Prince Harry: Therapy ‘opened my eyes’ that there’s not ‘only one way to live’
Prince Harry shared that therapy helped him see that he has the power to choose how to live his life after quitting the royal family.
“The moment I started doing therapy, it opened my eyes,” he shared during a fireside chat at the inaugural Masters of Scale Summit on Wednesday. “I was moving through life thinking there was only one way to live. And therapy burst that bubble.”
He continued, “Then when I found my way to coaching, the next bubble burst, and all of a sudden I realized that now I have perspective and a great understanding of my value. I regained confidence that I never thought I had.”
The Duke of Sussex, 38, also reportedly shared that he had never even heard about therapy or coaching while growing up in the royal family or serving in the military.
“Prince Harry says growing up in the royal family & and then spending 10 years in the military, he never heard the words ‘therapy’ or ‘coaching,’” Doron Weber, VP and program director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, tweeted from the event, adding, “Then the blinkers came off and his life changed.”
Harry — the chief impact officer of BetterUp, which offers virtual professional coaching — was joined by BetterUp CEO Alexi Robichaux, who also discussed the importance of coaching.
“At BetterUp, we are trying to make coaching not something you go to, but something that is your go-to. It should be constantly happening, and we are redesigning technology to increase this type of coaching at a global scale,” Robichaux shared.
Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, have always been very open about the importance of mental health.
In 2017, the former royal shared how much his mother Princess Diana’s death affected him.
“I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12, and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years, has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but my work as well,” he told the Telegraph at the time.
“I have probably been very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions when all sorts of grief and sort of lies and misconceptions and everything are coming to you from every angle.”
And Markle revealed in 2021 that she experienced suicidal thoughts after joining the royal family, adding that Buckingham Palace did nothing when she asked for help.
“I just didn’t want to be alive anymore,” the Duchess of Sussex told Oprah Winfrey during her bombshell interview in March of that year, adding, “I can’t be left alone.”
The couple also owns three emotional support dogs, Harry revealed on World Mental Health Day earlier this month.
“I’ll tell you what, we all need a dog that keeps us calm,” Harry shared at the time.
He noted that their dogs “charge around chasing the squirrels” and cause “all sorts of problems to us every single day,” but that they are “emotional support dogs” when they “are behaving.”
