The Cellar of Tears” is a symbolic journey through hidden emotional wounds and past trauma. Many people carry subconscious pain that affects behaviour and emotional wellbeing. By exploring these hidden layers, real healing and inner transformation become possible.
The Story Behind “The Cellar of Tears
The next case story is meant to illustrate the power our emotions have and the influence they can actually exert on our health.
One of my healing students (let’s call her Helga) complained that she had recently developed a bloated stomach. In addition, she had suddenly begun experiencing pain in the sole of her foot from one day to the next. After several days without improvement, she consulted her general practitioner.
As soon as Helga described her symptoms, the doctor suspected gout. Blood tests confirmed the assumption: Helga’s uric acid levels were significantly elevated. All the symptoms clearly pointed to gout.
However, because Helga had learned during her healer training with me that most illnesses have an unconscious cause, she came to see me to find out whether there might be an emotional root behind it.
As usual, I first asked when exactly everything had begun. Helga told me that it had started shortly after her wedding. She remembered returning from her honeymoon with her newly married husband. When they opened the mailbox, they were overwhelmed by the large number of congratulatory letters they had received.
Helga explained that she and her husband were incredibly happy when they returned from their honeymoon, and she was delighted by all the letters from friends and relatives.
But then she opened a letter from her stepmother—and all those feelings of happiness vanished instantly.
Her stepmother was not pleased about Helga’s new marriage and informed her, in a very unfriendly tone, that she would no longer belong to the family.
Helga said that from that moment on she couldn’t stop thinking about her stepmother and constantly felt guilty.
Almost like obsessive thoughts.
That was when everything began. Shortly afterward, her stomach became bloated. But something else also changed: she suddenly had difficulty urinating. Before that, everything had worked perfectly, but now it felt as if the “valve” was no longer opening properly and something was being held back.
This explained the elevated uric acid levels.
So we had identified the trigger—but the underlying cause was still missing.
Recognizing Hidden Wounds
Now my detective work began.
I asked Helga to stand up and allowed my energy to flow into her. Within a few moments, she slipped into a light trance. I then instructed her subconscious to show us the true cause of her problem.
Helga’s voice and posture changed, and I suddenly had the feeling that a little girl was standing in front of me instead of a 55-year-old woman.
Her subconscious was working at full speed and led us far back into the past.
Helga saw herself as a small child—perhaps five years old—and began describing the surroundings she found herself in.
Speaking with a childlike voice, she told me that she was playing alone on the terrace in front of her parents’ house. The atmosphere felt bleak, and Helga did not feel comfortable.
I asked if anyone else was there.
She replied that only her mother was inside the house.
I asked if it was her stepmother, but she clarified that it was her biological mother.
Then Helga’s mood changed, and small tears rolled down her face.
“Why are you crying?” I asked.
“Mommy is angry with me,” Helga replied.
“But why is she angry with you?”
“I don’t know. Something bad is always about to happen. I’m scared. I don’t want to go into the house.”
I asked Helga’s adult self to join the situation in order to support the little girl.
The adult Helga took her inner child by the hand and led her through the door into the house.
Once inside, Helga saw a dark cellar door in her mind’s eye.
“There is that horrible cellar,” she said.
Gently I asked what was in the cellar.
Suddenly Helga broke down crying and shouted:
“Me! I am in the cellar!”
After a while Helga explained that her mother would often beat her with a wooden cooking spoon whenever she had supposedly done something wrong. Sometimes the beatings only stopped when Helga wet herself.
Only then would her mother stop.
As an additional punishment, Helga was locked in the dark cellar of the house and not allowed to leave. Sometimes for hours, sometimes even for days.
These cellar punishments became more frequent when Helga’s mother had a lover and wanted the little girl out of the way.
“I understand,” I replied with deep compassion and surrounded Helga with the full energy of unconditional love.
She began to cry more intensely and bent forward as if in pain. All the shock energy from the past was now releasing from her subconscious.
When that wave passed, she told me that she now felt an intense anger inside her.
“Oh, I am so angry!”
This was a good sign. The shock and trauma energy had suppressed and hidden these feelings of anger for many years.
I encouraged her to express this anger freely.
Because Helga was a gentle person who never wanted to harm anyone—and had been raised to always be nice—she initially found it difficult to give in to the impulse.
