Meghan Markle’s Concern About Prince Harry’s Mental Health Revealed: Why Doing This One Thing Is ‘Damaging’
Meghan Markle admitted that the public and media scrutiny that she and husband Prince Harry face is overwhelming and hurtful. Though they’ve been taking things day by day and attempting to adopt the “stiff upper lip” method of dealing with the criticisms, she revealed that it’s not healthy for them to bury their emotions.
Can Prince Harry and Markle keep a “stiff upper lip”?
In the ITV documentary, Harry and Meghan: An African Journey, Markle shed some light on the devastating impact of living with constant scrutiny. One way of dealing with it all is to adopt the British “stiff upper lip” and allow all of the criticisms to roll off your back.
Markle admitted she gave that method a try, but it isn’t for her and she advised Prince Harry of the dangers of it as well, fearing the “damaging” way it could impact their mental health.
In discussing how they deal with the all the criticism, Markle admitted: “I’ve said for a long time to H — that’s what I call him — it’s not enough to just survive something, right? That’s not the point of life. You’ve got to thrive.”
She continued: “You’ve got to feel happy and I think I really tried to adopt this British sensibility of a stiff upper lip. I tried, I really tried.”
Burying emotions, however, isn’t advisable, as she noted: “But I think that what that does internally is probably really damaging.”
Markle wasn’t prepared for the media attention
Markle also shared how she dismissed some of her friends’ warnings not to marry Prince Harry, as they feared that she would be targeted by the media.
She noted: “When I first met my now-husband, my friends were really happy because I was so happy but my British friends said to me, ‘I’m sure he’s great but you shouldn’t do it because the British tabloids will destroy your life.’”
She said her response was naive, noting that she told them, “I’m not in tabloids” and admitting, “I didn’t get it. So it’s been, yeah, it’s been complicated.”
She added that she knew being a member of the royal family wouldn’t be “easy,” but she did believe “it would be fair. That’s the part that’s really hard to reconcile. Just take each day as it comes.”
Despite the scrutiny and pressure she endures, Markle counts her blessings, saying, “The good thing is that I’ve got my baby and I’ve got my husband and they’re the best.”
Are Prince Harry and Meghan Markle “buckling” under the pressure?
ITV broadcaster Tom Bradby, who followed the couple on their royal tour of Africa, shared some concerns after spending that time with them. He wrote in The Sunday Times that “it does not take a genius to work out the basic psychology at play. Harry still believes that the press, or at least the game she was forced to engage in with it, killed his mother.”
Bradby added: “He now fears, in the most deep and atavistic way, that history may repeat itself with his wife. As he says: ‘I will always protect my family, and now I have a family to protect.’”
In interviewing Prince Harry, Bradby noted: “I tiptoed gently into the subject of his [Prince Harry’s] mental health, which he has discussed in public in the past, and it was clear from his answer that he is still having to manage the stress and anxiety.”
Bradby further shared that not even halfway through their tour, “I couldn’t help but notice how incredibly tired, even burnt out, [Prince Harry] looked.”
He shared, “as the journey wore on, another human story gradually emerged, of a couple who clearly feel under the most extreme pressure and seem, at times, to be buckling beneath it.”