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

  • Skeptical Faith

    Hi, readers of Dr. Ted’s Thoughts. My apologies for missing two weeks of publication of the Skeptical Faith. I had very unexpected quadruple bypass surgery 10 days ago. I’m home …

  • Between Belief and Faith?

    Many people think that either you’re a believer or you’re not. If you’re a believer, they may say, you must adhere to a faith that is expressed in dogma and …

  • “Thoughts and Prayers?”

    On social media, and in person, many people seem to dislike the phrase, “You’re in our thoughts and prayers,” used when someone discloses a tragedy such as a death in …

  • “She Who Is?”

    I’ve mentioned several times in these blogs that I had a sort of awakening in my early 30s about my image of God. A homily by a young priest declared …

  • Does God Have Favorites?

    Five years ago, I wrote a blog called “What’s So Great about Being Poor?” “Nothing,” I wrote, “unless being among God’s favorites counts for nothing.” It’s true that poverty, in …

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Past Posts

mm Ted

Can You Get Over an Addiction?

Jun 28, 2016

Article posted in the New York Times (click the link below):

mm Tom Carney

When “Common Wisdom” Fails Us

Jun 23, 2016

“Cleanliness,” my mother used to say, “is next to godliness.” My mother grew up in a poor family. Her father abandoned his wife and six children so my grandmother had...

mm Tom Carney

When Church Doesn’t Feel Like a Spiritual Place

Jun 16, 2016

“As a child,” writes Annika Freese in a recent issue of America magazine, “I could never find God in his house. “Sitting in Mass I felt like a machine...

mm Ted

One Person, One Gun

Jun 15, 2016

Article posted in the New Yorker magazine http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/one-person-one-gun

mm Tom Carney

Obstacles in the Search for God

Jun 09, 2016

I try to be positive in these blogs. No one wants to read downers, especially in a blog whose aim is to help people who may have given up...

mm Ted

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jun 08, 2016

“No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” Lk 9:62 Leroy “Satchel” Paige, the great baseball...

mm Ted

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jun 08, 2016

“Do you see this woman?” Lk. 7:44 Here’s a gospel story that features many ingredients of a racy summer beach read! You can even imagine the blurbs on the...

mm Ted

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jun 08, 2016

“Once when Jesus was praying in solitude ….” Lk 9:1 Jesus prayed. Wikipedia says: we get our word “prayer” from the Latin precari, which means “to ask, to beg,...