Prince Harry has claimed that travelling to London is a “trigger” for his anxiety and revealed that he was “afraid” to return to Britain for his grandfather Prince Philip’s funeral.
The woke royal, who stood back from official duties last year and now lives with wife Meghan Markle in the exclusive Santa Barbara area of Montecito in California, made the former statement during the Apple TV mental health documentary The Me You Can’t See, a series on which he worked with Oprah Winfrey.
Harry said in comments reported by the Daily Mail: “For most of my life I’ve always felt worried, concerned, a little bit tense and uptight whenever I fly back into the UK, whenever I fly back into London.
“And I could never understand why. I was aware of it, I wasn’t aware of it at the time when I was younger, but after I started doing therapy stuff I became aware of it.
“I was like, why do I feel so uncomfortable? And of course for me London is a trigger, unfortunately, because of what happened to my mum, and because of what I experienced and what I saw.”
He was then filmed having a therapy session, demonstrating the eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EDMR) technique he utilises to treat the travel-related anxiety attacks. During the EDMR, Prince Harry closed his eyes, crossed his arms, and tapped his shoulders while psychotherapist Sanja Oakley prompted him, via video link, to focus on the “negative thoughts”.
Harry told Ms Oakley: “Happens every time. I can’t remember the first time it happened, I can just remember the feeling, anxiety, like a hollow empty feeling almost of nervousness, is it fear? Everything feels tense.
“It’s being the hunted, and being helpless and knowing that you can’t do anything about it. There is no escape. There is no way out of this.”
During a joint interview with Winfrey to promote The Me You Can’t See, Prince Harry told the Associated Press that he was “afraid” to return to the United Kingdom for his Second World War veteran grandfather’s funeral earlier this month.
Asked by the AP whether Harry was able to “work through those feelings” in his recent trip, the prince said: “I was worried about it. I was afraid about it. But then going through the motions and being able to lean on the toolbox and lean on the learnings that I’ve grown from over the past. It definitely made it a lot easier.
“But the heart still pounds. That’s a trigger.”
The AP also reported that in the series it was revealed that Harry first went to therapy after being prompted by his then-girlfriend Meghan Markle, following the couple having had an argument and the Duchess of Sussex claiming his anger seemed misplaced.
Prince Harry had similarly told Dax Shepard last week on the Armchair Experts podcast how his wife had encouraged him to seek mental help, saying: “It was a conversation I had with my now wife.
“She saw it straight away, she could tell that I was hurting and that some of the stuff that was out of my control was making me really angry – it would make my blood boil.”
The Me You Can’t See is not Harry’s first collaboration with Winfrey, having been interviewed by the American talk show host in March, where he and his wife alleged a member of the Royal Family was racist and the family failed to give Meghan mental health support — claims that reportedly continued to cause a rift with his relatives including during Prince Philip’s funeral.