Prince Harry revealed an argument with then-girlfriend Meghan Markle was what pushed him to get therapy.
In candid interviews with Oprah Winfrey on his new Apple TV show, The Me You Can’t See, the Duke of Sussex, 36, said he realised he could ‘lose the woman he could see spending the rest of his life with’ if he didn’t ‘fix’ himself.
Harry told how he had tried drugs and alcohol to numb his pain, not realising at the time that was what he was doing, and when people close to him told him to seek help, he would say he did not need help.
It wasn’t until he met Meghan, he said in the second episode, that he decided he needed help. He’s now been in therapy for four years.
Prince Harry revealed an argument with then-girlfriend Meghan Markle was what pushed him to get therapy
It wasn’t until he met Meghan, Harry said in the second episode, that he decided he needed help (pictured together after announcing their engagement in November 2017)
‘I saw GPs. I saw doctors. I saw therapists. I saw alternative therapists. I saw all sorts of people, but it was meeting and being with Meghan,’ he explained.
‘I knew that if I didn’t do the therapy and fix myself that I was going to lose this woman who I could see spending the rest of my life with.
‘When she said, “I think you need to see someone,” it was in reaction to an argument that we had. And in that argument not knowing about it, I reverted back to 12-year-old Harry.’
Prior to seeking help, Harry told how he simply tried to push his mother from his mind.
‘I don’t want to think about her, because if I think about her then it’s going to bring up the fact that I can’t bring her back and it’s just going to make me sad,’ he said.
‘What’s the point in thinking about something sad, what’s the point of thinking about someone that you’ve lost and you’re never going to get back again. And I just decided not to talk about it.’
He said the moment he started therapy, his therapist told him that during his argument with his girlfriend, it sounded like he was ‘reverting to 12-year-old Harry’.
In candid interviews with Oprah Winfrey on his new show, The Me You Can’t See, he said: ‘I thought my family would help, but every single ask, request, warning, whatever, it is just got met with total silence, total neglect’
‘I felt somewhat ashamed and defensive. Like, “How dare you? You’re calling me a child”. And she goes, “No, I’m not calling you a child. I’m expressing sympathy and empathy for you for what happened to you when you were a child. You never processed it. You were never allowed to talk about it and all of a sudden now it’s coming up in different ways as projection”.
‘That was the start of a learning journey for me. I became aware that I’d been living in a bubble within this family, within this institution and I was sort of almost trapped in a thought process or a mindset.’
He added: ‘For me, therapy has equipped me to be able to take on anything.’
Harry also admitted he felt ‘ashamed’ about how he dealt with his wife Meghan’s traumatic feelings, referencing the suicidal thoughts she spoke about during their interview with Oprah in March.
The Duchess, 39, said she considered ending it all while she was pregnant with Archie, now two, and claimed she went to the Palace for help, but they refused.
In the new programme, Harry said the way Meghan was feeling reminded him of his mother’s final days.
‘History was repeating itself,’ he told Oprah. ‘My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone who wasn’t white. And now look what’s happened.
‘It’s incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life. Like, the list is growing. And it all comes back to the same people, the same business model, the same industry.’
Harry told Oprah he thought his family would help, but claimed ‘every single ask, request, warning, whatever, it is just got met with total silence, total neglect’.
‘We spent four years trying to make it work. We did everything that we possibly could to stay there and carry on doing the role and doing the job. But Meghan was struggling,’ he explained.
Before they walked into the Royal Albert Hall in London for a charity event when Meghan was already six months pregnant, gripping each others hands, Harry said on the show, ‘Meghan decided to share with me the suicidal thoughts and the practicalities of how she was going to end her life.
‘I’m somewhat ashamed of the way that I dealt with it,’ he said, ‘and of course because of the system that we were in and the responsibilities and the duties that we had, we had a quick cuddle and then we had to get changed and had to jump into a convoy with a police escort and drive to the Royal Albert Hall for a charity event.
