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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

What Hiking and “Church” Have in Common

Sep 05, 2024

My wife, Amparo, and I were blessed over the Labor Day weekend by a visit from our son, Sean, his wife and two sons, aged 8 and 10. They...

mm Tom Carney

How Could God Possibly Love Us?

Aug 29, 2024

I don’t recall how, but I recently came across the above painting of St. Jerome by a 15th century Italian artist named Benvenuto Tisi da Garafalo. Being nearly illiterate in...

mm Tom Carney

How Fear Threatens Us

Aug 22, 2024

I’ve told this story to many people because I think it’s a fascinating illustration of how fear often gets the better of us. I heard the story from my...

mm Tom Carney

Ordinary Faith, Ordinary Science

Aug 15, 2024

I keep coming back in these blogs to the perceived conflict between faith and science, mostly because so many people cite it as a reason for having lost their...

mm Tom Carney

Indifference Society’s Greatest Threat?

Aug 08, 2024

One of my favorite songs in Spanish is a well-known tune by Argentina’s iconic singer, Mercedes Sosa, who died in 2009. I’ve mentioned it before in this blog. Here...

mm Tom Carney

Is God Dead?

Aug 01, 2024

In college, I read a book that profoundly affected my faith, contributing to a faith crisis that lasted for years. Entitled “Honest to God,” and written by Anglican Bishop...

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Who, or What, is God?

Jul 25, 2024

Do you ever stop to think about who, or what God is, and where we get our image of God? The title of this blog, “Who or What is...

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Conforming to “the Real World”

Jul 18, 2024

My friend, Ted Wolgamot, a retired psychologist, also writes a weekly essay on religious matters and last week included this anecdote. A priest received a phone call from an...