Even future Kings suffer from stage fright! Thankfully, Prince William , 37, has a trick for calming his anxiety these days...and it’s come with age. “My eyesight started to tail off a little bit as I got older, and I didn’t used to wear contacts when I was working, so when I gave speeches I couldn’t see anyone’s face,” the Duke of Cambridge said (via HELLO!) during the new BBC documentary Football, Prince William and Our Mental Health. “And it helps, because it’s just a blur of faces and because you can’t see anyone looking at you - I can see enough to read the paper and stuff like that - but I couldn’t actually see the whole room.” He added, “And actually that really helped with my anxiety.”
© WireImageKate Middleton ’s husband was followed for the past year for the BBC documentary as he traveled promoting his Heads Up initiative, which aims to raise awareness about mental health and encourage soccer supporters to speak about their problems or support a fellow fan. During the documentary, William candidly opened up about parenthood and how having children brought back emotions of his mother Princess Diana ’s death.
“Having children is the biggest life changing moment, it really is…I think when you’ve been through something traumatic in life, and that is like you say, your Dad not being around, my mother dying when I was younger, the emotions come back, in leaps and bounds. It’s a different phase of life and there is no one there to kind of help you. I definitely found it very, at times, overwhelming,” the Duke told former soccer player Marvin Sordell.
William also revealed how he and wife Kate “support each other.” “We go through those moments together and we kind of evolve and learn together,” the dad of three said. “I think that emotionally things come out of the blue that you don’t ever expect or that maybe you think you’ve dealt with. So I can completely relate to what you’re saying about children coming along, it’s one of the most amazing moments of life but it’s also one of the scariest.”
