James Middleton "pushed" his sister Catherine, Princess of Wales away during his mental health struggles.
The 37-year-old entrepreneur — whose late dog Ella became his "reason to get up in the morning" in the years that he was at his lowest — was on the edge of taking his own life in years gone by but refused to even answer the phone to the royal, 42, or the rest of his family.
Writing in his memoir Meet Ella: The Dog Who Saved My Life, he said: "I contemplate ways of dying so I can get off the giddy roller-coaster that is sending me to the brink of madness. I cannot sleep because my mind is in tumult.
"The insomnia is dizzying. I am utterly exhausted. I feel misunderstood; a complete failure. I wouldn't wish the sense of worthlessness and desperation, the isolation and loneliness, on my worst enemy. I think I'm going crazy.
"Yet I know I am privileged; fortunate, too, to have a loving and close-knit family — Mum and Dad, my sisters Catherine and Pippa, their husbands William and James — but I push them all away.
"I do not answer their phone calls. Emails remain ignored. Invitations to visit go unheeded. I hide behind a double-locked door, unreachable."
But James — whose sister is married to Prince William and has Prince George, 11, nine, and six-year-old Prince Louis with him — then recalled that it was his beloved dog who would save him time and time again.
He said: "I haul myself back from the brink, slowly climb down the ladder and stroke Ella's silky head. She is the reason I do not take that fatal leap. She is Ella, the dog who saved my life."
James previously noted that his black spaniel — who passed away in January 2023 at the age of 15 following a short illness — seemed to know he was struggling and tried to "encourage" him along the way.
He told OK! Magazine: "My dog Ella, in particular, was my reason to get up in the morning, my reason to get dressed and go outside and go for a walk — even if it was pouring with rain
"You go outside for 10 or 15 minutes, get that fresh air and you suddenly forget what was traumatising you.
"That respite from the thing that was banging away in my mind and causing me to not function properly was unintentionally helped by Ella and the rest of my dogs."
I think Ella knew that I was not functioning to my full capacity and she was trying to give little encouraging signs to look after myself because I had a responsibility to look after her too. I do think [the dogs] played such an important role to the point that I do think they saved my life."
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