Harry wanted Royals to have therapy so they could ‘speak his language’

The Duke of Sussex has said he encouraged the royal family to have therapy so they could ‘speak his language’ and understand him better.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

The Duke of Sussex has said he encouraged the royal family to have therapy so they could “speak his language” and understand him better.

Prince Harry said he “did the thing of trying to encourage everyone to do it” after benefiting from speaking to therapists himself. He was speaking to Gabor Mate, a Hungarian-Canadian expert on “toxic trauma”, in an 86-minute fireside chat in California at the weekend

“A lot of families are complicated and a lot of families are dysfunctional as well,” he said. “But for me when I was doing therapy regularly … I suddenly realised that I had learned a new language and the people that I was surrounded by, they didn’t speak that language.

“So I actually felt more pushed aside … I’m feeling more and more distant from my loved ones and my family, this is a problem.”

He said that before starting therapy, “if I didn’t know myself, how could members of my family know the real me?”

He also revealed he was diagnosed by a therapist with PTSD triggered by the death of his mother Diana, when he was 12.

Gabor Mate. Picture: Facebook

Dr Mate said that after reading Harry’s memoir, Spare, “as a clinician”, he had diagnosed him with ADD – attention deficit disorder – which he told Harry “should not be seen as a disease but as a normal response to abnormal circumstances”. ADD involves problems with concentration and focusing on a single task.

Speaking about the need to break the stigma around mental health, Harry told Dr Mate: “I think we’re all on the spectrum and we slide up and down, ­depending on where we’re at in our life.”

Harry also described how the use of drugs had helped him to heal and deal with the trauma of his mother’s death. “Marijuana is different (to cocaine). It did really help me.” Speaking about his own use of ayahuasca, a psychedelic hallucinogen, he said: “For me … I started to realise how good it was for me. It was one of the fundamental parts of my life that changed me and helped me deal with the trauma of my past.”

In a recent interview to promote his memoir, Harry described using ayahuasca, a class-A drug, as “a medicine” to help him cope with the death of his mother.

He said: “Doing it with the right people if you are suffering from a huge amount of loss, grief or trauma, then these things have a way of working as a medicine. For me, they cleared the windscreen, the windshield of the misery of loss.”

In his book, he also revealed taking cocaine during his youth, consuming magic mushrooms in 2016 while staying at the actor Courteney Cox’s LA home and smoking marijuana to relax.

Harry also said that publishing his memoir in January “feels great” and “it feels like an act of service”, and after publication he felt “a huge weight off my chest”, adding: “Once the book came out, I felt incredibly free.”

Dr Mate observed how Spare revealed a “multi-generational lack of touching” within the royal family, noting how when Charles informed Harry of Diana’s death, he “walks out and leaves you on your own”, describing him as an “emotionally distant” father.

The Sunday Times