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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 Ted

Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Nov 21, 2021

“In those days, after that tribulation – the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky,...

mm Tom Carney

Judging vs. Being Judgmental

Nov 18, 2021

“Who am I to judge?” This must be Pope Francis’ most famous quote. It came from a press conference on an airplane in 2013 when Francis was asked about...

mm Tom Carney

Mindfulness: Just Another Trendy Idea?

Nov 12, 2021

I find myself upset when the vehicle in front of me is going 20 mph in a 35-mph zone. I carefully examine the checkout lines at the supermarket before...

mm Ted

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Nov 07, 2021

“… she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.” (Mk. 12:44) Jesus had very unorthodox, even radical, ideas about economics! Open the Gospels, and there...

mm Tom Carney

Freedom, and Our True Selves

Nov 04, 2021

Geez! I’m doing dishes, again! And now I have to go on a long trip because my spouse wants to. Tomorrow I have to skip work because my kid...

mm Ted

Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Nov 01, 2021

“… you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk: 12:31) Many years ago, when I was a 16-year-old high school sophomore, one kid in our class decided it was a...

mm Ted

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Nov 01, 2021

 “Master, I want to see.” Mk. 10:51 The journalist John Allen wrote about a dinner experience he had while covering a Synod of Bishops on Family Life that met...

mm Tom Carney

How We Respond to Adversity

Oct 28, 2021

Some try to avoid it at all cost. Others try to minimize it. Still others deny it. But some seem to accept adversity with courage and grace. What’s their...