So I encouraged her gently:
“You are innocent in what happened to you. It is your right to free yourself from it. You can’t do anything wrong now, and you never did anything wrong. Stop fighting it. Just let it go.”
And Helga screamed.
These are the moments, dear reader, when I am very grateful to work in a practice with extremely thick walls.
When years of suppressed anger finally release, it is almost as if someone has thrown an energetic hand grenade into the room.
There is quite a bang.
After that emotional explosion, the room was filled with a flood of colorful swear words that I will spare you here. Helga raged furiously:
“How could you dare treat such a small child like that?!”
This went on for several minutes.
When the waves of anger subsided, Helga relaxed, and a smile appeared on her face.
“How do you feel now?” I asked.
“So relieved, Marco!”
Then I asked Helga to free the little Helga from the cellar and bring her into the present moment.
(Of course, this process is much more complex than I can describe here. I cannot explain these techniques in detail because I want to prevent untrained people from attempting to work with traumatized individuals based only on descriptions in a book.)
After the healing session, Helga told me that one day her father had gained custody and taken her to live with him. He had a new partner—the stepmother mentioned earlier—who raised her from then on.
Although the physical violence stopped, Helga experienced psychological abuse. The message was always the same:
“You will only be loved if you do exactly what we expect of you. Be nice.”
Helga moved out very early to escape this pressure and became independent at a young age. She moved from southern Germany to the far north, married, and had a son.
Her family continued to make it clear that she never truly belonged.
No matter what she did, she was rejected.
When her father died, Helga felt responsible for her stepmother and tried to maintain contact. She was never thanked. Instead, attempts were constantly made to make her feel guilty in order to control her.
Eventually Helga began freeing herself from this pattern—but the guilt still lingered deep inside her.
After the healing session I asked her how she felt.
She smiled broadly.
“I’m exhausted—but in a good way,” she said.
She also reported a strong energetic sensation flowing through her legs and down into her feet.
“It feels like bubbling,” she said fascinated. “Is that normal?”
“That’s actually a very good sign,” I replied.
“The energy that was stuck is now flowing properly through your body again. Symbolically, you had still been trapped in that cellar all these years. That is why the gout symptoms appeared in your foot—unconsciously, you were still stuck in that terrible place.”
Her bloated stomach had also been a sign that energy could no longer flow properly below the hips.
The problem with urination should now resolve as well.
When she had been beaten as a child, her subconscious learned that the beatings stopped once she wet herself.
So over time she wet herself faster because her subconscious was trying to protect her from the blows.
When she later received the letter from her stepmother, her subconscious recognized the same “mother theme” and attempted to react the same way.
As an adult, she had unconsciously resisted this impulse—which created tension and physical symptoms.
“That’s why I had trouble urinating?” Helga exclaimed. “That’s incredible!”
“Exactly,” I replied.
“As a child you were helpless against the forces of your subconscious. Today, as an adult, it must find other ways to signal that something is wrong.”
It is both frightening and fascinating when we realize how much power the subconscious mind actually has over our health.
About a week later Helga called me.
“I’m doing very well, Marco,” she said happily.
“The energy in my legs stopped in the evening, and the pain in my foot is gone. My stomach swelling has also disappeared.”
She also told me that the day after the healing session she had passed very dark urine and that urination had returned to normal.
“I can sleep well again,” she added. “I feel rested, balanced, and simply happy.”
Her smile practically radiated through the phone.
“Wonderful,” I said. “And what about the obsessive thoughts about your stepmother?”
“That’s the funny part,” Helga replied. “At first I didn’t even notice that I had stopped thinking about her. After about a week it suddenly occurred to me that she hadn’t crossed my mind at all.”
She laughed.
“It’s like tinnitus,” she continued. “If the ringing suddenly disappears after years, you don’t notice it immediately because you’re so used to it being there.”
We both smiled.
“It’s okay now, Marco,” she said. “I’m not angry with my stepmother anymore. I forgive her. I also forgive my mother and let it go. Finally, I am free from guilt and have decided not to be a victim anymore.”
Some weeks later I saw Helga again.
She was still doing wonderfully.
None of the symptoms had returned.
To this day, she remains symptom-free.