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

  • Compassion as Weakness

    While in Colombia a week or so ago, I had an interesting conversation with a taxi driver. He was sympathizing with America’s “immigration problem,” comparing it to the onslaught of …

  • Knowing Right from Wrong

    One of my all-time, favorite movies was produced in 1989 and was entitled, “Do the Right Thing.” Produced, written and directed by Spike Lee, “the story explores a Brooklyn neighborhood’s …

  • Finding Our Real Father

    If you are a Christian, you have probably recited the Our Father, also called “the Lord’s Prayer,” more times than you can count. Even if you’re not a Christian nor …

  • Starting with the Historical Jesus

    Some people don’t believe there was a Jesus. Others believe he was merely one of the many revolutionaries of his time, fomenting rebellion against the Roman occupiers of Israel. Others …

  • Jimmy Carter: A Fish Out of Water?

    In a recent article, Sam Sawyer, editor of America Magazine, quoted Pope Francis describing politics as “a lofty vocation, and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as it …

Dr. Ted’s Mailing List

Recent

Past Posts

mm Tom Carney

Will the New Year Bring Happiness?

Dec 31, 2020

I recall as a youth being saddened by the song, Auld Lang Syne. I’ve read that the title is taken from a phrase in a 1788 poem by the famous...

mm Ted

Feast of the Presentation of the Lord

Dec 28, 2020

“Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign of contradiction ….” Lk 2:34 Everybody loves a story. Children...

mm Ted

Christmas

Dec 26, 2020

“… the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a...

mm Tom Carney

Ambivalence about Christmas

Dec 24, 2020

Sometimes these blogs come together easily. They flow from my brain onto the screen. Other times, I write and re-write, and every word is a problem. That’s the case...

mm Ted

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Dec 19, 2020

“The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph.” Lk: 1:26 “Mary: The Most Powerful...

mm Tom Carney

Are Religious Parents Brainwashing Their Children?

Dec 17, 2020

During Mass at a parish in Denver that my wife, Amparo, and I attend when visiting family members, children bring gifts to a Nativity display at the foot of...

mm Ted

Third Sunday of Advent

Dec 11, 2020

Something had to change. Something drastic had to happen. The Jewish world of first century Palestine was awash in extreme poverty, burdensome taxation, widespread hunger, and frightening persecution. The...

mm Tom Carney

Why Pray?

Dec 10, 2020

I can’t remember a day in my life when I haven’t prayed, and that includes times when my faith was weak-to-none and when I was facing personal crises. But...