The Duchess opened up on her latest episode of the Archetypes podcast in which she detailed a number of insults that have been thrown her way.
Meghan spoke to them in depth about how she and other women have been called “crazy and hysterical” in order to “minimize” their problems.
She told listeners: “Raise your hand if you’ve ever been called crazy or hysterical, or what about nuts? Insane, out of your mind, completely irrational, OK? You get the point.
“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.”
Meghan continued: “Calling someone crazy or hysterical completely dismisses their experience and minimizes what they’re feeling.
“It keeps going to the point where anyone who’s been labelled it enough times can be gaslight 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.
“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.
“From relationships to families being shattered, the reputations destroyed and careers ruined. The stigma surrounding the word, it also has this silencing effect,” Meghan noted.
“This effect, women experiencing real mental health issues, they get scared, they stay quiet, they internalize, and they repress for far too long.”
