5 Eye-Opening Things Prince Harry Has Said About the Benefits of Therapy
Prince Harry has been candid about how he feels going to therapy changed his life and might have saved his marriage to Meghan Markle. At first, he had a bit of hesitance about accepting the help of a therapist, but now he’s an advocate for seeking counseling or coaching of some sort to improve one’s mental health.
To help celebrate Harry’s journey from reservation to acceptance, we’ve gathered five of the most eye-opening things he’s said about the benefits of therapy in his life.
Going to therapy opened Prince Harry’s eyes and ‘burst that bubble’ of royal thinking
Prince Harry said his life before therapy differed significantly from life with a therapist, and he’s glad he found help, despite the royal drama. “The moment I started doing therapy, it opened my eyes,” he shared during a chat at the inaugural Masters of Scale Summit (per Page Six). “I was moving through life thinking there was only one way to live. And therapy burst that bubble.”
“Then, when I found my way to coaching, the next bubble burst,” he added. “… I [suddenly] realized that now I have perspective and a great understanding of my value. I regained confidence that I never thought I had.”
Prince Harry said going to therapy saved his relationship with Meghan Markle
Prince Harry credited Meghan as his reason for eventually seeking help from a therapist. Initially, he became defensive when she suggested he could sort through some of his grief about Princess Diana’s death through counseling. But he eventually realized she was right.
“It was meeting and being with Meghan,” he said in his documentary series, The Me You Can’t See (via People). “I knew that if I didn’t do therapy and fix myself, that I was going to lose this woman who I could see spending the rest of my life with.”
Prince Harry said being in the royal family was like ‘living in a bubble’ without a mindset of his own
Prince Harry said royal duties caused a “nightmare” period of anxiety and exhaustion in his late twenties (per The Me You Can’t See /People). He said, “It was only when a couple of people close to me started to say, ‘This isn’t normal behavior, perhaps you should look into this, or perhaps you should go and seek help.'”
“Now immediately, I was like, I don’t need help,” he added. However, he also said that it was “the start of a learning journey,” sharing, “I became aware that I’d been living in a bubble, within this family, within this institution, I was sort of almost trapped in a thought process or a mindset.”
Prince Harry wished Prince William ‘would be able to feel the same benefits’ of therapy
While speaking to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Prince Harry said he wishes Prince William had the same relationship with therapy as him (per Fox 28). “As two brothers, if one of you goes through that experience and the other one doesn’t, it naturally creates a further divide between you. Which is really sad.”
“… As much as William was the first person to even suggest therapy, I just wish that he would be able to feel the same benefits of that as opposed to believing what he doesn’t need to,” he went on. Notably, he once claimed his brother teased him about his anxiety.
Prince Harry worried therapy would distance him from Princess Diana
During a live stream to promote his memoir, Spare, Prince Harry revealed he worried going to therapy might sever his last ties to Princess Diana by working through unresolved childhood issues.
“One of the things I was most scared about was losing the feeling that I had of my mom. I thought that if I went to therapy that it would cure me and that I would lose whatever I had left, whatever … I had managed to hold onto of my mother. And it turns out it wasn’t the case, I didn’t lose that,” he told Dr. Gabor Maté (per Us Weekly). He added it was “the opposite.”
“I turned what I thought was supposed to be sadness, to try to prove to her that I missed her, into realizing that actually, she really just wanted me to be happy,” he explained. “And that was a huge weight off my chest.”
After all that, it sounds like therapy has a fixed place in Harry’s life.
