Prince Harry Opens up About His State of Mind After Princess Diana's Death
Prince Harry speaks of his bottled up grief at losing Diana, which only surfaced properly in his [...]
Prince Harry is opening up about his emotions after Princess Diana's death, E! News reports.
The royal joined Bryony Gordon's Mad World where he was candid about his own emotional and mental health struggles. Although the prince has been a big supporter of erasing the stigma that surrounds mental health, he's been mostly quiet about how it has affected him personally.
Harry revealed that he's been dealing with emotional and mental health issues since Princess Diana's death 20 years ago.
"If you look back to the fact that I lost my mom at the age of 12 on the public platform of which it was, and then everything else that happens with being in the spotlight in this sort of role and the pressures that come with it," Harry explained.
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"And then going to Afghanistan, and then working in the personal recovering unit with all of the soldiers as well and taking on a lot of their issues. Anybody would look at that and go, 'OK, there must be something wrong with you. You can't be totally normal."
He added that he would always ignore his emotions, saying, "My way of dealing with it was sticking my head in the sand and refusing to ever think about my mom because why would that help. It's only going to make you sad. It's never going to bring her back."
Today, he recognizes the harmful effects that running away from his emotions has had on him.
"I can safely say that losing my mom at the age of 12 and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but also my work as well," he confessed.
"It was only three years ago that, from the support around and my brother and other people who started to say, 'You need to deal with this. It's not normal to think that nothing's affecting you.' "
He said he began to tackle his mental health at the age of 28, and by the time he turned 30, he finally felt like he had a handle on it and was able to talk with others who'd suffered through grief.
[H/T Instagram / @crownchronicles]
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