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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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mm Tom Carney

A Renowned Scientist Committed to His Faith

Oct 21, 2021

A defining moment in U.S. history is occurring with little fanfare. Francis Collins, who has headed the National Institutes of Health for a dozen years, has announced that he...

mm Ted

Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 15, 2021

“Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you …. Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other...

mm Tom Carney

Can We Be Intimate with God?

Oct 14, 2021

When our kids were young, my wife and I had a hard time getting them to attend weekly religious education classes at our parish. Even then, I understood why....

mm Tom Carney

When Is It Too Late?

Oct 07, 2021

Among famous people dying recently was Norm MacDonald, a comedian who was a regular on Saturday Night Live from 1993 to 1998. He died of cancer at age 61....

mm Ted

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 03, 2021

“ … what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” Mk 10:9 Listen to these heart-rending words of a 43-year-old mother: “’Are you trying to tell me...

mm Tom Carney

Will Everything Really Be OK?

Sep 30, 2021

I recently happened across clips of the 1997 movie “Life is Beautiful” on YouTube and was reminded that the movie itself is beautiful, and meaningful. The winner of three...

mm Ted

Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sep 26, 2021

“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off …. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off … If your eye causes you to sin,...

mm Tom Carney

It’s Not Just About the Intellect

Sep 24, 2021

Back when I was writing about medicine and health for The Des Moines Register, I was surprised to learn that people in scientific fields often don’t act rationally. I...