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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

Prayer: Why We Don’t Get What We Want

Aug 09, 2019

When I was a priest in Bolivia, living in a village on the shore of Lake Titicaca, a man came to the door saying he was part of a...

mm Ted

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Aug 02, 2019

“Take care to guard against all greed … one’s life does not consist of possessions …. For where your treasure is, you heart will be also.” Lk 12:15 &...

mm Tom Carney

Too Busy for Faith

Aug 01, 2019

“Rachel” is a self-proclaimed workaholic. She’s too busy to eat lunch so she skips it, saying she just “eats stress.” At night, to avoid awakening her husband, Rachel sleeps...

mm Ted

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jul 25, 2019

                                   “Lord, teach us to pray.” Lk 11:1 The original followers of Jesus of Nazareth were amazed and even stupefied by many things about Jesus: his extraordinary ability to...

mm Tom Carney

One Person’s Surrender to God

Jul 25, 2019

At age 25, Libby Osgood, “wearing heels and a sculpted black skirt with just a hint of pink,” stood in a room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center filled...

mm Tom Carney

Kindness a Sign of Weakness?

Jul 18, 2019

Social scientists, I’ve noticed, often try to use scientific studies to explain human emotions, and sentiments like kindness – with limited success, in my opinion. The National Public Radio...

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Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jul 18, 2019

                            “Mary has chosen the better part. Lk. 10:43” In 1983, the movie Yentl made its first appearance in American theaters. Starring Barbara Streisand, it told the story of...

mm Ted

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jul 11, 2019

                               “And who is my neighbor?” Lk: 10-29 Is there a more challenging question in America today than: Who is my neighbor? Sadly, we are a divided people....