*Prince Harry opens up about his experience with the media as a senior member of the British royal family in the new Apple TV+ series “The Me You Can’t See.”
The Duke of Sussex says he and his wife, Meghan Markle, were constantly being attacked and harassed by the U.K. press, and when he went to his family for help dealing with the stress of it all, his pleas were “met with total silence.”
“Within the first eight days of our relationship being made public, was when they said, ‘Harry’s girl almost straight out of Compton,’ and that her exotic DNA will be thickening the royal blood,” he said is the series, as reported by Complex. “We get followed, photographed, chased, harassed. Picking up cameras and flashes of cameras, makes my blood boil, and makes me angry takes me back to what happened to my mum, I experienced when I was a kid,” the London native shared. “But it went through a whole new depth, not just with traditional media, but also social media platforms as well. I felt completely helpless. I thought my family would help, but every single ask, request, warning, whatever it is, just got met with total silence or total neglect.”
READ MORE: Prince Harry Admits He Turned to Drugs, Alcohol to Cope with Mother’s Passing / WATCH
Harry, who co-executive produced “The Me You Can’t See” with Oprah Winfrey, also recalls the night Meghan revealed she was having suicidal thoughts.
“To be honest with you, like a lot of other people my age could probably relate to, I know that I’m not going to get from my family what I need,” Harry continued. “Then I had a son, who I would far rather be solely focused on, rather than every time I look in his eyes wondering whether my wife is going to end up like my mother and I’m going to have to look after him myself. That was one of the biggest reasons to leave, feeling trapped, and feeling controlled through fear. Both by the media and by the system itself, which never encouraged the talking about this kind of trauma. Certainly, now I will never be bullied into silence.”
Harry said when he first met Meghan, she inspired him to pursue therapy.
“It was meeting and being with Meghan, 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,” he said.
#TheMeYouCantSee, co-created by @Oprah & Prince Harry, premieres today on @AppleTV+. The series takes a look at mental health told by real people who struggle with their emotional wellbeing.@GayleKing spoke with Oprah about the project and partnering with Prince Harry. pic.twitter.com/53QxuPD3lu
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) May 21, 2021
“There was a lot of learning right at the beginning of our relationship. She was shocked to be coming backstage of the institution of the British royal family,” he added. “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.”
“I quickly established that if this relationship was going to work, that I was going to have to deal with my past because there was anger there and it wasn’t anger at her. It was just anger and she recognized it. She saw it,” Harry shares in the third episode. “So how do I fix this? And it was a case of you need to go back to the past, go back to the point of trauma, deal with it, process it and then move forward.”
Harry said he and his wife “chose to put our mental health first.”
“That’s what we’re doing. And that’s what we will continue to do,” he continued.
“The Me You Can’t See” is now streaming on Apple TV+.
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