Prince Harry “felt disloyal and guilty of being happy” without his mother

O grief is a particularly delicate subject for Prince Harry, who in a young age was marked by the death of his mother, Princess Diana, in 1997. At the time the Duke of Sussex was only 12. 

Harry, now 42 years old, participated in a new MasterClass that explored precisely mourning, having confessed that he felt “loyal and guilty of being happy” without his mother.

For years, he remembers, he felt an “emotional block”, but that allowed him to enter a “state of adrenaline”. And he referred to this capacity as a “super power” that helped him stand out in the armed forces. That was actually the “perfect distraction” to not have to face mourning.

“ As soon as I realized where the superpower came from and what was the connection to it, my fear was: if I healed myself from it, if I went looking for the solution, would I lose it? Would he lose his superpower? Would that mean losing the connection with my mother?”, shared, as People quotes.

“ I spent so much emotionally numb time, largely because I felt disloyal and guilty of the possibility of being happy and cheerful without her. He felt that he had to be sad and that he had to be emotionally numb to prove that he missed him”, he confessed.

The big change came when he realized his mother would like him to be happy. “It set me free and gave me a totally different perspective on life. The key to all this is knowing yourself and knowing how the nervous system and the whole body react to certain situations. So now I can recognize when I have an adrenaline rush and I also know what does not require adrenaline.”

And when he's in a state of excitement, he says, what helps him calm down is his breathing exercises. “It is still a work in progress, certainly because, often, the shallow breathing, the feeling of tightness in the chest and all these things continue to cause me great disturbance.”

“ And I think once again, my nervous system is easily activated by having spent 15, 16, 20 years in a state of hypervigilance and reactive. But if I can find the time and place to take a moment just to breathe and reconnect, this, for me, is a big difference”, he added.

Still at MasterClass, Harry also spoke of the moment he was able to mourn his mother's death. “The day of the funeral itself came and, surrounded only by the family, away from the crying eyes, away from the chambers and, I suppose, from the expectations and perhaps from the trials and fixed looks of the world, I could not stop myself and ended up crying. And I remember thinking or feeling that it was really good to cry.”

“ Years later, I was looking for evidence for the funeral. I didn't want to believe that. I didn't believe she left. I thought she'd be back at some point. I believe that she had created this way out to escape all the things that were destroying her life and that she would return to the fight in disguise and then take me and my brother away,” she said.

“ That protective belief lasted a decade. The mechanism of defense of mind and body consisted of blocking emotions and memories. Not just the bad memories, but the good ones. I forgot my mother's voice. I forgot your laugh. I couldn’t really visualize what she looked like without looking at a picture of her,” she later shared. 

Even found joy in solidarity work, as well as family, wife Meghan Markle, and two sons of both, seven-year-old Prince Archie, and five-year-old Princess Lilibet, Harry always needs a balance. 

“ The most important factor for me is the energy, joy and happiness I feel in being with my family, especially with our children, and the joy and happiness I feel in being on the ground doing my job. And the key to finding a balance between joy and happiness is not to stay more than 10 days away from my wife and my children. It is about balancing my work and the purpose behind it, as well as being a father and husband, and seeing how these various identities unite”, he explained.