Years after his mom’s death, Prince Harry reveals he needed counselling

Prince Harry has revealed he sought help through counselling following the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Harry said he wasn’t able to process his grief until his late 20s. It was then that he experienced two years of ‘total chaos’ and decided to seek help.

Opening up about his mental health, he explained that he spent 28 years feeling ‘on the verge of punching someone’ and had anxiety during royal engagements.

Speaking to the newspaper, Harry said, ‘I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12, and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years, has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but my work as well.’

Princess Diana carries Prince Henry (harry) on her shoulders at Highgrove. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images)

He continued, ‘I have probably been very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions when all sorts of grief and all sorts of lies and misconceptions and everything are coming to you from every angle.’ Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash in Paris in August 1997.

Explaining that he chose to stick his ‘head in the sand’, Harry added that he refused to think about his mum for years as it would only make him sad and it was ‘not going to bring her back.’

Prince William and Prince Harry stand outside Westminster Abbey at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales on September 6, 1997 in London, England. (Photo by Anwar Hussein)

As he grew older, his unprocessed grief began to filter into his life and, with the support of his brother the Duke of Cambridge, he decided to seek help.

‘[I…] started to have a few conversations and actually all of a sudden, all of this grief that I have never processed started to come to the forefront and I was like, there is actually a lot of stuff here that I need to deal with,’ he said.

It was then that Prince William sat him down and said, ‘Look, you really need to deal with this. It is not normal to think that nothing has affected you.’ As well as counselling, Harry said boxing ‘saved’ him as it gave him a medium to let out aggression.

Harry has since launched Heads Together, a charity focused on promoting good mental well-being and shunning stigma around mental health issues. The charity was set up alongside his brother Prince William and his sister-in-law the Duchess of Cambridge.

Prince Harry talks with Iwan Thomas (L) as he joins a Team Heads Together London Marathon Training Day at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park on February 5, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images)

He finished, ‘What we are trying to do is normalise the conversation to the point where anyone can sit down and have a coffee and just go “you know what, I’ve had a really s— day, can I just tell about it?” Because then you walk away and it’s done.’

For more information on Heads Together, visit the charity’s website here.

From: Good Housekeeping UK

PHOTOS: Getty Images