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

  • Between Belief and Faith?

    Many people think that either you’re a believer or you’re not. If you’re a believer, they may say, you must adhere to a faith that is expressed in dogma and …

  • “Thoughts and Prayers?”

    On social media, and in person, many people seem to dislike the phrase, “You’re in our thoughts and prayers,” used when someone discloses a tragedy such as a death in …

  • “She Who Is?”

    I’ve mentioned several times in these blogs that I had a sort of awakening in my early 30s about my image of God. A homily by a young priest declared …

  • Does God Have Favorites?

    Five years ago, I wrote a blog called “What’s So Great about Being Poor?” “Nothing,” I wrote, “unless being among God’s favorites counts for nothing.” It’s true that poverty, in …

  • “A Hundred Thousand Welcomes?”

    I’ve often written about my personal connection to Ireland, undoubtedly because all of my great grandparents were Irish immigrants and I’ve always been interested in them and their homeland. In …

Dr. Ted’s Mailing List

Recent

Past Posts

mm Tom Carney

Why “The Chosen” is Worth Watching

Jun 11, 2025

I was a latecomer to “The Chosen.” I finished watching season 4 only a couple of weeks ago. I had thought it was probably just another pious portrayal of...

mm Tom Carney

Adios, Francis

Jun 05, 2025

I grew up on Sacramento Street in St. Joseph, Mo., and it only recently occurred to me how the street probably got its name. St. Joseph, if you recall,...

mm Tom Carney

The New Paganism

May 29, 2025

David Brooks, one of my favorite writers – who was considered a conservative until the Trump era – believes the president is the archetype of contemporary paganism. I know...

mm Tom Carney

Why So Hard to Talk about God?

May 23, 2025

I understand that my weekly blog is counter-cultural, and for some of my friends and acquaintances, it may even be embarrassing. You just don’t talk or write about God,...

mm Tom Carney

The New Pope Through a Political Lens

May 15, 2025

There’s a remarkable passage in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, that book in the Bible that recounts Christianity’s first years, in which the apostles were...

mm Tom Carney

How It All Got Started

May 08, 2025

I have mentioned in a previous blog that in the newsroom of the newspaper where I worked for 22 years was a sign that read, “If your mother says...

mm Tom Carney

What Does Faith Offer?

May 01, 2025

My beloved paternal grandmother, Julia, who died in 1957, had what I’ve heard identified as “late-onset Alzheimer’s.” In other words, she had a kind of dementia that happens late...

mm Tom Carney

The First Stone

Apr 25, 2025

If you have been attending Catholic Mass or a Christian service, at least weekly, as long as I have, you will have heard the same stories from the Bible...