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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

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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...

mm Ted

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Aug 22, 2017

  “Who do you say I am?” Mt. 16:14   Today’s gospel begins in a rather unusual way. It starts with a statement about geography, about a certain city...

mm Ted

Trump made excuses for neo-Nazis, but we cannot

Aug 19, 2017

Published on National Catholic Reporter: Click here to view the article

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Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Aug 18, 2017

“’O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And the woman’s daughter was healed from that hour.” (Mt. 15: 28)   Today’s...

mm Tom Carney

The Disconnect Between Religion and “Real Life”

Aug 17, 2017

There’s a certain American archbishop and cardinal, who until his dismissal by Pope Francis in 2014, had an important post in the Vatican. On several occasions, he was photographed...

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Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Aug 12, 2017

“Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water,...