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“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

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Past Posts

mm Tom Carney

Why We Deserve Respect

Aug 10, 2023

Thomas Meagher was an Irish revolutionary whom the British sentenced to death. But his hanging was commuted at the last minute, and he was “transported” to a penal colony...

mm Tom Carney

Our Brains on Stories

Aug 03, 2023

I often wonder why more preachers – priests, ministers, rabbis – fail to use stories in their homilies. (Ok, I must admit I’m talking about Catholic preachers. I’ve heard...

mm Ted

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jul 30, 2023

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he...

mm Tom Carney

The Bugaboo of “Organized Religion”

Jul 27, 2023

I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard criticism of “organized religion” – that it tries to force its tenets down the throats of the rest of society, that...

mm Ted

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jul 23, 2023

“Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?” Mt. 13:27 “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Many of...

mm Tom Carney

Loneliness is bad for your (Spiritual) Health

Jul 20, 2023

I’m hooked on a Netflix series called “Alone.” It’s about a group of 10 experienced outdoors people who are taken to remote areas, each left alone with limited gear,...

mm Ted

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jul 16, 2023

“The seed sown on rich soil is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.” Mt....

mm Ted

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jul 16, 2023

“Come to me all you who are labored and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Mt. 11:28 Early in the 1960’s, during my college years, The Kingston Trio...