How Prince Harry Says an Argument With Meghan Markle Made Him Start Therapy

In his new Apple TV+ docuseries series, The Me You Can’t See (which he made with Oprah Winfrey), Prince Harry opens up about the events that led to him seeking therapy for the first time. 

In the show, per People, the Duke of Sussex talks about how therapy wasn’t something widely discussed in his family, but in the years following the death of his mother, Princess Diana, people noticed a change in him. 

“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,’” Prince Harry says in The Me You Can’t See. “Now, immediately, I was like, ‘I don’t need help.’”

His wife, Meghan Markle, helped him see the potential 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.” 

He continues in the doc, “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. 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.”

Prince Harry says the concept of him reverting back to his 12-year-old self is something he covered in therapy. “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,’” he reveals in the doc. “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.’” 

For Prince Harry, this was “the start of a learning journey.” “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,” he says. 

From therapy, he says he “quickly established that if this relationship [with Markle] 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 [Markle]. It was just anger and she recognized it.”

The Me You Can’t See is now streaming on Apple TV+.