Welcome!

“Do Not Be Afraid … You Are My Dearest Friends”*

Toxic Fear is perhaps life’s greatest hostage-taker. One psychiatrist calls it a “disease of the imagination.” Fear and disabling Worry can start off like a tiny seed and, watered by thoughts that emphasize worst-case scenarios, grow into a virus-like fiend that ends up dominating our mental state. It then holds us back from our ability to enjoy nearly every dimension of our life: our talents, our work, our love, our play, and our approach to a life in the Spirit.

This website is dedicated to three major Defense Systems that can be effective in helping us overcome the insidious nature of fear, as well as other mental health demons like depression. It will also focus on how we can better live out our lives free of those persistent foragers that roam throughout the corners of our minds… relentlessly haunting us.

Those three Defense Systems are: Spirituality, Psychology and Addiction. All three of these provide newly developed means of delving into the root causes of fear and depression and other mental health disorders, and assisting people in finding improved pathways to freedom, joy, and peace.

“Do not be afraid” – a phrase found 365 times in Sacred Scripture!

*Luke 12:32; translation found in The Bible in Contemporary Language, Eugene H. Peterson

Recent Posts

Dr. Ted’s Mailing List

Past Posts

mm Ted

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 20, 2016

  “Two men went up to the Temple to pray ….” Lk. 18: 10 Comedian Rodney Dangerfield used to tell this joke: “I went to the doctor the other...

mm Ted

Generation Adderall

Oct 18, 2016

Article published in the New York Times Magazine. Click the link below to view Generation Adderall  

mm Ted

The drug industry’s answer to opioid addiction

Oct 16, 2016

Article published in The Washington Post. Click the link below to view: The drug industry’s answer to opioid addiction

mm Tom Carney

Magical Thinking?

Oct 13, 2016

I recently finished a book called “Not Forgotten, the True Story of My Imprisonment in North Korea” by Kenneth Bae. The author, a Korean-American who had emigrated to the...

mm Ted

Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 13, 2016

“ … pray always without becoming weary” Lk. 18:1   Persistence. That’s been the customary explanation given for the point to this gospel story. Only the way we have...

mm Ted

Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 06, 2016

“… and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan.” Lk 17:16 One of the great mystics of the Church, Meister Eckhart, once...

mm Tom Carney

The Case for Change

Oct 06, 2016

A few years ago, I visited a Greek Orthodox monastery in Arizona with my wife, sister and brother-in-law. It was a beautiful, tranquil place, an oasis in the desert....

mm Ted

The 4 Traits That Put Kids at Risk for Addiction

Oct 06, 2016

From the New York Times. Early trials show that personality testing can identify 90 percent of the highest risk children, targeting risky traits before they cause problems.  Click here to...