Prince Harry went to Canada to get some space. Within days, he says, he was struggling to function.

In his new MasterClass, Redefining Grief: Building Resilience Through Loss, the 42-year-old joined neuroscientist and grief researcher Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor to discuss loss and mental health. He recalled arriving in Canada with Meghan Markle and their infant son, Archie, in late 2019. They wanted time away “just to be able to think.”

“I actually slipped into depression for about two weeks, and I felt like I couldn’t function without adrenaline,” he said.


Adjusting to Life Without Constant Stress

Harry and Meghan spent the end of 2019 in Canada before announcing their decision to step back as senior working royals in January 2020. But being away from the stress Harry was used to brought a feeling he didn’t recognize. He called it an “adrenaline crash.”

“Being in Canada, away from the stressful environment where presumably my body was just pumped full of adrenaline, within two or three days, I experienced this adrenaline crash, something that I’d never experienced before,” he recalled.

“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.”

Learning to Talk About His Grief

Harry also spoke about losing his mother, Princess Diana, in 1997, when he was 12. For years, he kept telling people he was fine. “For 15, 20 years, when I was being asked, ‘Are you okay?’ My response was, ‘I’m fine.’ It was numbness, emotional shutdown,” he recalled.

After returning from his second tour in Afghanistan in 2013, Harry began to recognize that something was wrong. He was having panic attacks on his way to work, and even a tight shirt collar could make him feel like he was suffocating. “And that’s when I realized, ‘Okay, there’s something bigger, there’s something else that you need to look into here.’”

Beneath those panic attacks was a heavy, lingering sense of guilt. Looking back, he realized he had subconsciously blocked himself from finding joy without his mother.

“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,” he said. “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.”

Today, he credits that realization with giving him the energy to finally carry his mother’s legacy forward on his own terms.



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