Prince Harry has had a pretty crazy life, especially in the past few years. Even those who dislike this rebellious royal can acknowledge that things haven’t been easy for him. Marrying Meghan Markle put him at odds with his brother, resulting in a rift that carries on to this day. Later, his attempts to protect Meghan from the British tabloids left them leaving England altogether, which put him at odds with the rest of his famous family. He was cut off from his father while living in America, forcing him to release a tell-all memoir for money. Of course, spilling even more royal tea ended up alienating Harry from his few remaining family supporters.
All of these events have left Harry pretty numb, and he’s likely still reeling from everything now that he and Meghan have moved back to jolly old England. However, it turns out that none of this drama and fallout can compare to a tragic event that ended up leaving the prince feeling numb for decades. That even was, of course, the shocking death of his mother, Princess Diana. And this even left scars that Harry is still working to mend, all these years later.
Harry’s sudden panic attack
Everybody expected Prince Harry to be deeply shocked and saddened by the death of his mother, Princess Diana, in 1997. After all, Harry was only 12 years old at the time. However, he seemingly recovered just fine as he grew into a young man. Recovered so well, in fact, that he eventually started making headlines for all the wrong reasons as a prince who did everything from wearing a swastika on a Halloween costume to stripping down to his birthday suit at a Las Vegas party.
Last month, however, Harry revealed how keenly the death of Princess Diana affected him for years afterward. In an interview with GQ, the prince admitted, “When I tried therapy, it didn’t take me that long to realize, ‘Wow, I’ve been numb to this.'” This was a revelation to Harry because he, too, thought he had successfully moved on from the death of his mother. Eventually, however, he realized that he simply shut down and refused to process his very complex feelings.
Of course, there were earlier hints that he was still suffering. As reported by Today, Harry opened up in 2017 about how the death of Diana had led to panic attacks. “Every single time I was in any room with loads of people, which is quite often, I was just pouring with sweat, like heart beating,” he said. Unfortunately, this was the first hint that the death of his mother would affect him for years to come.
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Afghanistan was his wake-up call
Eventually, Prince Harry sought professional help in unpacking the trauma caused by his mother’s death. However, he didn’t seek out help right away for a very simple reason: he didn’t realize he was experiencing trauma. Eventually, he was able to identify how he felt, but only after getting an upfront look at another kind of tragedy. As it turns out, Harry didn’t realize what he was experiencing until he went to an active war zone!
Like other men in the Royal Family, Harry served in the British Army. He did so from 2007-2008 and from 2012-2013. This wasn’t a cushy duty; instead, he was deployed to Afghanistan, where he saw the traumas and tragedies of war up close and personal. As reported by Today, Harry said, “Afghanistan was the thing that triggered everything else.” Continuing, he said, “If you lose your mum at the age of 12, then you’ve got to deal with it and the idea that … 15, 17 years later I still hadn’t dealt with it, Afghan was the moment.”
The secret to Harry’s recovery
Unfortunately, Harry’s sudden revelations about his mental health didn’t lead to an immediate improvement. On the Mad World podcast, he admitted that things got worse in 2015-2016, leading him to finally take measures to improve himself. “It was 20 years of not thinking about it, and then two years of total chaos,” he said. How did the prince deal with this issue once he knew it was a problem? At first, he took up boxing, thinking it could be the perfect channel for the pent-up aggression he was feeling.
Eventually, he realized that boxing could only do so much, and he took up therapy. “I know there is huge merit in talking about your issues,” Harry said, “and the only thing about keeping it quiet is that it’s only ever going to make it worse.” As he recently told GQ, therapy helped him realize that he didn’t have to hide his grief from the world. “It gave me permission to grieve and acknowledge the fact that, yeah, losing your mom really sucks. You’re allowed to cry about it,”
Now, Harry still has plenty of issues to deal with, including controversies with his famous family. But he no longer has to feel numb about his mother’s death, and that’s all thanks to therapy.