Prince Harry shares the feeling that kept him from healing for years

Prince Harry says he felt “disloyal and guilty” about being happy after the death of his mother, Princess Diana.

The Duke of Sussex, 42, spoke about his grief on a new MasterClass, where he revealed he spent years emotionally numb because he felt he had to be sad to prove to Diana that he missed 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,” he said. Realizing she would want him to be happy was a “huge mental shift.” “It freed me,” he said.

After Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris in 1997, Prince Harry says he stayed numb for years, which let him focus on the “task at hand.” He called this a “superpower” that helped him in the military, but also a “perfect distraction” from grief. Once he understood it, he feared that healing might mean losing that power, and his connection to his mom.

Prince Harry said he first cried at her burial, away from the cameras. He also said he did not believe she was gone. For about a decade, he believed she had created an exit from the things destroying her life and would return to take him and his brother away. During that time, he said, he shut down his memories. “I forgot what my mom sounded like. I forgot her laugh.”

Today, he said, he can tell when he is having an adrenaline surge. Breathing exercises help him calm down. He said it is still a work in progress, and that his nervous system is “easily triggered.”

He finds joy in his charity work and in his family, his wife, Meghan Markle, and their children, Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, though he said that also takes balance.

The episode comes out ahead of World Mental Health Day on October 10. It benefits two bereavement charities, Comfort Zone Camp and Scotty’s Little Soldiers.