Yahoo News Prince William says blurred eyesight helped with anxiety during big speeches
Prince William has spoken openly about dealing with the pressures of being in the public eye in his upcoming BBC documentary about football and mental health.
The Duke of Cambridge recalls how he avoided wearing contact lenses before giving big speeches so that the faces in the audience were blurred.
"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," he explains to a grassroots footballer suffering from anxiety.
"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. And actually that really helped with my anxiety."
In the documentary Football, Prince William And Our Mental Health, the 37-year-old royal meets players and fans from grassroots to the elite of the game and openly discusses their mental health challenges.
William also details the resurgence of emotions that overwhelmed him when he became a father, which he had felt when his mother died when he was 15-years-old.
"Having children is the biggest life-changing moment, it really is," he tells former professional footballer Marvin Sordell in the film.
"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 – your emotions come back in leaps and bounds because it's a very different phase of life.
"And there's no one there to, kind of, help you, and I definitely found it very, at times, overwhelming."
Speaking about parenthood, the royal added: "It's one of the most amazing moments of life but it's also one of the scariest."
Prince William, Prince Harry and Kate founded the mental health campaign Heads Together which aims to detach the stigma from mental health.
Football, Prince William And Our Mental Health will air on BBC One on tonight (Thursday, 28 May ) at 8.05pm.
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