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

Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Aug 27, 2022

“ … when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.” Lk:...

mm Tom Carney

What It Means to Believe

Aug 25, 2022

Over coffee at a neighborhood Panera’s, my friend, Bob Claus, and I had one of our familiar conversations about faith and doubt, but this time, with Bob’s friend and...

mm Tom Carney

When It Stops Flowing, It Stinks

Aug 18, 2022

In his homily about stories in the New and Old Testament readings on a recent weekend, Fr. John Brobbey, the associate pastor at St. Francis of Assisi parish in...

mm Ted

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Aug 15, 2022

“I have come to set the earth on fire” Lk 12:49 Last week Jesus pleaded with us to “not be afraid.” But the words Jesus speaks today are frightening:Fire. Division....

mm Tom Carney

Friendship Next to Godliness?

Aug 11, 2022

My lifelong friend, Fr. Gerald Waris, recently paid a visit to my wife, Amparo, and me and that got me thinking about the significance of friendship. Though most people...

mm Ted

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Aug 07, 2022

“Do not be afraid.” Lk 12:32 Four words: “Do not be afraid.” Four words: the keystone for any of us who are followers of Jesus Christ.Four words: the centerpiece of...

mm Tom Carney

Inventing a god We Can Live With

Aug 04, 2022

A woman who worked in a fertility clinic was being interviewed on NPR radio. She talked about all the people she helped and how much they appreciated her work...

mm Tom Carney

The Power of Stories

Jul 28, 2022

I recently visited my nephew, Mark Pfeffer, in Anchorage, AK. Trained as an architect and a developer by profession, he and his wife, Desiree, have a beautiful house on...