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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 Tom Carney

Voices Crying in the Wilderness

Mar 12, 2020

My friend, Lori Chesser, an immigration lawyer, writes about the complexities of the immigration system (which many say is no system at all) in a recent issue of Living...

mm Ted

Feast of the Transfiguration

Mar 07, 2020

 “This is my beloved Son … listen to him.” Throughout Sacred Scripture, astonishing things happen on mountains. When the Bible says that someone is going “up a mountain,” it’s...

mm Tom Carney

Cleaving to a Vengeful God

Mar 05, 2020

Dear God, Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don’t you just keep the ones you have now?  Jane An excellent question, you might...

mm Ted

First day of Lent

Feb 28, 2020

“Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.” Mt. 4:1 Temptation.  Even the word itself is provocative, glamorous, alluring. Because, if there’s...

mm Tom Carney

Called to Show Up

Feb 27, 2020

Patrick Reardon, an author who regularly contributes to the National Catholic Reporter, wrote a column recently entitled, “God Calls Us to Show Up, Be Present.” The title intrigued me,...

mm Tom Carney

Lesson from a Spotted Gecko

Feb 20, 2020

My wife, Amparo, and I are visiting her native country of Colombia, staying the month in the peaceful, mountainous, semi-tropical town of Barichara. Already, we’ve gotten into the rhythm...

mm Ted

The Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Feb 15, 2020

For the last few Sunday’s, readings from the Gospel of Matthew, noted for its strong emphasis on Jesus the Teacher, have emphasized  what has come to be called “the...

mm Tom Carney

Is This All There Is?

Feb 13, 2020

In a visit last year to Dromore in County Tyrone, Ireland, my wife, Amparo, and I stayed in the ancestral home of the family of my great-grandfather. It’s a...