Marianne Gutierrez: Health Practitioner: Trapped Grief

Trapped Grief · 10 February 2005

I was thinking about trapped grief and illness. I am a born-again Christian praying with others who base our lives solely on God and His Word – Jesus Christ, and the bible. This article seems to touch on a heap of emotions. I would be interested in your – the reader’s – response.

Let me just give you a bit of background information. We (the prayer group) are currently going through some talks given by Roger Price, a bible speaker, who has researched bible topics and the language the bible was written in, which was the original greek called Koine Greek and hebrew and chaldean. He offered a more precise, gentler, truer meaning than I had previously understood. The talks are enormously interesting and inspiring and helping me to understand the pure and wonderful love, God has for each of us and the reason God made us. This is important to me because of the teachings of the religious organisation I was brought up in from the moment I was born, the catholic church that left me so confused and guilty about everything, even being alive.

Back to the point: In looking at grief and its trappedness or suppression also brought me to look at anger, were the two connected? Was trapped grief one reason we get ill? What do I mean by trapped grief? Is it unexpressed sadness? Anger? Hate? Unforgiveness?

Sorry, another little aside: If anyone reading this does not think they get angry as I used to think about myself, then ask yourself: ‘Do you get hurt?’ My answer to that was: ‘YES! I cry all the time, I am always hurting over something.’ Then when you read hurt in your life, read anger. When I read that, in this book I was reading about anger, I then breathed a mental sigh of enormous relief and understanding. Because when I translated the feelings of my pain to anger I could deal with it positively and not continue to self-destruct myself with hurt.

(However when you read hurt in your life do not read tears. Tears are another important mechanism for the body to express itself and are good. Sadness, another facet of grief, is always there when grief is present and needs expression through tears.)

I find myself weeping silently when I think of my Mum who died a short while ago. Of-course I miss her. Another time I will laugh out loud when I remember a particular occasion with her. Or simply smile. And sometimes I am angry that she has gone. I may believe in God and believe that Mum has gone to a better life but I still don’t understand the perplexing enigma of death or for that matter birth! So simply because we are born and we die and we are a thinking interactive part of each other, that we matter to each other, for me that proves there is God, the supreme creator and a life in a better world when we die.

Sometimes we are tearful because we are feeling sorry for ourselves and this directs the pain back at yourself and is negative and damaging. Ask yourself why you feel sorry for yourself. Generally one has no reason to feel sorry for themselves, negativity has got in the way and positivity needs to be sought. Ephesians 6 and the armour of God in the Bible is essential in protecting ourselves from our negative thoughts.

So, back to the point again: I always thought that anger was very wrong and in catholic eyes a ‘mortal’ sin and yet God got angry. Jesus got angry. And somewhere in Paul’s letters it says something like ‘Do not let the sun go down on your anger’.

I read some passages from a book concerning anger and it made such sense. Anger is a normal emotion like love, sadness, happiness. We are allowed to feel anger, we are not allowed to sin with it. The bible says:’Be angry and do not sin.’ So what does ‘Don’t let the sun go down on your anger mean? Sun in this passage is from the Koine Greek that the new testament was written in. And it means heat. What the passage is saying is, do not let the heat go down on your anger.

This now fits in with what some people feel that suppressed anger can make one ill. If the anger is suppressed along with the heat you can imagine an illness waiting to happen, a veritable explosion!

What God is saying in the bible is not to let the heat go down on our anger, to be angry but do not sin. In other words, express yourself, tell someone that you feel angry with them, with the illness, with the grief, with the perpertrator, with the abuse, with the insults but do not allow the heat of the anger. The heat being the shouting, the insults, the violent actions that are generally expressed when we are angry.

The important thing to understand is that you are allowed to feel as you do about situations.

I think the realisation of this was so releasing for me, I could be angry about my experiences that had caused me pain. Once I was, or one is, allowed to feel their emotion they must then deal with it without sinning. I believe the way to deal with it is by expression.

The healing comes from continually having to express ourselves when each facet of the painful experience is presented. You may want to express it to the person concerned. You may have to express it to God or a counsellor if the person is not available. However what you must remember is to express your feelings, your anger without sinning.

Sometimes it is the individual facets of the experience that get surpressed. When presented with yet more anger over the same situation we think we have not dealt with it properly in the first instance and so suppress the feelings, instead of expressing them again.

It takes time to express our anger over our abuse, whether it is disease caused, loved one’s death caused, physical actions to our person or taking on board incorrect teachings.

So:
If we are angry – tell the person concerned or someone
If we are sad – cry
If we are happy – laugh
If we feel joy – smile
If we feel bitter – forgive
If we feel hate – why? Are we angry? Can we forgive? Can we find an aspect to love?

Then maybe we won’t suffer from trapped grief making ourselves ill.

I believe that trapped grief is not caused by the reason for the grief but the suppressed emotions of it. Grief like a diamond has many facets and each facet needs expressing and not suppressing. Those facets can be anger, sadness, love and happiness and forgiveness, all need expression and not suppression.

There is one sure thing that will happen once we are born and that is that we will die (even the scientists agree with that bit and they also agree that a supreme creator started life). I believe that after death we will live again in heaven with God. The reason for living is to get to know God and His son Jesus Christ and what He did for us and why He had to do it.

Death is so mysterious perhaps this was why Jesus wept at Lazarus’ tomb when he saw the sadness that death causes even though he knew he would show us graphically, by raising Lazarus from the dead, our own salvation, through Jesus’ death, our own new life.

Praise the Lord as my sins have not caused me to die because Jesus did that for me and through believing in His Son and seeking His forgiveness to human ways He does forgive me. If God can forgive my rubbish when I confess and ask for forgiveness and forget it (as far as the east is from the west) surely I should forgive myself and forgive others? So is unforgiveness part of Trapped Grief?

Koine Greek was the written and spoken language that Alexander the Great introduced to all his conquered countries in 350BC. It was a language designed by Alexander the Great to bring together all the dialects and idioms of the Greek language which was so diverse among all the islands. Koine means common. Common Greek. This made Alexander the Great’s army very powerful as there were no mistakes in battle with misunderstandings of the language between generals and the troops. The language for this reason was designed to be explicit with no confusions. When the bible is translated from the Koine Greek there is no misunderstanding of what was meant. King James’ translation from the Hebrew (Old testament) and the koine greek (new testament) is considered to be the closest translation as he understood english and the way they expressed themselves then. Modern english misuses expressions and so it is exceedingly interesting to receive the direct translation from the greek. When we become Christians following the faith in our hearts and not following man’s rules, the Holy Spirit inspires us to understand as we read the bible and so in that respect Christians do not really need to know the greek. However for my imperfect, guilt ridden, feel-sorry-for-myself mind I find it a useful tool to take the bible words back to the original greek or hebrew.

Next: For every season, turn, turn, turn ...

Previous: Medical Quacks?