I’ve been called ‘insane,’ ‘hysterical,’ ‘crazy’

Meghan Markle said she’s been labeled as “insane” and “crazy” in a new episode of her podcast, “Archetypes.”

In the show’s fifth installment entitled, “The Decoding of Crazy,” the Duchess of Sussex, 41, sat down with actresses Constance Wu, Jenny Slate and Deepika Padukone and discussed allegedly being called “insane.”

“Raise your hand if you’ve ever been called crazy or hysterical, or what about nuts, insane, out of your mind, completely irrational,” Markle asked the round table of women.

“Okay, 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,” the “Suits” star added.

Markle did not elaborate on who allegedly called her these words or give examples nor did she clarify if she was merely speaking about public perception.

The mother of two also explained how the word “crazy” is shamelessly “thrown around so casually and the damage it’s wrought on society and women, frankly everywhere.”

“From relationships to families being shattered, reputations destroyed and careers ruined,” Markle said.

Markle then went on a rant about some sitcoms such as “How I Met Your Mother” and “Scrubs,” slamming the shows for their representation of said “crazy” women.

“The use of these labels has been drilled into us from movies and TV, from friends and family, and even from random strangers,” she said. “The fact is, no one wants this label.”

In “How I Met Your Mother,” Markle observed how the character of Barney said: “If she’s this crazy, she has to be this hot.”

In “Scrubs,” she brought up how the character of Elliot — who is a female doctor — said: “I can’t take it, Carla. I cannot hide the crazy a minute longer. I’m just this big mountain of coocoo is about to erupt and spew molten crazy, all over him and he’s gonna die like this.”

She also admitted how — at her “worst point” — her husband, Prince Harry, found her a therapist. “[You have to] be really honest about what it is that you need and to not be afraid to make peace with that to ask for it,” Markle noted.

Markle explained how there is a “stigma surrounding the word” “crazy” and it has a “silencing effect” that hurts women with “real mental health issues.”

“They get scared,” she said. “They stay quiet, they internalize, and they repress for far too long.”

She pointed out: “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 labeled it enough times can be gas-lit 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,” Markle said.

She even shared that she has felt “lonely” at times and confessed that she’s been conditioned to not show emotion in public.

Elsewhere in the episode, Markle described the word “hysteria,” its Greek meaning and origin.

“The word hysterical comes from hysteria, which is — wait for it — the Greek word for ‘womb,’” the Los Angeles native added. 

She said: “Plato himself was actually amongst the Greek philosophers, who believed that the womb would travel around the body adding pressure to other organs, which would then lead to erratic and unreliable behavior.”