Prince Harry is getting honest about his mental health and revealing never-before heard stories about being a member of the royal family.
The Duke of Sussex joined Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast where he admitted that even in his 20s’ he had reservations about working as a senior member of the royal family and wanted to quit.
“Obviously in my early 20’s, I was a case of, I don’t want to do this job, I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be doing this, look what it did to my mom. How am I ever going to settle down and have a wife and family when I know it’s going to happen again,” Prince Harry said.
“I’ve seen behind the curtain, I’ve seen the business model, I know how this operation runs and how it works. I don’t want to be part of this,” he continued.
But after getting professional help to work through his feelings, he admits that he had an epiphany.
“When I started doing therapy, suddenly there was like this bubble that burst, I plucked my head out of the sand and gave a good shake off and I was like, ‘Ok, you’re in the position of privilege, stop complaining or stop thinking that you want something different and make this different because you cannot get out,” he explained.
“How are you going to do this differently? How are you going to make your mom proud? How are you going to use this platform to really affect change and give people the confidence to affect their own lives?’”
Even though Prince Harry moved forward with being a senior member of the royal family, he admits that he felt helpless throughout various points of his life.
“Helplessness, that’s my biggest, sort of, Achilles heel. The three major times I felt the most helplessness is one, when I was a kid with my mom in the back of the car being chased by paparazzi, two, was in Afghanistan in an apache helicopter and then the third one was with my wife,” Prince Harry said.
“Those are the moments in my life where feeling helpless hurts, it really hurts and that’s when you’re like, s*it, I got the privilege, I got the platform and even I can’t fix this. I can’t change this and when you get in your head about it, that’s when it start taking a toll,” he said.
When Dax Shepherd asked if the royal could ever accompany Meghan Markle on any errands, Prince Harry shared a surprising story about the couple meeting in a London supermarket during her first trip to visit him while he was living in Kensington Palace.
“The beauty of it is that the first time Meghan and I met up for her to come stay with me, we met in a supermarket in London and pretended we didn’t know each other and we’re texting each other from the other side. People were looking at me and giving me all these weird looks and I’m texting her, asking her if this is the right one and she’s like ‘No, you want parchment paper,’ he laughs as he recalled the sweet story.
Prince Harry continued, “It was nice, I had a baseball cap on and I was looking at the floor, I don’t know how many times you’ve done that when you’re walking down the street and trying to stay incognito.”
But now that the couple have relocated to California and stepped away from being senior members of the royal family, Prince Harry says that his entire life has changed for the better. The couple live in their Montecito home with 2-year-old son Archie and are expecting a baby girl this summer.
“Living here now, I can actually lift my head, I feel different. My shoulders have dropped so are hers. I can take Archie on the back of my bicycle, now that I said that, they’re probably going to be. I never had the chance to do that,” he said.
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