Parts of childhood were painful in my ‘broken home’, says Prince
THE Duke of Sussex has suggested he comes from a “broken home” and that he always felt different to the rest of his family.
He also said elements of his childhood were “incredibly painful” during a globally live-streamed interview on Friday with Dr Gabor Maté, a trauma expert, to promote his memoir, Spare.
The Duke, 38, said he had to move to the US to break a “cycle of pain”, and that he was a “fantastic candidate for the military”.
He added: “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 – you know, individuals who are ready for it.”
The interview is his first public appearance since it emerged that he and wife Meghan, 41, have been evicted from Frogmore Cottage.
It has been suggested that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s children may not develop a relationship with the King if the couple are not provided with accommodation in the UK, The Daily Telegraph previously reported.
Dr Maté said in the 90-minute ticketed event that the Duke, who served tours in Afghanistan, grew up in an environment where there was a “lack of child being held”, adding of the late Queen: “At some point you wanted to hug your grandmother but it wasn’t done.”
During the interview, labelled as an “intimate chat about loss and childhood trauma”, Prince Harry also said he had urged other members of the Royal family to have therapy.
He said that “a lot of families are complicated and a lot of families are dysfunctional as well”, adding that therapy had taught him a “new language” which he felt his relatives did not speak.
“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’,” he said.
The Duke also said that a therapist had diagnosed him with PTSD, triggered by the death of his mother.
He said that he did have “an incredible childhood, elements of it, and elements of it were incredibly painful”, adding that both he and his wife Meghan “try their best to make sure you don’t hand on any traumas that you have as a parent”.
He claimed the “root cause” to his suffering was living in the UK and he had to move his family abroad.
Dr Maté said of Harry and Meghan, whose parents also divorced: “You both come from broken families, it is not accidental that you found each other.”
Harry said he felt “incredibly free” and that it was a “huge weight off my shoulders” after writing his controversial memoir, which he claimed was an “act of service”.
The Duke also suggested he was closer to his mother, who died in 1997 when he was 12, than his brother, Prince William.
“I certainly have felt throughout my life, throughout my younger years, I always felt slightly different to the rest of my family,” he said. “I felt strange being in this container and I know that my mum felt the same.
“So it makes sense to me. It didn’t make sense at the time. I felt as though my body was in there, but my head was out and then sometimes it was vice versa.
“But the times that I ventured towards being myself, being my authentic true self, for one shape or another whether it was through media or family or whatever it was, it was almost like the ‘Don’t be yourself, come back to what you’re expected to be’.”
‘I’m feeling more and more distant from my loved ones and my family – this is a problem’