The Duke of Sussex has revealed he encouraged the royal family to have therapy so they could “speak his language” and understand him better.
Prince Harry, 38, said he “did the thing of trying to encourage everyone [in his family] to do it” after benefitting from speaking to therapists himself, describing therapy as “necessary”.
The King’s second son was speaking to Dr Gabor Maté, 79, a Hungarian-Canadian expert on “toxic trauma”, in an 86-minute fireside chat in California yesterday, during which he also revealed:
• He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) triggered by the death of his mother when he was 12.
• He doesn’t think of himself as “a victim”.
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• His wife, the Duchess of Sussex, has “saved” him and is an “exceptional human being”.
• Drugs, including marijuana and psychedelics, “really helped” him and were “good” for him.
Last night, a spokesperson for the Sussexes confirmed that Harry had “recently received email correspondence from His Majesty’s office regarding the coronation. An immediate decision on whether the Duke and Duchess will attend will not be disclosed by us at this time.” Coronation Day on May 6 is their son Archie’s 4th birthday.
Harry said “a lot of families are complicated and a lot of families are dysfunctional as well”, and explained that therapy had taught him a “new language and the people that I was surrounded by, they didn’t speak that language…”
He added: “So I actually felt more pushed aside and then I said to my therapist: ‘Ok, I’ve got a problem — this is working for me … so that I can now live a truly authentic life and be genuinely happy and be a better dad for my kids, but at the same time I’m feeling more and more distant from my loved ones and my family, this is a problem’”
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Harry also said that before starting therapy, he didn’t know himself: “If I didn’t know myself, how could members of my family know the real me?”
He also revealed he was diagnosed by a therapist with PTSD triggered by the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, adding: “It didn’t feel great when I was told I had PTSD.”
Maté said that after reading Harry’s memoir, Spare, “as a clinician”, he had diagnosed him with attention deficit disorder (ADD) which he told Harry “should not be seen as a disease but as a normal response to abnormal circumstances” caused by the “stress” in his life. ADD involves problems with concentration and focusing on a single task.
Speaking about the need to break the stigma around mental health, Harry told Maté: “I think we’re all on the spectrum and we slide up and down, depending on where we’re at in our life.”
Harry also described how the use of drugs had helped him to heal and deal with the trauma of his mother’s death. “Marijuana is different [to cocaine]. It did really help me.” Speaking about his own use of ayahuasca, a psychedelic hallucinogen, he said: “For me … I started to realise how good it was for me. It was one of the fundamental parts of my life that changed me and helped me deal with the trauma of my past.”
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Maté, an addiction expert, has advocated the use of ayahuasca, an illegal hallucinogenic drug, as a treatment for trauma. In his book, Harry also revealed he had taken cocaine during his youth, consumed magic mushrooms in 2016 while staying at the actress Courteney Cox’s LA home and smoked marijuana to relax after he and Meghan moved to America in 2020.
About publishing his memoir in January, he said it “feels great” and “like an act of service” and he felt “a huge weight” off his chest”, adding: “Once the book came out, I felt incredibly free.”
Tickets for the “intimate” live streamed chat hosted by Harry’s publisher, Penguin Random House, cost £19 and included a copy of Spare which became the fastest-selling non-fiction book in history. In it, Harry claimed Prince William physically “attacked” him during a row about Meghan, describing his brother as his “arch-nemesis”, and claimed the Queen Consort leaked stories about the royal family to the media to boost her image.
His criticism of Camilla is understood to have infuriated the King, who reportedly authorised officials to notify the Sussexes about quitting Frogmore Cottage, their Windsor home, on January 11, the day after Spare was published.
Last night, a source close the Sussexes said they felt the King’s decision was “unfortunate” and had hoped Frogmore would be their “forever home” in the UK, but they were not “kicking and screaming about it.”
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Maté described Spare as “a story of deprivation” and observed how the book revealed a “multi-generational lack of touching” within the royal family, noting how when the then Prince of Wales informed Harry of Diana’s death in 1997, he “walks out and leaves you on your own”, describing him as an “emotionally distant” father.
Asked how he has embarked on parenting his two children, Archie, three, and Lilibet, one, differently, Harry said: “Making sure I smother them in love and affection. As a father, I feel a huge responsibility to make sure I don’t pass on any negative trauma I’ve experienced as a child … We only know what we know.”
He did, however, concede that not all of his childhood was miserable: “I had an incredible childhood as far as I can remember, elements of it, and elements of it were incredibly painful.”
Harry also spoke of feeling “different to the rest of my family” for much of his life, adding: “I felt strange being in this container” and acknowledged that in stepping away from the royal family and moving to America, he had “lost a lot” but said he felt it was “a risk worth taking” for his family.
“At the same time I’ve gained a lot, to see my kids growing up here the way that they are, I just can’t imagine how that would have been possible back in that environment.”
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The prince, who served ten years in the armed forces and undertook two tours of Afghanistan, also criticised the British public for not being supportive enough of the military on operations.
He said: “One of the reasons why certainly so many people in the United Kingdom were not supportive of our troops was because they assumed that everybody that was serving was for the war.
“But no, once you sign up you do what you’re told to do, so there was a lot of us that didn’t necessarily agree or disagree, but you were doing what you were trained to do, you were doing what you were sent to do.”
He also said he felt he was a “fantastic candidate for the military”, because of his troubled childhood: “I don’t know how it is around the rest of the world but certainly in the UK we tend to recruit from broken homes, individuals that are ready for it.”
Harry also said that Meghan “saved him”, describing her impact on his emotional journey and his decision to leave royal life as “huge”. He said: “People have said my wife saved me. I was stuck in this world, she was from a different world and helped draw me out of that. My partner is an exceptional human being and I’m eternally grateful for the wisdom and the space she’s been able to give to me,” adding: “The two of us have had our own stuff with our families.”
Despite publishing a memoir which is deeply critical of the royal family, and detailing his years of unhappiness within the royal family, Harry insisted that he did not see himself as a victim: “I certainly don’t see myself as a victim. I do not, and have never looked for sympathy in this.”
