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For a man who demands his privacy, it was an extraordinary soul-bearing 90-minute public therapy session.
Prince Harry sat down with controversial ‘trauma therapist’ Gabor Maté for a £17 livestreamed chat last night and poured his heart out about topics ranging from his ‘positive’ experience of psychedelic drugs to how wife Meghan Markle ‘saved’ him.
Sitting in front of a roaring fire at his £12 million home in Montecito, California, Harry at one point joked about how ‘great’ the free therapy session was as he yet again complained about how he felt ‘different’ from the rest of his family and now bombards his own children with the love he feels he never received from his own father King Charles.
His choice of inquisitor was controversial as Dr Maté has been roundly criticised for advocating the use of psychedelic drugs including the South American drug ayahuasca, which makes users vomit.
The Duke of Sussex cheerfully described taking the hallucinogen, saying it ‘changed me’ and describing it as ‘cleaning the windscreen’ of his troubled mind. Harry, 38, also appeared to advocate for illegal drugs, at one point saying: ‘Marijuana really did help me.’
Prince Harry sat down with controversial ‘trauma therapist’ Gabor Maté for a £17 livestreamed chat last night and poured his heart out
His choice of inquisitor was controversial as Dr Maté (pictured) has been roundly criticised for advocating the use of psychedelic drugs including the South American drug ayahuasca, which makes users vomit
Sitting in front of a roaring fire at his £12 million home in Montecito, California, Harry at one point joked about how ‘great’ the free therapy session was
While the ‘old’ Harry has long been fading from sight, yesterday’s event, entitled Living With Loss And Personal Healing, blasted that person into oblivion. Often sliding into Californian ‘therapy speak’ the Prince opened up about his ‘broken home upbringing’ and talked about his ongoing quest to find his ‘authentic true self’.
In one of the more jaw-dropping moments he talked about his military service saying he was a good candidate for the Army ‘because they recruit from broken homes’.
When Dr Maté said he disagreed with the war in Afghanistan, the Duke veered into politics saying many British soldiers were ‘not necessarily supportive’ of the military effort, saying: ‘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.’
When asked if he ‘wallowed’ in victimhood, Harry smiled and said: ‘I definitely don’t see myself as a victim.’
Many of the themes were familiar topics from the endless interviews he has given to promote his memoir, a copy of which was included in last night’s price for the event. Recalling his childhood, Harry called himself ‘a boy in a bubble’ saying: ‘I am still unclear to this day whether it was one bubble or multiple bubbles… My own self was distorted and perhaps because of my environment I was confined in but also because of society. What it does to you, is almost like box[ing] you in.’ The topic then turned to his love of therapy with the Duke saying: ‘When I found my therapist and started to unpack 12-year-old Harry at the point my mother died, it was scary. I thought that when I went to therapy, it would cure me, and that I would lose whatever I had left of my mother [but] it was the opposite.
‘I turned what I thought was supposed to be sadness to try to prove to her that I missed her into realising she just really wanted me to be happy, and that was a huge weight off my chest.’ However he said that as he ‘learned a new language of therapy’, he found that ‘my family didn’t speak that language.’ Elaborating on his use of ayahuasca he said it ‘brought me a sense of relaxation, release, comfort, a lightness that I managed to hold on to for a period of time’.
But he said: ‘The moment I’m back in the chaos it kind of dissipates. I started doing it recreationally and then started to realise how good it was for me. I would say it was one of the fundamental parts of my life that changed me and helped me deal with the traumas and the pains of the past.’ He added that ‘marijuana really did help me’ but cocaine ‘did nothing’ except make him feel part of a group.
The Duke of Sussex cheerfully described taking the hallucinogen, saying it ‘changed me’ and describing it as ‘cleaning the windscreen’ of his troubled mind
When asked if he ‘wallowed’ in victimhood, Harry smiled and said: ‘I definitely don’t see myself as a victim.’
Speaking about fatherhood he said he wanted to avoid the emotional distance that defined his relationship with his own father – recalling how Charles broke the news of Diana’s death to his son without hugging him.
He said that with his own children, Archie, three, and Lilibet, one, he was ‘trying to smother them with love’, adding: ‘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.’
He added that he and Meghan are trying to ‘break the pattern’ of divorce and childhood trauma, saying: ‘We do the best we can as parents, learning from our own past and overlapping those mistakes, perhaps, and growing… to break that cycle.’ When asked what the most important thing in raising children he said: ‘It has to be love. There have to be rules, but one thing my wife and I talk about is if they have a moment of frustration, to allow them to have that and then talk about it.’
Of his relationship with Meghan he said: ‘People have said my wife saved me. I was stuck in this world and she was from a different world and helped draw me out of that.
‘But none of the elements of my life would have been possible without me seeing it for myself.
‘My partner is an exceptional human being and I am grateful for the space that she’s given to me.’
Turning to his decision to step away from Royal duties, he said: ‘Fear is a very controlling force… I wasn’t aware that there was a choice and then I became aware of my situation, my environment and I was like “now there is a choice”.
‘I realised if I take this change… I am inevitably going to get hugely criticised but I cannot let the fear of that keep me stuck in this environment because it is not right for me, it’s not right for my wife or my children.
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