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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

The Antithesis to the Search for God

May 16, 2019

A little-noticed national news item recently reported the death of 96-year-old Judge Damon J. Keith. One of the nation’s longest-serving federal judges, he was a tireless champion of civil...

mm Ted

Fourth Sunday of Easter

May 10, 2019

                                    “The Father and I are one.” Jn. 10:30 When Catholics my age were young, nearly everything we learned about our faith was accomplished through catechisms, specifically  Baltimore Catechisms....

mm Tom Carney

A Generosity Hormone?

May 09, 2019

As a young man, I traveled to Europe on a ship. Since a friend and I were seminary students, talk at the table where about a dozen of us...

mm Ted

Third Sunday of Easter

May 03, 2019

                           “Come and have breakfast.” Jn. 21:12 Ever been betrayed? Ever felt the pain of being abandoned, dismissed, rejected? If you have, then you know these are experiences that...

mm Tom Carney

Is My Faith Merely a Cultural Expression?

May 02, 2019

As American priests in Bolivia in the 1970s, my colleagues and I tried to overcome the cultural differences between the Aymara people with whom we worked and the cultural...

mm Ted

Second Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday

Apr 26, 2019

                    SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER, DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put...

mm Tom Carney

Avoiding the Deep Funk

Apr 25, 2019

At 28, Mitchell had a passion for sports, had gotten his pilot’s license and “did really well with the ladies.” One day he jumped on his motorcycle, off to...

mm Tom Carney

Humility, the Most Despised Virtue?

Apr 18, 2019

Today, many Christian churches celebrate Holy Thursday. For me and my fellow Catholics, the day commemorates Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist, or Mass, and the priesthood. Included in today’s...