5 Heartbreaking Revelations Prince Harry Just Shared About Diana and Life After the UK in New Masterclass

In Redefining Grief: Building Resilience Through Loss, a new MasterClass, Prince Harry joins neuroscientist and grief expert Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor for an intimate and emotional discussion about loss, trauma, and the impact of grief. During the class, Harry opened up about losing his mother, Princess Diana, and the way he dealt with her death as a child. “I didn’t cry when I was told my mom died, only at her burial, and then not again for nearly two decades,” he said. “I was convinced that was strength, but it wasn’t. It was a 12-year-old boy with no permission to fall apart and no roadmap for how to heal.”

For years, Harry struggled with the idea that finding happiness after Diana’s death meant leaving her behind. He felt that staying emotionally closed off was a way of showing that he still missed his mother. “I’d spent so long emotionally numb, to a large extent, because I felt disloyal and guilty for the possibility of being happy and joyful without her,” he shared. “I felt like I had to be sad and I had to be emotionally numb in order to prove to her that I missed her.”

However, over time Harry came to see his grief differently. He realized that holding onto his sadness was not what Diana would have wanted for him. The Duke shared, “But the reality is, what I discovered was actually that she just wanted me to be happy. And that was a huge mental shift for me. It freed me, and it gave me a whole different outlook on life.”

Earlier in the class, Harry revealed that he barely cried after Diana’s death. He now believes that shutting down his emotions helped him avoid the pain, but it also meant losing access to some of his happiest memories of his mother. “The defense mechanism for the mind and the body was shut down the emotions and shut down the memories,” he says. “Not just the bad memories, the good memories as well. I forgot what my mom sounded like. I forgot her laugh. I couldn’t really visualize what she looked like without looking at a photograph of her.”

Harry says it took him years to understand how deeply that emotional shutdown had affected him. A therapist later suggested using Diana’s perfume to help him reconnect with memories he had buried.

One of the biggest revelations Harry made was that he experienced a depressive episode after moving to Canada with Meghan Markle and Archie. The change came after years of living under intense pressure, and he said the sudden absence of that stress affected him more than he expected. He explained that his body had become accustomed to running on adrenaline, particularly after years of high-pressure experiences including his military service. He said, “It was as if I needed stress in order to get the adrenaline to make my brain function because I became useless around the house. I actually slipped into depression for about two weeks and I felt like I couldn’t function without adrenaline.”

Harry also opened up about the intense anxiety he experienced during royal engagements, saying the pressure could begin before he even arrived at an event. He recalled having panic attacks in the car and feeling increasingly self-conscious about how he appeared in front of the public. “The biggest anxiety that was created for me was the fear of sweating,” he said. “It was the fear of people seeing me looking disheveled and me not being able to explain to them in one short sentence what’s actually going on.”

Harry says his connection to Diana’s memory looks very different today than it did during his childhood. After her death, he deliberately avoided thinking about her because he felt that revisiting the loss would only bring back the pain without changing what had happened. Now, however, he says Diana is often on his mind, particularly in the mornings and at night.

He also keeps a framed photograph of his mother nearby, saying the image makes him feel especially close to her. “I can actually get eye contact from her, and there’s a cheekiness in her smile,” Harry said as he showed O’Connor the framed photo. “The eyes — I just feel very connected to her. And I do; I find myself looking at her and wondering what she is thinking about what I am doing right now.”