The latest episode of Meghan’s Archetypes series is called The Decoding of Crazy (Picture: PA/REX)
Meghan Markle has spoken out after her and other women were branded ‘crazy and hysterical’ in the past.
In her latest Archetypes podcast, Meghan talked to Indian actress Deepika Padukone, American comedian Jenny Slate and American actress Constance Wu about how women have been labelled in such terms to ‘minimise’ their problems.
Meghan went on to describe how she was made to feel ‘lonely’ and ‘like she didn’t fit in’ at school before she went on to ‘feel so deeply it’s like an Adele album’ but she is unable to show this emotion because she has been conditioned not to show emotion in public.
She started off the episode titled The Decoding of Crazy, by addressing her listeners.
Meghan says: ‘Raise your hand if you’ve ever been called crazy or hysterical or what about nuts? Insane out of your mind, completely irrational, okay? You get the point.’
The Duchess then continues: ‘Now, if we were all in the same room and could see each other, I think it would be pretty easy to see. Just how many of us have our hands up? By the way, me too. And it’s no wonder when you consider just how prevalent these labels are in our culture.’
She then plays a series of quotes, including one from American sitcom How I Met Your Mother in which the character Barney says: ‘If she’s this crazy, she has to be this hot.’ This is followed by the conservative philosopher Jordan Peterson, who says: ‘I don’t think that men can control crazy women’.
The third segment comes from American sitcom Scrubs in which female character Elliott says: ‘I can’t take it, Carla! I cannot hide the crazy a minute longer! I’m just this big mountain of cuckoo about to erupt and spew molten crazy, all over him and he’s gonna die like this.’
Meghan said calling someone ‘crazy’ minimises what they’re feeling (Picture: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)
Archetypes is back up and running following the Queen’s death (Picture: PA)
Meghan said: ‘Calling someone crazy or hysterical completely dismisses their experience and minimises what they’re feeling.
‘It keeps going to the point where anyone who’s been labelled it enough times can be gaslit into thinking that they’re actually unwell or sometimes worse, to the point where real issues of all kinds get ignored. Well that’s not happening today.’
She finished the podcast reading Breathe by Becky Hemsley which was recommended to Meghan by a friend which she has described as her ‘north star’.
The passage features a woman facing contradictory expectations who eventually goes on to find solace in nature.
The Duchess says the ‘stigma surrounding the word’ mad has a ‘silencing effect’ – particularly for those experiencing ‘real mental health issues’.
‘They get scared,’ Meghan says. ‘They stay quiet, they internalize, and they repress for far too long.’
She continued: ‘I feel pretty strongly about this word, this label crazy, the way that it’s thrown around so casually and the damage – it’s rotten (for) society and women, frankly everywhere.’
Meghan opened up about how she felt suicidal during her time in the royal family but she does not reveal in the latest podcast episode who has branded her ‘crazy’.
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The latest Archetypes episode is called The Decoding of Crazy.