Prince William Says Losing His Mom at a Young Age Was a 'Pain Like No Other Pain'

Prince William is candidly speaking out about how the tragic loss of his mother Princess Diana forever changed his life.

In a preview for the BBC special A Royal Team Talk: Tackling Mental Health, which aims to help others talk about their emotions, specifically men, William, 36, opens up about his own experience with grief.

“I think when you are bereaved at a very young age, anytime really, but particularly at a young age — I can resonate closely to that — you feel a pain like no other pain,” William says in the clip.

“And you know that in your life it’s going to be very difficult to come across something that is going to be an even worse pain than that,” William says.

However, William notes that although losing a loved one can be very challenging to overcome, he found strength in sharing his story with those who experienced the same.

“It also brings you so close to all those other people out there who have been bereaved. So instantly, when you talk to someone else… You can almost see it in their eyes sometimes.”

William also explains that British people have a hard time expressing their emotions and he hopes to change that.

“There has to be a moment for that,” William says of the British stiff upper lip as it’s known, adding that people need to “be able to talk about our emotions, because we’re not robots.”

William’s honest conversation comes just a couple of days after it was revealed that Prince Harry feels “a gap” raising his newborn son Archie with wife Meghan Markle without his mom.

Princess Diana with Prince William and Prince Harry | Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images
Princess Diana with Prince William and Prince Harry | Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images

“There will be a gap from Harry’s point of view,” a royal household source told PEOPLE.

“It’s very sad that poor Diana isn’t here to see her children getting married and now have babies. And it is so sad for him that she isn’t here too,” added a close friend of Diana’s. “Life is so precarious.”

The new royal dad traveled to The Netherlands on last Thursday — while Meghan and their baby boy stayed home in Windsor — to launch the official countdown to the Invictus Games in The Hague next year. During a bike ride around the park, Harry, 34, opened up to Dennis van der Stroom, 31, a former soldier who hopes to compete for The Netherlands Invictus team.

Princess Diana, Prince Charles, Harry and William | Tim Graham/Getty
Princess Diana, Prince Charles, Harry and William | Tim Graham/Getty

RELATED: Prince Charles Once Joked He Had ‘Second-Class Appeal’ at Parties with Princess Diana, Supreme Court Justice Says

“I told Harry about my mother and we talked about our shared experience of missing a mom,” van der Stroom said. “He said missing a mother is like missing some kind of security, how you need that as a son and it falls away when you lose your mother. He said he meets a lot of people in his work who have lost a mother, father, sister, brother or relatives and when he hears their story, as he heard my story, he said he doesn’t feel so alone.”

Princess Diana died in 1997 as a result of injuries sustained in a car crash in Paris.