Prince Harry says he “couldn’t do anything around the house” and was unable to “function without adrenaline” after he and wife Meghan moved to Canada at the end of 2019
Prince Harry says he “slipped into depression” after fleeing the UK and moving away from a “stressful environment”.
The Duke of Sussex says he “couldn’t do anything around the house and “couldn’t function without adrenaline” after he and Meghan moved to Canada at the end of 2019 – just weeks before announcing their dramatic decision to step down as working royals in 2020. Harry makes the admission in a conversation with neuroscientist Dr Mary-Frances O’Connor about grief and resilience on the Masterclass platform, which has been released ahead of World Mental Health Day on Saturday.
The Sussexes relocated to Canada when Archie was a baby at the end of 2019, following a tense tour of Southern Africa where the pair both publicly spoke about their difficulties about life in the Royal Family, and Harry first spoke about his feud with brother, Prince William.
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In the conversation, he describes how he experienced an “adrenaline crash” and says: “We moved to Canada to get some space away from everything, just to be able to think.
“Being in Canada, away from the stressful environment where presumably my body was just pumped full of adrenaline, within two or three days, I experienced this adrenaline crash, something that I’d never experienced before.
“It was as if I needed stress in order to get the adrenaline to make my brain function because I became useless around the house. I actually slipped into depression for about two weeks, and I felt like I couldn’t function without adrenaline.”
He also added how carrying out royal engagements has caused him “absolute panic” from putting on a suit to travelling to visits and hearing the clicks of cameras.
Harry shared: “I started to realise that I had become seriously depleted when just putting a simple dress shirt on — the tightening of the collar — literally felt like I was suffocating, and I would be experiencing panic attacks just in the car on the way to work.
“And that’s when I realised, okay, there’s something bigger, there’s something else that you need to look into here.”
In the online conversation, filmed in California before his move back to Britain, he also speaks of his torment at feeling like he “had to be sad” in order to prove to his late mother, Princess Diana, that he missed her.
Harry was just 12 when Diana died in a car crash in Paris at the age of just 36. He tells Dr O’Connor that he forgot the sound of her laugh and voice and eventually used her perfume to ‘unlock’ memories of her. And he also admitted that he spent many years “emotionally numb” as nobody told him “joy was still allowed”.
He said: “I’d spent so long emotionally numb, to a large extent, because I felt disloyal and guilty for the possibility of being happy and joyful without her. I felt like I had to be sad and I had to be emotionally numb in order to prove to her that I missed her.”
And in a deeply personal moment, he said: “It took me a long time to find my path to resilience. I didn’t cry when I was told my mom died, only at her burial, and then not again for nearly two decades.
“I was convinced that was strength, but it wasn’t. I was a 12-year-old boy with no permission to fall apart and no roadmap for how to heal.”
Now Harry says that he thinks of his late mother “pretty much every night and most mornings” and keeps a photograph of her close to him.
He also reveals that he often feels her presence, explaining: “A lot has happened in my life in the last six years, and she has turned up at moments where it makes complete sense that she turned up in those moments. But I know that if I work harder, that I can be connected to her more often than these sort of fleeting moments.”
Meanwhile, he also opens up about the 10-day rule he and Meghan have when it comes to their family life.
He says: “The biggest factor for me is the energy and the joy and happiness that I get being with my family, especially our kids, and the joy and happiness I get by being on the ground for my work.
“And the key to finding the joy and happiness balance is no more than 10 days away from my wife and kids. This is balancing my work and the purpose behind that as well as being a dad and a husband and the sort of multi-identity elements coming together.”
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