‘There wasn’t an option to say, “You know what, tonight we’re not going to go, because just imagine the stories that come from that,” he said, recounting how once the lights dim Meghan started to cry and he felt ashamed he could not go to his family.’
Harry said in an interview with Oprah that the only thing preventing Meghan from killing herself was the thought that it would be unfair to him to lose another woman he loved in his life while also pregnant with their baby.
‘The scariest thing for her was her clarity of thought,’ he said. ‘She hadn’t lost it. She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t self-medicating, be it through pills or by alcohol. She was absolutely sober. She was completely sane. Yet in the quiet of night, these thoughts woke her up.’
Harry claimed his family tried to prevent him and Megan from leaving when she was struggling to cope.
Harry said his family tried to prevent him and Megan from leaving when she was having suicidal thoughts
‘That feeling of being trapped within the family, there was no option to leave. Eventually when I made that decision for my family, I was still told, “You can’t do this”,’ Harry recounted to Oprah. ‘And it’s like, ‘Well how bad does it have to get until I am allowed to do this?’ She [Markle] was going to end her life. It shouldn’t have to get to that.’
When asked if he has any regrets, he says it is not taking a stand earlier in his relationship with Markle. Ultimately, he claimed, he and Meghan had to leave the U.K. to ‘put our mental health first.’
‘That’s what we’re doing,’ the prince said, ‘and that’s what we’ll continue to do.’
‘It was like that for me so it’s going to be like that for you’: Harry criticises his father Charles for continuing the cycle of generational suffering
Harry said: ‘That doesn’t make sense. Just because you suffered, that doesn’t mean your kids have to suffer. In fact, quite the opposite. If you suffered, do everything you can to make sure that whatever negative experiences you had, you can make it right for your kids.’
‘Isn’t this all about breaking the cycle?’ he asked, rhetorically. ‘Isn’t this all about making sure that history doesn’t repeat itself.’
‘This is my mum. You haven’t even met her’: Harry hit out at mourners at Diana’s funeral who showed ‘ten times’ as much emotion as he could
The Duke of Sussex recounts how he was only allowed to show ‘one-tenth of the emotion everyone else was feeling,’ making him angry as he saw strangers on the street crying over Diana’s death.
‘This was my mother,’ he said, ‘you never even met her.’
He said on the show he was discouraged from talking about his mother’s death, and when people would ask him how he was feeling, he said, ‘fine was the easy answer.’
Six-month pregnant Meghan shared with Harry HOW she was going to kill herself before they attended charity function at Royal Albert Hall
Harry said: ‘I’m somewhat ashamed of the way that I dealt with it,’ he said, ‘and of course because of the system that we were in and the responsibilities and the duties that we had, we had a quick cuddle and then we had to get changed and had to jump into a convoy with a police escort and drive to the Royal Albert Hall for a charity event.’
‘There wasn’t an option to say, “You know what, tonight we’re not going to go, because just imagine the stories that come from that”,’ he said, recounting how once the lights dim Meghan started to cry and he felt ashamed he could not go to his family.
Prince Harry told Oprah that Meghan didn’t kill herself because she didn’t want him to lose another woman he loved
‘The scariest thing for her was her clarity of thought,’ he said. ‘She hadn’t lost it. She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t self-medicating, be it through pills or by alcohol. She was absolutely sober. She was completely sane.
‘Yet in the quiet of night, these thoughts woke her up.’
He says he now would like to focus on his son, Archie, ‘rather than every time I look in his eyes wonder whether my wife is going to end up like my mother, and I’m going to have to look after him myself.’
‘That was one of the main reasons to leave,’ Harry said.
Prince Harry says Royals tried to STOP him and Meghan leaving after ‘she was going to end her life’
‘That feeling of being trapped within the family, there was no option to leave. Eventually when I made that decision for my family, I was still told, ‘You can’t do this.’
