After nearly 20 years of “not thinking” about the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, Prince Harry has admitted that he underwent counseling.

When Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed in a car accident when Harry was 12, he said it took him until his late 20s to process the pain after two years of “total chaos.”

The then 32-year-old royal disclosed in a remarkable, frank interview that he buried his feelings for 20 years after his mother died before seeking support.

“My way of dealing with it was sticking my head in the sand, refusing to ever think about my mum, because why would that help? It’s only going to make you sad. It’s not going to bring her back,” he said.

“[I thought] it’s only going to make you sad, it’s not going to bring her back. So from an emotional side, I was like ‘right, don’t ever let your emotions be part of anything’. So I was a typical 20, 25, 28-year-old running around going ‘life is great’, or ‘life is fine’ and that was exactly it.

“And then [I] started to have a few conversations and actually all of a sudden, all of this grief that I have never processed started to come to the forefront and I was like, there is actually a lot of stuff here that I need to deal with.”

Harry even said that boxing had “saved” him by allowing him to express his rage.

“I, through a lot of my 20s, was a problem, and I didn’t know how to deal with it,” Harry said. He admitted that he was frustrated as well, especially during social engagements where he had to maintain his composure.

“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,” he said.

Though Prince Harry has spoken about depression and assisted mental health organisations in the past, he is wary of media coverage and seldom speaks publicly of his personal experience.

According to the Telegraph, Prince Harry wanted to speak about his experience in the hopes of breaking the stigma around mental health problems.

After his brother, the Duke of Cambridge, advised him, “Look, you really need to deal with this. It is not normal to think that nothing has affected you,” the prince sought assistance.

Harry is now in a “good place.” Together with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, he  also launched the Heads Together initiative, which helps those who are dealing with their mental health to speak to somebody about it rather than holding it all inside. It’s a project that’s near to the royal’s heart, particularly because he’s been involved in it before.

On August 31, 1997, Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, as well as their French driver Henri Paul, were killed in an automobile accident in a Paris underpass while attempting to outrun pursuing photographers.

Her death sparked a worldwide outpouring of sorrow, with Prince Harry walking behind her coffin at a funeral that was televised live across the globe.