Daily Times

Prince Harry on Saturday spoke of being diagnosed with PTSD after Princess Diana’s death and said he was a good candidate for the Army because they ‘recruit from broken homes’.

The Duke of Sussex is fielding questions from controversial ‘toxic trauma’ expert Dr Gabor Maté as part of an intimate conversation about ‘living with loss and personal healing’, with the £17-a-head tickets including a copy of his memoir, Spare.

Harry told the author he did not see himself as a ‘victim’ and didn’t want sympathy. He compared himself to Diana in feeling ‘different’ from the rest of his family and said he tried to constantly hug his children in contrast to his father, King Charles.

The royal said that sharing his personal troubles in public was an ‘act of service’ for others and spoke how having therapy had helped ‘burst a bubble’ he felt he was living in.

‘My awareness of myself was distorted by my environment but also society,’ he said. ‘When I found my therapist and started to unpack 12-year-old Harry at the point my mother died was scary.’

Dr Maté began the conversation by saying there were ‘two divergent streams of responses’ to the event based on whether or not people had read Harry’s autobiography.

He said that those who hadn’t read the book were ‘resentful’ towards Harry and thought he was wallowing in victimhood and those who had were ‘grateful’ to him for sharing his story.

‘I definitely don’t see myself as a victim,’ Harry said, adding that his experiences and his work with mental health ‘sharing my story will help some people out there’.

Harry said he had originally ‘frowned’ upon therapy but believed it had helped ‘burst a bubble’ he felt he was living in.

‘I thought that when I went to therapy that it would cure me, and that I would lose whatever I had left of my mother… it was the opposite,’ he said.

‘I turned into what I thought should be sadness to show that I missed her into knowing that she would want me to be happy.’

The conversation turned to the death of Harry’s mother, Diana, and how Charles broke the news to his son without hugging him.

Dr Maté spoke about the prince describing hugging his brother when he returned from Afghanistan and how unusual it felt to have this physical contact.

Describing how he was seeking to adopt a different approach, Harry said: ‘It leaves me in the position of a father having two children trying to smother them with love.

‘I feel a huge responsibility not to pass on any trauma or negative experiences that I’ve had as a kid or as a man growing up.

‘There are times when I catch myself when I should be smothering them with that love but I might not be.’

He added that if he did not hug his own children, it would have a ‘similar’ impact on them as to what he experienced growing up.

Dr Maté told Harry he could see ‘a lot of trauma’ in his childhood despite being ‘a scion of one of the richest families in the world, gilded with power and privilege.

Harry said he had tried to make life better for his children by providing them with a different upbringing.

‘We only know what we know, and for myself and my wife we do the best we can as parents – learning from our own past and overlapping those mistakes, perhaps, and growing… to break that cycle,’ he said.

‘You certainly don’t make friends in the process, in the short term.’

Speaking about Harry’s childhood, Dr Maté said: ‘I know there were great moments but there was also a lot of trauma and suffering.

Harry responded: ‘Isn’t that the same for most people?’

Dr Maté said: ‘It’s whether we recognise it or don’t recognise it, deal with it or don’t deal with it.

He added that he did not read Harry’s book for the drama but praised its ‘universal humanity’.

Dr Maté quoted a section of Harry’s book where he described his frustration that no one in his family wanted to ‘break free and live’, asking him if he felt he had been able to do so.

Harry responded that he had, adding that he felt ‘a great weight off my shoulders’ after leaving the Royal Family.

Dr Maté said: ‘You’re working hard to become more aware, more kind but the more you do, the more distant you become from your own family

Harry said: ‘A lot of families are complicated, a lot of families are dysfunctional – but for me when I was doing therapy regularly… I felt that I learned a new language.’

He added that other members of his family ‘didn’t speak that language’.

Speaking about his time in therapy the prince said he told his therapist: ‘This is working for me and I’m starting to go back to the point of trauma and unpack everything so I can be truly happy… but at the same time I’m feeling more and more distant from my loved ones and my family’.

Harry said his therapist responded: ‘This is what happens for a lot of people.’

Dr Maté said: ‘Ideally you shouldn’t have to face that choice but a lot of people have to make a decision – am I going to be myself or am I going to… please others.’

The conversation also touched on politics, with the Duke of Sussex saying some British soldiers were not ‘necessarily’ supportive of military efforts in Afghanistan.

During a livestreamed conversation, Dr Maté said he did not align with the West during the conflict.

Harry responded: ‘One of the reasons why 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.’

Harry spoke in detail about the death of his mother, Diana, and the long-term impact it was having on him.

Harry said that he was ‘in a state of shock’ from a young age.

‘Since age 12 apart from being in a state of shock I was in fight or flight,’ he said, adding he had learned the importance of ‘self-regulation’ to deal with his mental health.

Dr Mate said: ‘We don’t develop self-regulation, we have to learn it.’

Harry added that his therapist told him ‘We’re dealing with 12 year-old Harry here’ during one of his sessions.

Dr Mate responded: ‘At a certain point you revert to much younger ages – when you get hurt, when you get upset.

‘Trauma’s what happens inside of ourselves.’

Speaking about his mother giving him to someone else to save his life under the Nazi regime, Dr Mate said: ‘The trauma was what I made that mean… my mother thought she was saving my life but I thought I was being abandoned.’

‘Who gets abandoned? Someone’s who’s not worthy’

The trauma expert added that similar traumas had to be dealt with in adulthood so they were not passed on to the next generation.

Harry’s decision to share a platform with Dr Maté has provoked fury due to his history of controversial comments, including comparing Hamas to the Jewish heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis.

The 79-year-old Hungarian-Canadian Holocaust survivor has also defended Palestinian rocket fire at Israeli civilians and once branded the Israeli government ‘terrorists’.

Today’s discussion is taking place just days after it emerged Harry and Meghan had been told to leave Frogmore Cottage, their grace-and-favour residence.

The couple were allegedly given ‘weeks’ to pack up their British home after Harry’s memoir Spare hit the shelves in January. Earlier this week, journalist Omid Scobie claimed that some members of the Royal Family were ‘appalled’ by the decision to evict Harry and Meghan, with the couple also said to have felt ‘stunned’.

An insider allegedly told him: ‘It all feels very final and like a cruel punishment. It’s like want to cut them out of the picture for good.’ But the couple are not as ‘stunned’ about leaving as previous reports have suggested, believing that ‘if we need to move out, we will get ourselves out’, a source told The Times. The revelation comes as preparations are taking place for King Charles’ Coronation in May amid speculation that Harry may not receive an invitation.