Prince Harry has opened up about a difficult period after stepping away from royal life, saying he fell into depression shortly after moving to Canada with Meghan Markle and their son.
The Duke of Sussex, 42, discussed the experience in a new MasterClass session centered on grief, resilience and the lasting impact of losing his mother, Princess Diana.
Harry said years of royal duties, unresolved grief and constant stress had left him operating almost entirely on adrenaline.
“You would think I had the best help in the world. I’m a prince, for God’s sake, but I was still grieving and didn’t have any place to put those feelings,” he said.
He said those emotions had been building for “15 or 20 years.”
According to Harry, the dramatic change came after he and Meghan left Britain and moved to Canada in search of distance from royal pressures.
“We moved to Canada to get some space away from everything and simply think,” he said.
But instead of immediately feeling better, Harry said the sudden drop in stress caused what he described as an “adrenaline crash.”
“Within two or three days of leaving that stressful environment, I experienced an adrenaline crash unlike anything I’d ever felt before,” he said.
Harry said he had become so accustomed to functioning under pressure that he struggled without it.
“It was as though I needed stress for my brain to function,” he said.
“I became useless around the house. I slipped into depression for about two weeks and felt like I couldn’t function without adrenaline.”
Harry said he now believes much of his earlier life had been shaped by emotional shutdown.
He tied those struggles back to the death of Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 when Harry was 12.
Harry said he barely cried after losing his mother.
“I didn’t cry when I was told my mum died, only at her burial, and then not again for nearly two decades,” he said.
At the time, Harry said he believed suppressing those emotions was a sign of strength.
He now sees it differently.
“I was convinced that was strength, but it wasn’t,” he said. “It was a 12-year-old boy with no permission to fall apart and no roadmap for how to heal.”
Harry said guilt also played a major role in keeping him emotionally numb.
He said he felt that being happy without Diana somehow meant betraying her memory.
“I’d spent so long emotionally numb because I felt disloyal and guilty at the possibility of being happy without her,” he said. “I felt I had to stay sad and emotionally shut down to prove I missed her.”
Therapy eventually helped Harry confront those feelings.
He recalled one therapist encouraging him to use his mother’s perfume as a way to reconnect with memories he feared had disappeared.
“It was like being transported to another time,” Harry said.
He said the scent brought back emotions and experiences that had been buried for years, per Trending Politics.
“Spraying my mother’s scent was almost like knocking certain bricks through so that I could see through and certain memories and experiences could start seeping back,” he said.
Harry said therapy also changed the way he viewed his mother’s wishes for him.
“The reality is that what I discovered was that she just wanted me to be happy,” he said.
“That was a huge mental shift for me.”
Harry also reflected on his military career, saying it became another outlet for the adrenaline and emotional avoidance that had shaped his life.
“For 15 or 20 years, when people asked, ‘Are you okay?’ my answer was always, ‘I’m fine,’” he said. “It was numbness. It was emotional shutdown.”
Harry said that mindset helped drive him toward military service at age 20.
“Without realising it, adrenaline was driving me,” he said. “It was the force that led me to join the military at 20. It was the perfect distraction.”
His deployment to Afghanistan, however, brought other buried trauma to the surface.
“The things I saw and experienced appeared to trigger other traumas that had been stored within me,” Harry said.
Today, he says his family provides the strongest source of stability in his life.
“The biggest factor for me is the energy, joy and happiness I get from being with my family, especially our children, and from being on the ground doing my work,” he said.
Harry said he tries not to spend more than 10 days away from Meghan and their children.
“It’s about balancing my work and sense of purpose with being a dad and a husband,” he said.
The prince also credited therapy with giving him a place where he could speak openly.
“Sitting in a room with a complete stranger and having the confidence and trust to open myself up,” he said, describing what the process gave him.
Harry has since become a vocal supporter of mental health treatment, including psychedelic-assisted therapy.
He said he believes combining traditional therapy with newer treatments can help people break through emotional barriers.
“Psychedelic assisted therapy is no longer a fringe idea or thought,” Harry said. “It’s really becoming, I think, mainstream.”
The MasterClass session, released ahead of World Mental Health Day, offers one of Harry’s most personal accounts yet of the grief, depression and emotional numbness he says followed him for years after Diana’s death and surfaced fully after his exit from royal life.
