How to start “freeing” yourself of past childhood trauma and the grief of losing a parent?

Hi there, I am glad that you reached out. And, I offer my condolences if you have lost a parent as a child or young adult. Losing a parent prematurely is often very devastating and can leave us feeling hopeless and confused. When you speak about "freeing" yourself from childhood trauma, the answer is that you will have to work on talking about those traumas openly or in a journal and then working to understand how they impact you now. Then you can begin to free yourself from the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that are a result of that trauma. For instance, if you were raised in a household where your parent yelled at you all the time and threatened you, you may now do the same to other people and/or you may be very afraid of other people. You may find yourself trying to please other people all the time because when you were a child, you were afraid of someone in your household being angry because that was threatening your peace and stability. That is just one example of the many ways that childhood trauma can negatively impact us. We can also have anxiety or panic attacks that we can't seem to understand because our minds and bodies were so used to panicking all the time and this thought process and behaviors just naturally carried over into our adult life. We may have trouble connecting with other people because it doesn't feel safe to connect with others. Whatever it is that is causing you to have lasting symptoms of childhood trauma, you have to work with someone or yourself to understand and talk about those things that occurred and then understand how it's impacting you now. Then you can begin to turn around whatever thoughts and emotions are causing you distress now with new thoughts that reflect your current situation and not an old and abusive situation. As far as losing a parent, I would suggest joining a grief support group, you can find those online or locally in person. It helps to process grief with others and I would research The Stages of Grief, that can be very helpful to understand where you are at in the grieving process.