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Angustia: no way out!

  Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae describes anxiety as a narrowing (from Latin angustia - narrowness): "Anxiety is that which so takes possession of the mind as to leave no opening for escape" It is sorrow so intense it "binds the soul" and "shuts out all hope" The soul becomes trapped, unable to find a way out. This image is precise: anxiety feels like being in a space that keeps getting smaller, the walls pressing in. Aquinas's proposed remedies all point towards "dilatatio" (expansion) : -Grace as "enlargement and strengthening" of the soul. A distraction that provokes a "dilatatio" (expansion) and therefore:  -Joy and love causing the heart to widen -Hope opening what anxiety has closed -Contemplation of truth delighting more than pain saddens This is grace - not as theological abstraction, but as lived experience of sudden release. My frustration:  Around my 20s when I was trying to deepen Catholicism, I bega...
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too much

There was soo much going on, within me, this summer, that I ended up writing no words. No reflection was possible as it was, and still is, an intense and fast process, where whatever I could state one morning, in the evening it grew further into something new. A sprout that has begun to stretch and expand at an unimaginable speed, leaving me overwhelmed and in awe.

But one thing I can now say: in spite of the challenging intensity I enjoyed it utterly. My physical health got even better and some annoying psychosomatic problems that I developed during my reclusion in the almost nine years I spent with my schizophrenic mother are practically over now. And I got tanned, splendidly tanned, I walked a lot, enjoying the life I felt increasing within me. 

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