“Having now done therapy for four and a bit years, five years, for me it is all about prevention,” Harry said in the new mental health series “The Me You Can’t See”.
The Duke of Sussex gave viewers a glimpse of what EMDR treatment entails.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is “a structured therapy that encourages the patient to briefly focus on the trauma memory while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation (typically eye movements), which is associated with a reduction in the vividness and emotion associated with the trauma memories” as per the American Psychological Association.
In the third episode, Harry undergoes EMDR treatment, explaining that he gets “uptight” each time he returns to London.
“For me, London is a trigger because of my mom. It happens every time,” he added, describing the feeling that overcomes him as “being hunted, knowing that you are helpless.
That “feeling of the past is so deeply connected to the present,” Harry said during treatment. “It all comes back, the trauma is very much geographical.”
Speaking about EMDR, Harry said the therapy process is like “cleaning my hard drive,” adding that he now has “calmness” when thinking of flying to the United Kingdom.
“For me, therapy has equipped me to be able to take on everything. That is why I am here now, that is why my wife is here now. That feeling of being trapped in the family — there was no option to leave — eventually, when I made that decision for my family I was still told, ‘You can’t do this.’ I was like, ‘How bad do things have to get until I am allowed to do this?'”
Harry also opened up about wife Meghan Markle’s previous admission of experiencing suicidal thoughts. “She was going to end her life,” Harry said. “It shouldn’t have to get to that.”
Harry does have some “regrets,” including “not making more of a stance earlier on in the relationship with my wife and calling out the racism when I did.”
“History was repeating itself,” Prince Harry told the camera. “My mother was chased to her death or she was in a relationship with someone who wasn’t white. Now, look what has happened. Want to talk about history repeating itself? They aren’t going to stop until she dies.”
Continued Harry: “It is incredibly trigging to potentially lose another woman in my life.”
RELATED: Prince Harry Recalls Mental Health Worries Being ‘Squashed’ When He Was Younger
Expanding on the same thoughts he told Dax Shepard on his “Armchair Expert” podcast about changing the way he was parented by Prince Charles, Harry recalled his dad telling both him and Prince William, “It was like that for me so it will be like that for you.”
Harry once again said that just because that was the way it was done, doesn’t mean it is the way it should continue to be done. In fact, he’s adamant about parenting son Archie and his unborn daughter in a very different way than he was brought up.
“We chose to put our mental health first and that is what we will continue to do,” he declared.
Once again addressing Meghan’s own battle with mental health, Prince Harry said that she didn’t commit suicide because it would “unfair” to him.
“The thing that stopped her from seeing it through was how unfair it would be on me after everything that had happened to my mom and to now be put in a position of losing another woman in my life, with a baby inside of her, our baby,” he said. “The scariest thing for her was her clarity of thought. She hadn’t ‘lost it.’ She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t self-medicating, be it through pills or through alcohol. She was absolutely sober. She was completely sane. Yet in the quiet of night, these thoughts woke her up.”
Right before the two were to attend an event at Royal Albert Hall, Meghan told Harry she was contemplating suicide.
He said, “I’m somewhat ashamed of the way that I dealt with it. And of course, because of the system that we were in and the responsibilities and the duties that we had, we had a quick cuddle, and then we had to get changed and had to jump in a convoy with a police escort and drive to the Royal Albert Hall for a charity event and then step out into a wall of cameras and pretend as though everything’s okay.”
Harry said they couldn’t just say they didn’t want to do “because just imagine the stories that come from that.”
“While my wife and I were in those chairs, gripping each other’s hand, the moment the lights go down, Meghan starts crying. I’m feeling sorry for her, but I’m also really angry with myself that we’re stuck in this situation,” he continued. “I was ashamed that it got this bad. I was ashamed to go to my family. Because to be honest with you, like a lot of other people my age could probably relate to, I know that I’m not gonna get from my family what I need.”
Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey’s new series “The Me You Can’t Series” debuts on Apple TV+ on May 21.
