The real reason Meghan plays the victim
Poor Meghan. That’s what we’re supposed to say, isn’t it? Back in the UK this week, one wonders which sympathy card she’ll play next. After all, every interview she gives centres on the ‘woe is me’ mantra. Clutch your ethically- sourced pearls and reach for the tissues while she sits in her multi-million pound house, surrounded by staff and security. How does she get through the day?
In all seriousness, I do wonder if she can really believe she’s so hard done by and that the average person on the street would have any sympathy? Can she really be so insulated against the plight of ordinary people that she doesn’t think she’s coming across as phenomenally out of touch and self-obsessed?
I’m sure she’s had struggles in her life, just as everyone has. I don’t doubt that marrying into the royal Family was a big
culture shock, especially if you thought it mostly entailed swanning around a palace and putting on pretty frocks for film premieres when the reality is more cutting ribbons at a new sewage processing plant in Stevenage.
But most people would keep this to themselves. It’s not a trauma by most people’s standards. The awful truth is that Harry really has had a trauma; losing your mother at such a tender age is dreadful.
SowHy is Meghan ‘constantly looking back at how awful it was to briefly be a royal’, as one source who knows the Sussexes was quoted as saying this weekend?
It helps no one to be a prisoner to their past. That’s not to say we have to just sweep what’s happened to us under the carpet. Far from it. But there does come a point where if you don’t learn to move on, it starts to define you.
At some stage, you have to let the past go, or at least build on it to stop it festering and consuming you.
But with Meghan, I think there’s something profound going on here, something I’ve seen with some of my patients.
A few years ago I worked for a charity and in order to fund this I worked a few days a week in a private clinic. Many of my patients were eyewateringly wealthy, with some even flying in on their private jets just for the appointment.
They had a life of unparalleled privilege. yet as I talked to them, there were some who seemed to feel maligned and injured, slighted and upset. They were extraordinarily sensitive and at pains to paint themselves as the victim at nearly every opportunity they had.
It was quite bizarre and in sharp contrast to the poor, disenfranchised patients I saw at the charity, who seemed to just accept their lot, do the best they could and get on with things.
It took a while for me to realise
that it was precisely their privilege and the pressure that this brought that made those wealthy patients so quick to play the victim card.
They had great privilege but, unless they also achieved great things, they would always been seen as a failure. Perversely, their privilege was like a millstone round their neck.
The problem was that no one had any sympathy for this. I would have people in their 20s and 30s who were children of the rich and famous trying to convince me they were one of life’s victims, rather than having been handed a golden ticket — through no real merit or talent of their own — that few could have imagined. They had a toxic, noxious combination of self-entitlement and over-inflated self- esteem that resulted in a bitterness and bewilderment that not everything always went their way. rather than sucking this up as life, they used this as evidence that they were the real victims. And the key thing I realised was
that the sense of victimhood was a perfect way of absolving themselves of life’s problems.
It meant they always had a ready- made excuse for why things were going wrong, or hadn’t worked out how they wanted. It was always someone else’s fault; there was always someone else to blame.
OFCoUrSe, regardless of how rich, privileged and wellconnected you are, life can feel an uphill battle at times.
But getting some perspective on things and realising this is part of life’s tapestry is a key skill. I find it truly astonishing that someone as apparently bright and intelligent as Meghan seems to struggle to grasp this and, therefore, comes across as increasingly tone-deaf.
The Duchess of Sussex wants us to think that she’s the victim of all sorts of injustice that she’s gallantly battling against, when I’m afraid it just comes across as a self- indulgent, out-of-touch whinge.