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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 Ted

Palm Sunday

Mar 27, 2021

“ … though he was in the form of God … he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave … he humbled himself.” Phil. 2:7-8 14th century German...

mm Tom Carney

Stereotypes: A Cheap Substitute for Thinking?

Mar 25, 2021

As I age, I’m acutely aware of stereotypes about old people and find myself trying not to fall into them. I try not to get too far behind in...

mm Ted

Fifth Sunday in Lent

Mar 22, 2021

“… unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but, if it dies, it produces much fruit.” Jn. 12:22...

mm Tom Carney

Seeing Things As They Really Are

Mar 19, 2021

One of my regular prayers is, “Lord, help me to see things as they really are.” “What?” some non-believers may say. “How can you say you want to see...

mm Ted

Fourth Sunday of Lent

Mar 13, 2021

“For God so loved the world…. (Jn. 3:15) In 1967, a song written by a then unknown country singer named Bobbie Gentry made it all the way to the...

mm Tom Carney

Mariana and the Ex-Royal Couple

Mar 10, 2021

A bent and seemingly emaciated grandmother who sells vegetables in the streets of the small city of Sonsonate in El Salvador rises at 5 a.m. to get her wood...

mm Ted

Third Sunday of Lent

Mar 08, 2021

“The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom.” (I Cor. 1:25) A “fool” is a person society considers to be mad, irrational, imprudent and unwise. If that’s so,...

mm Tom Carney

The Jesuit Notion of Discernment

Mar 04, 2021

Besides their universities and high schools, Jesuits – members of the Society of Jesus – are known for the Spiritual Exercises of their founder, Ignatius of Loyola. And I’m...