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 Tom Carney

“If You Want Peace…”

Apr 20, 2023

I’ve always liked the slogan, “If you want peace, work for justice.” It’s a 1972 quote from Pope Paul VI, according to an online site summarizing five sources. The...

mm Tom Carney

The Sizzle Instead of the Steak

Apr 13, 2023

Having studied Journalism as well as taught it at the university level and spent much of my life in journalism, I’m sensitive – some might say obsessive – about...

mm Ted

Good Friday

Apr 09, 2023

This Friday is called “good” because, according to one spiritual writer, it’s the day on which “the primary human problem, the core issue that defeats human history, is both...

mm Ted

Holy Thursday

Apr 07, 2023

“Do you realize what I have done for you? …. If I, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have...

mm Ted

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Apr 07, 2023

“Untie him and let him go free.” Jn. 11:44 “I’m not okay, you’re not okay, but that’s okay because God’s okay.” Spoken by Rick Warren, pastor of one of...

mm Tom Carney

Calm in Danger, Disorder and Confusion?

Apr 06, 2023

If you’re at all tuned into Holy Week, reading or hearing the passages about the cruel and inhumane treatment endured by Jesus, you will be amazed at the apparent...

mm Tom Carney

When Love Comes at a Price

Mar 30, 2023

Tish Harrison Warren, an Episcopal priest who writes a column about religion for the New York Times, recently wrote about the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a pastor in Birmingham, Ala....

mm Tom Carney

What Makes Us Happy?

Mar 23, 2023

Attending church recently, I heard the gospel of the day – the annual reading that includes what is known as “the Beatitudes” – for what I calculate to be...