How Meghan Markle made Prince Harry start therapy

Prince Harry opens up about the events that led to him seeking therapy for the first time in his new Apple TV+ docuseries The Me You Can't See (which he co-created with Oprah Winfrey).

Harry talks about how therapy was never discussed in his family. His inner circle, on the other hand, had noticed a shift in his demeanor.

“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 recalls in the second episode. He tells how his late 20s, specifically between the ages of 28 and 30, were a “nightmare” for him “Due to royal duties, this was a period of anxiety and exhaustion.

Harry described how he used drugs and alcohol to numb his pain, not realising what he was doing at the time, and how when people close to him told him he needed help, he would say he didn't.

Meghan Markle, his wife, aided him in seeing the benefits of therapy. “It was meeting and being with Meghan,” he says, per 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.”

“There was a lot of learning right at the beginning of our relationship,” he continues. “She was shocked to be coming backstage of the institution of the British royal family. When she said, ‘I think you need to see someone,' that was in reaction to an argument we had. And in that argument, not knowing about it, I reverted back to 12-year-old Harry.”

“The moment I started therapy and probably within my second session, my therapist turned around to me, and said, ‘That sounds like you are reverting to 12-year-old Harry.' I felt somewhat ashamed and defensive. She said, ‘I'm not calling you a child. I'm expressing sympathy and empathy for you for what happened to you when you were a child. You never processed it. You were never allowed to talk about it. And all of a sudden now, it's coming up in different ways as projection.'

“That was the start of a learning journey for me. 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.”