Prince Harry reportedly has long felt “a bit different” from the rest of the British royal family in an interview on Saturday with a trauma expert.
In a wide-ranging discussion with Dr Gabor Mate, Harry, 38, described himself as coming from a “broken home” and said he was trying not to “trauma” his children, according to reports from the live chat.
The interview follows the January publication of the prince’s controversial memoir, sparewho admitted that his youth was marked by drugs and alcohol and detailed the breakdown in his relationship with his father King Charles III, and his brother William.
“I’ve always felt throughout my life, in my younger years, that I felt different from the rest of the family,” Harry told Mate, according to multiple media reports of the interview.
“I feel weird being in this container, and I know my mom feels the same way, so I feel weird,” he said, referring to his late mother Princess Diana.
Harry continues to credit his wife Meghan Markle for “saving” him.
“I was stuck in this world, and he was from a different world and helped me get out of it,” she said, describing him as an “extraordinary human being”.
During the conversation, Mate – the author of several books on trauma, addiction and illness – publicly diagnosed Harry with attention deficit disorder (ADD).
Summarizing the prince’s life, which included losing his mother at the age of 12 and then serving in the British army in Afghanistan, Mate said there was “trauma and suffering”.
See also: Harry and Meghan invited to King Charles’ coronation: report
Prince Harry talks about his parents’ style
California-based Harry, who left the UK and royal life with Meghan in 2020 amid a row with the monarchy, opened up about his parenting style to his two children, three-year-old Archie and one-year-old Lilibet.
“I feel a great responsibility not to go through the trauma or negative experiences I had as a child or as an adult,” he said.
“There are times when I should be in love, but maybe not.”
He added that, together with Meghan, he tried to learn “from the past and overlap the mistakes, maybe, and grow to break the cycle”.
In his memoirs, Harry admitted to using cannabis regularly earlier in his life, and to cocaine on several occasions in his youth, saying that he “liked to try almost anything that would change the established order”.
He reiterated to Mate that cocaine “didn’t do anything for me” but said marijuana was “different”.
“It really helped me,” he said, according to the British Press Association.
Publication of spare – where Harry claims his older brother William assaulted him during an argument about Meghan – is said to have damaged relations between the estranged couple themselves and other senior royals.
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