Prince Harry Dealt With Princess Diana’s Death by ‘Sticking His Head in the Sand’
Prince Harry admitted that for years, he couldn’t deal with the death of his mother, Princess Diana. It wasn’t until he was in his 20s that Harry began to process the tragedy. Until that point, he claims he handled his grief by “sticking his head in the sand.”
Prince Harry tried not to think about his grief throughout most of his young life
In 2017, Prince Harry gave an in-depth interview to Bryony Gordon for the first episode of her podcast, Mad World reported The Telegraph. Harry claimed to have “shut down all his emotions” until he was in his 20s about Princess Diana’s death, which occurred when he was 12. It wasn’t until Harry was around the age of 28 that he began fully processing his grief.
“I can safely say that losing my mum 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 my work as well,” Harry explained. “I have probably been very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions when all sorts of grief and sort of lies and misconceptions and everything are coming to you from every angle.”
He continued, “My way of dealing with it was sticking my head in the sand, refusing to ever think about my mum, because why would that help? “[I thought] it’s only going to make you sad, it’s not going to bring her back.”
“So from an emotional side, I was like ‘Right, don’t ever let your emotions be part of anything.’ So I was a typical 20, 25, 28-year-old running around going ‘life is great’, or ‘life is fine’ and that was exactly it,” he concluded.
Prince Harry said ‘bless’ Prince William for much-needed help in processing his grief
In 2017, Prince Harry and Prince William were not estranged. The brothers, along with Kate Middleton and the Royal Foundation, formed the Heads Together campaign. Its goal is to reduce the stigma around mental health and provide resources to help people.
Harry cited William as one of his biggest champions for getting help in coping with the unresolved feelings he had regarding their mother’s death. “It’s all about timing.”
He continued, “For me personally, my brother, you know, bless him, he was a huge support to me. He kept saying this is not right, this is not normal, you need to talk to [someone] about stuff, it’s OK.”
After Harry and Meghan Markle’s relationship turned serious, the brothers became estranged for a series of reasons. Reportedly they still do not speak.
Harry needed to ‘deal with his past’ to move forward
Prince Harry was involved with Meghan Markle during his Mad World podcast appearance. He cites her help in opening himself up further to therapy.
However, Harry also knew that he had internal work to do to maintain a healthy relationship with Meghan. He knew that he hadn’t fully processed his trauma regarding Princess Diana’s death, and he didn’t want it to affect his relationship with the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.
“I quickly established that if this relationship was going to work, that I was going to have to deal with my past because there was anger there — and it wasn’t anger at her, it was just anger,” Harry said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey in the documentary series The Me You Can’t See, as reported by NPR. “And she recognized it. She saw it.”
Harry said he needed to go back to the past. “Go back to the point of trauma, deal with it, process it, and then move forward.”
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been married since May 2018. The couple has two children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. He is estranged from most senior royal family members.
