- By Sean Coughlan
- Royal Correspondent
March 4, 2023 at 20:27 GMT
Updated 16 minutes ago
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Behold: Prince Harry says how he feels since he published his book
Prince Harry has said he “always felt a little different” about his family and that his late mother felt the same way.
Speaking online about grief, the Duke of Sussex said he feared losing memories of his mother Diana once he started therapy.
He also said he was careful to “smother” his children with affection to avoid passing on “traumas” or “negative experiences” from his own upbringing.
He had his conversation with Dr. Gabor Maté, an author on trauma and addiction.
Her fireside chat in California followed the themes of “living at loss” from his bombshell memoir Spare.
Reflecting on the public reaction to the work, the Duke of Sussex insisted 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”.
Image source, Getty Images
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Prince Harry spoke about the racism experienced by his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex
“I felt a great load lifted from my shoulders,” he told Dr. Maté, describing the book as a “service” to help others break the taboo of talking about mental health issues.
Saturday’s discussion focused on the prince’s feelings, therapy and thoughts on mental health.
There was also no mention of how the royal family, including his brother, felt about his all-encompassing memoir.
Prince Harry described growing up “I felt a little different from the rest of my family” – feeling like I was living in a separate “bubble” that therapy had helped him burst.
In front of an international online audience, he was asked about an emotionally distant childhood that lacked hugs and displays of affection.
He said that with his own children, he “makes sure I smother them with love and affection.”
“As a father, I feel very responsible for not passing on any trauma or … negative experiences I had as a child,” he said.
He kept talking about the importance of therapy, even if it could drive a wedge between him and other relationships.
But he said he falsely feared it would undermine his feelings towards his mother Diana, who died in a car accident in Paris in 1997 when Harry was 12.
“One of the things I feared the most was losing the feeling I had for my mother… whatever I had managed to hold on to my mother,” Prince Harry said.
But he hadn’t lost those feelings and realized “she really just wanted me to be happy,” he told Dr. mate
Image Credit, PETER NICHOLLS
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Prince Harry’s memoirs are an international bestseller
The prince spoke of being “eternally grateful” to his wife Meghan for changing his perspective and calling her an “extraordinary human being”.
But he said meeting Meghan gave him a “crash course” in experiencing racism, which he described as “quite shocking”.
Prince Harry also defended the use of psychedelic medicine, saying it has helped him “deal with the trauma and pain of the past” and is like “cleaning the windshield”.
He said that taking cocaine “didn’t do anything for me,” but that “marijuana is different, that actually really helped me.”
To see the online interview, audiences had to purchase a copy of Prince Harry’s best-selling memoir, which had made headlines with its unprecedented portrayal of royal tensions and personal revelations.
It included claims of a physical altercation with his brother Prince William and chronicled his experiences of using drugs and losing his virginity.