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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

Suffering as a Challenge to Faith

Jun 19, 2026

Life, as we all know, is “unfair.” It’s an observation expressed by people who are suffering, or whose loved ones are suffering, by the rhetorical question, “Why me?” I...

mm Tom Carney

Are Faith and Reason Compatible?

Jun 12, 2026

There’s a famous quote from Tertullian, one of the earliest Christian thinkers, about the relationship between faith and reason. (“Reason” being rationality or critical thinking.) You may not have...

mm Tom Carney

All or Nothing?

Jun 05, 2026

I’m a life-long believer, born and raised a Catholic and having almost all of my formal education provided by church-related institutions. But my journey along the road of faith...

mm Tom Carney

A Pivotal Choice

May 29, 2026

“I asked AI for a prayer before dinner. It thanked the cloud.” “The church livestream added AI captions. “Prince of Peace” became “prints of peas.” These are jokes ChatGPT...

mm Tom Carney

An Antidote to Absurdity?

May 22, 2026

Back when I was studying philosophy, we briefly considered the writings of Albert Camus (1913-1960), a French Algerian novelist, essayist, playwright, and moral philosopher. A leading voice of mid-20th-century...

mm Tom Carney

The False or True Self

May 15, 2026

When writing about this subject I know I’m at risk of engaging in amateur psychology. Yes, the theme is evident in the writings of psychologists like Karl Jung and...

mm Tom Carney

Who Cares?

May 08, 2026

I haven’t recently written about the care of our earth because every time I do, I can almost feel the collective yawn. Data on my readership on Blogger always...

mm Tom Carney

Just War?

May 01, 2026

This blog is about the “just war theory,” but the title could just as easily apply to the proclivity of the U.S. and other powers to rely principally on...