‘And it’s like, ‘Well how bad does it have to get until I am allowed to do this?’ She [Markle] was going to end her life. It shouldn’t have to get to that.’
He said his biggest regret was not taking a stand earlier in his relationship with Markle, claiming a barrage of attacks on her won’t stop ‘until she dies.
‘It’s incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life,’ Harry said in the interview with Oprah. ‘Like the list is growing, and it all comes back to the same people, the same business model, the same industry.’
Harry claims Royals showed ‘total neglect’ for his and ‘struggling’ Meghan’s mental health
‘We spent four years trying to make it work,’ he says on the show. ‘We did everything that we possibly could to stay there and carry on doing the role and doing the job. But Meghan was struggling.’
He said the way Meghan was feeling reminded him of his own mother’s final days.
‘History was repeating itself,’ he said in an interview with Oprah. ‘My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone who wasn’t white. And now look what’s happened.
Ultimately, he claimed, he and Meghan had to leave the U.K. to ‘put our mental health first.’
‘That’s what we’re doing,’ the prince said, ‘and that’s what we’ll continue to do.’
Harry says he was ‘worried and afraid’ to return to the UK for Prince Philip’s funeral
‘I was worried about it, I was afraid,’ Harry told The Associated Press during a recent joint interview with Oprah Winfrey to promote the series.
He said he relied on coping skills learned in therapy.
‘It definitely made it a lot easier, but the heart still pounds,’ said Harry, the Duke of Sussex and grandson of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and her late husband Philip.
Harry tells trauma therapist of his fears about visiting the UK – and shares EMDR session that has ‘freed him’
Prince Harry said: ‘For most of my life I’ve always felt worried, concerned, a little bit tense and uptight whenever I fly back into the UK, whenever I fly back into London.
‘And I could never understand why. I was aware of it, I wasn’t aware of it at the time when I was younger, but after I started doing therapy stuff I became aware of it.
‘I was like, why do I feel so uncomfortable? And of course for me London is a trigger, unfortunately, because of what happened to my mum, and because of what I experienced and what I saw.’
He told London-based anja Oakley, a UK-based psychotherapist who used to be a trauma specialist for London Underground: ‘Happens every time. I can’t remember the first time it happened, I can just remember the feeling, anxiety, like a hollow empty feeling almost of nervousness, is it fear? Everything feels tense.
‘It’s being the hunted, and being helpless and knowing that you can’t do anything about it. There is no escape. There is no way out of this.’
Prince Harry says he believed his ‘compassionate’ Oprah Winfrey interview would ‘leave door open to reconciliation’ with his family
Prince Harry said: ‘The interview was about being real and authentic. And hopefully sharing an experience which we know to be incredibly relatable to people around the world, despite our unique privileged position.’
He continued: ‘Before the Oprah interview had aired, because of the combined efforts of The Firm and the media to smear her, I was woken up in the middle of the night to her crying into her pillow because she doesn’t want to wake me up because I’m already carrying too much. That’s heartbreaking.’
The couple were accused of ‘blowing up the royal family’ after the interview, in which they laid bare the extent of their rift with the Queen and other senior royals and accused The Firm of racism, sent shock waves around the world.
Harry says he felt forced to go to Nepal and his constant jet-setting as the family’s ‘yes man’ became ‘hectic to the point of exhaustion’
Harry said: ‘I was travelling all over the place because, you know, from the family’s perspective I guess I was the person who like ”we need someone to go there. Nepal, Harry you go”.
‘I was always the yes man I was always the one willing to say yes. But that yes and yes and yes of course yes yes yes led to burnout.
‘And it was like someone had taken the lid off. All of the emotions that I had suppressed for so many years suddenly came to the forefront.’
He added: ‘I saw GPs, I saw doctors, I saw therapists I saw alternative therapists, I saw all sorts of people.
‘But it was meeting and being with Meghan – I knew that if I didn’t do therapy and fix myself, that I was going to lose this woman who I could see spending the rest of my life with.’