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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

Joy in Flashes of Insight

Sep 21, 2017

The next time you swat a fly, you may want to reflect on the fact that you’re cutting shorter an already short lifespan an average of just four weeks....

mm Ted

Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sep 15, 2017

TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME “Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?” Mt. 18: 34   It is pretty amazing...

mm Tom Carney

A Voice Crying Out in the Wilderness?

Sep 14, 2017

Hurricanes devastate Texas, Georgia and Florida. An earthquake measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale causes 90 deaths and widespread damage and homelessness in Mexico. North Korea continues to launch...

mm Ted

Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sep 08, 2017

“Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Mt. 18:20   “For a city as fragmented as ours, Harvey could’ve...

mm Tom Carney

Intimacy with God?

Sep 07, 2017

Along with Jefferson and Franklin, Thomas Paine was one of the brains behind the American Revolution. Born in England, he arrived in America just in time to join the...

mm Ted

Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sep 01, 2017

“Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Mt. 16: 23 Several years ago, I...

mm Tom Carney

The God who is “Distant and Never Quite Satisfied”

Sep 01, 2017

On a recent show, TV host Stephen Colbert interviewed comedian Jim Gaffigan. They were talking about parenting and their faith, something that is seldom done on national network television,...

mm Tom Carney

Giving the Poor a Bad Name, Again

Aug 24, 2017

It was a summer afternoon, windows and doors were open, and our middle-class neighborhood in St. Joseph, Mo. was filled with sounds and smells. Trucks with screeching brakes delivered...