The Duke of Sussex has had an emotional conversation about bereavement and grieving, with a charity founder who helps military families facing the loss of a loved one.

“You convince yourself that the person you’ve lost wants you, or you need, to be sad for as long as possible, to prove to them that they’re missed,” Prince Harry, whose mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, died when he was 12, said.

“But then there’s this realisation, ‘No they must want me to be happy.’”

In a video released by the charity, Scotty’s Little Soldiers founder Nikki Scott, from Norfolk, tells the prince telling her son her husband had been killed in Afghanistan, in 2009, had “shattered his world”. “It was the worst,” she says. “How do you tell a five-year-old this?”

Prince Harry, an ambassador for the charity who has helped at its children’s events, even dressing up as Father Christmas, then describes how difficult talking about feelings of loss can be.

“That’s the hardest thing, especially for kids, which is, ‘I don’t want to talk about it because it will make me sad,’” he says.

“But once realising that if I do talk about it, and I’m celebrating their life, then actually, things become easier, as opposed to this, ‘I am just not going to talk about it and that’s best form of coping,’ when in fact it’s not.” said the prince.

“If you suppress this for too long, you cannot suppress it for ever, it is not sustainable and it will eat away at you inside.”

The prince also highlights how distressing it can be for people reluctant to talk about their feelings of grief.

“Especially when every defence mechanism in your mind and nervous system and everything else is saying, ’Do not go there,'” he says.

He praises Mrs Scott’s efforts in supporting other families in such difficult moments, with the charity aiming to help 1,000 young people each year.

And at the end of the conversation, she says: “I feel the need to give you a hug,” to which the prince replies: “Let’s do it.”