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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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mm Tom Carney

Why Many Young Catholics Stay in the Church

Apr 27, 2017

Sophia was 25 years old when she was interviewed for the book, “Young Adult Catholics, Religion in the Culture of Choice” by Dean Hoge et al, a book to...

mm Ted

Third Sunday of Easter

Apr 27, 2017

  “The Lord has truly been raised.” Lk: 24:34   The Emmaus story, described only in the gospel of Luke, can easily be read as the story of our...

mm Tom Carney

Skeptical about Skeptical Faith?

Apr 20, 2017

Somewhere in my formal education, I learned the importance of critical thinking. I believe it was in high school, taught by priests, but I know I already had an...

mm Ted

Second Sunday of Easter

Apr 20, 2017

“… he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.’” Jn. 20:22...

mm Ted

Easter Sunday

Apr 17, 2017

  One of the finest gifts I ever received was the opportunity to do graduate work in psychology under the tutelage of the psychiatrist, Victor Frankl. His best-selling book,...

mm Ted

Good Friday

Apr 14, 2017

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way….” Hebrews 4:15  ...

mm Tom Carney

Saying “No” to the Sense of Entitlement

Apr 13, 2017

We huffed and puffed climbing the steep path up a scruffy mountain, over orange to watermelon-sized rocks and the big tree roots protruding between them. It was hot, and...

mm Ted

Holy Thursday

Apr 13, 2017

“Do you realize what I have done for you? …. If I, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have...