimic, as I suspect the best spiritual guides are, at least in private. Like the desert hermit Evagrius, she understands how evil thoughts need to be made conscious, “confessed”, before they relax their grip. Just as in the spiritual life, dealing with dis-ease involves a process of conversion. Surrender to reality enables a transformative shift in attitude. This includes attending to the moment, to nature, to “what is”, and ultimately to what she slightly nervously calls “God”.

For those with catastrophising anxiety, posing an alternative helps to reduce the stress hormones that race around our bodies and paralyse our minds. She gives typically comic examples of how to undermine dire expectations: of replacing “Supposing the plane crashes” with something as simple as “Supposing it doesn’t.” If you are a catastrophising type, try it. It works.

Some in the ME community, rightly aggrieved with being told by others that their symptoms are all in the mind, have over-criticised Miranda for suggesting that thoughts can have material effects, but I think that this is unfair. We are all heirs to the mind-body dualism of René Descartes. Yet we are still far from a complete understanding of how our minds and bodies interact.

Meanwhile, the challenge goes on to find a form of health within the constraints of our personal health and history. Miranda points a way that is both holistic and surprisingly close to the insights of Christian spirituality. Bear with.

*Michael Joseph, £25; 978-1-4059-5833-2