[imagesource: Russell Boyce / Reuters]

The trailer for The Me You Can’t See, released last Friday, hinted at the trauma that Prince Harry had experienced after his mother, Princess Diana’s, death.

Now more has been revealed about how Harry coped with the loss, in two short clips from the series that he co-created with Oprah Winfrey.

Per The Guardian, Harry was 12 when Diana, Princess of Wales, died in August 1997 in a car crash while being pursued by the press in Paris.

In The Me You Can’t See, which focuses on mental health, the Duke tells Winfrey that being left alone to handle the trauma of his mother’s death caused him to turn to drugs and alcohol to dull the pain.

From the ages of 28 to 32, Harry says he suffered anxiety and severe panic attacks and “was just all over the place mentally”:

Harry also says that his family neglected to guide him through the mental distress that comes from such a traumatic event:

“My father used to say to me when I was younger, he used to say to both William and I: ‘Well it was like that for me so it’s going to be like that for you’,” he said.

“That doesn’t make sense. Just because you suffered doesn’t mean that your kids have to suffer, in fact quite the opposite – if you suffered, do everything you can to make sure that whatever negative experiences you had, that you can make it right for your kids,” he said.

This is exactly why he broke away from the Royal Family and moved to America to “break the cycle” of “genetic pain and suffering”.

The Duke also mentioned that he was “worried” about going back to London for his grandfather’s funeral:

In The Me You Can’t See, Harry also addresses the harassment on social media that he and Meghan faced, without any support from his family:

“We spent four years trying to make it work. We did everything that we possibly could to stay there and carry on doing the role and doing the job.”

He didn’t tell his family when Meghan was “feeling suicidal” because he suspected that they wouldn’t have helped anyway:

“That was one of the biggest reasons to leave, feeling trapped and feeling controlled through fear, both by the media and by the system itself which never encouraged the talking about this kind of trauma,” he said.

Well, good for you Harry, it’s all out now.

[source:guardian]