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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

Faith, Patience and Endurance

Sep 04, 2025

Interesting, isn’t it, how things can be going smoothly in your life, then all of a sudden, they’re not? Those things may be relatively insignificant, like getting cut off...

mm Tom Carney

The Kingdom of Heaven???

Aug 28, 2025

Before moving to Colorado, my wife, Amparo, and I used to drive from Des Moines to Denver to see our daughter, Maureen, who lives in the city’s southern suburbs....

mm Tom Carney

Evolution: The Creator’s Favorite Tool?

Aug 21, 2025

I often sit and read on the small stoop outside our house in the evenings, sometimes with “an adult beverage.” It’s usually cool and always calming. The calming effect...

mm Tom Carney

Ignoring the Obvious?

Aug 14, 2025

As it says on its website, this blog is written mainly for “those who have given up on God and/or religion,” and in a broader sense, for all of us...

mm Tom Carney

A Church That Defends Science

Aug 07, 2025

For 10 years at a regional newspaper, I wrote about medicine and health, despite having a rather weak background in science. The newspaper’s editor-in-chief believed I would well represent...

mm Tom Carney

Bigotry with a Brogue

Jul 31, 2025

A bonfire with an effigy of migrants in a boat before it was set on fire this month in Northern Ireland. Google Image A story in last week’s news...

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Seeing the World Afresh

Jul 24, 2025

This is third and final blog in a series on an interview with Rowan Williams in the New York Times that was so cogent, so relevant to my goal...

mm Tom Carney

Love in an Age of Darkness

Jul 17, 2025

This blog is second in a series on an interview with Rowan Williams in the New York Times that was so cogent, so relevant to my goal of helping...