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

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Past Posts

mm Ted

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Apr 06, 2019

                “Neither do I condemn you.” Jn. 8:11 Imagine. Imagine for a moment that you are the woman in today’s Gospel. Imagine the experience of crippling shame while being...

mm Tom Carney

Doubt, and the Fear of Death

Apr 04, 2019

Back in 1995 when I was 53 years old, I wrote a Father’s Day piece for The Des Moines Sunday Register about Pat Carney, my 94-year-old father. It was...

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How Religion Makes Us Better

Mar 28, 2019

I’ve noticed that as I grow older, I’m less likely to have bouts of anger – something that in the past I’ve had more often than I care to...

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Third Sunday in Lent

Mar 22, 2019

                  “… if you do not repent, you will all perish ….” Lk 13:3 High anxiety. That’s what we’re introduced to in today’s Gospel. The people Jesus is addressing...

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Chasing Certainty

Mar 21, 2019

In the newsroom at the newspaper where I worked was a sign saying, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” The message, of course, is that...

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Second Sunday of Lent

Mar 15, 2019

“Jesus took Peter, John, and James and went up the mountain to pray. While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white.” Lk....

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Good, and Bad, Priests

Mar 14, 2019

My best friend – after my wife and kids – is Father Gerald Waris. We’ve been friends for at least 72 years when his family moved in “across the...

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Should You Be Loyal to a Religion?

Mar 07, 2019

I once wrote a newspaper story about a man in his mid-80s who cared for his wife who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease at a young age. She...