The Fiji Times

Prince Harry: I always felt different to rest of family

-

PRINCE Harry has said he “always felt slightly different” to his family, and that his late mother felt the same.

In an online conversati­on about grief, the Duke of Sussex said he feared losing memories of his mother Diana when he started therapy.

He also said he made sure to “smother” his children with affection to avoid passing on any “traumas” or “negative experience­s” from his own upbringing.

His discussion was with Dr Gabor Maté, an author on trauma and addiction.

Their fireside conversati­on in California followed up themes of “living with loss” from his bombshell memoir, Spare.

Reflecting on the public response to the work, the Duke of Sussex insisted that he was not a “victim” or seeking sympathy.

He revealed that his own reaction to the controvers­ial book’s publicatio­n was to feel “incredibly free”.

“I felt a huge weight off my shoulders,” he told Maté, describing the book as an “act of service” to help others break the taboo about speaking about mental health problems.

Saturday’s discussion focused on the prince’s emotions, therapy and thoughts on mental health.

But it did not go into recent royal revelation­s, such as requests for Harry and his wife Meghan to vacate Frogmore Cottage - or whether or not he would attend his father’s coronation.

There were also no mentions of how the Royal Family, including his brother, had felt about his tell-all memoir. Prince Harry described growing up “feeling slightly different to the rest of my family” — and had a sense of living in a disconnect­ed “bubble”, which therapy had helped him burst.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Fiji