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Prince Harry said he turned to therapy after serving in Afghanistan triggered memories of losing his mother at a young age, a trauma he said was “not discussed” at the time, in an apparent swipe at his father.
He said serving on the front lines in Afghanistan prompted an “unraveling,” in the course of which he found himself “lying on the floor in the fetal position.”
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Harry made the comments in his new documentary series, Heart of Invictus, which tracks the progress of six competitors as they prepare for the 2016 Invictus Games, the Paralympics-style event for wounded veterans that he founded. The five-part show, which prominently features Harry, dropped Wednesday morning on Netflix, ahead of the 2023 Invictus Games, which kick off in Dusseldorf next week.
“From my personal experience, my tour of Afghanistan in 2012, flying Apaches, somewhere after that there was an unraveling,” he said
“And the trigger to me was returning to Afghanistan, but the stuff that was coming up was... from the age of 12.
“Losing my mum at such a young age, the trauma that I had I was never really aware of.”
In what some interpreted as a criticism of his family, he said, “It was never discussed. I never really talked about it and I suppressed it like most youngsters would have done.”
He added: “But when it all came fizzing out I was bouncing off the walls. Like, ‘What is going on here?’ I’m now feeling everything as opposed to being numb.
“The biggest struggle for me was no one around me really could help.
“I didn’t have that support structure, that network, or that expert advice to identify what was actually going on with me.
“Unfortunately, like most of us, the first time you really consider therapy is when you’re lying on the floor in the fetal position probably wishing you had dealt with some of this stuff previously.
“That’s what I really want to change.
“I’ve always wanted the Invictus Games and the support that comes with that all year round to be a net to catch those individuals.”
The show is being seen by many as a make-or-break moment for Harry, giving a steer on whether he can attract big audiences for the streaming giant without serving up scandalous revelations about his family.
However, it is inevitably Harry’s personal anecdotes that are leading news feeds—and dominating social media coverage of the show Wednesday.
In one segment, Harry speaks about trauma to Canadian rower and veteran Darrell Ling, who tells Harry: “I’m glad you’ve been through this stuff and know how we feel.”
Harry replies: “I can’t pretend to know what you’ve been through, but I had that moment in my life where, I didn’t know about it, but because of the trauma of losing my mum when I was 12, for all those years, I had no emotion, I was unable to cry, I was unable to feel.
“I didn’t know it at the time. And it wasn’t until later in my life aged 28 there was a circumstance that happened that the first few bubbles started coming out, and then suddenly it was like someone shook and it went ‘poof’—and then it was chaos.
“My emotions were sprayed all over the wall, everywhere I went, and I was like, ‘How the hell do I contain this?’ I’ve gone from nothing to everything.”
Harry said he had been advised to cope by imagining he had put himself in “a glass jar” to which he left “the lid open,” explaining: “My therapist said, ‘You choose what comes in, and everything else bounces off.’”
In the opening moments of the show, Harry was asked by an interviewer: “What’s your name?”
He replied: “My name’s Harry.”
The interviewer asked: “What do you do, Harry?”
Harry replied: “What do I do? On any given day? I’m a dad of two under 3-year-olds, I have got a couple of dogs, I’m a husband, and I’m the founding patron of the Invictus Games Foundation. There’s lots of hats that one wears, but I believe today is all about Invictus.”
Meghan Markle makes a few brief appearances in the film.
In one section she is seen reassuring him before he makes a speech to veterans in New York in November 2021.
Harry explains in another section that he decided to found the Invictus Games partly as a result of encountering severely wounded soldiers as he was being evacuated from Afghanistan after press reports of his presence there surfaced and he was pulled out.
He said: “To suddenly be on the way home I was angry. But it was important for everyone around me, their safety, to remove me.
“My own experience in Afghanistan was really affected by that flight home.
“As we took off, the curtain in front of me blew open. And all you could see was the air hospital. Three young British soldiers all wrapped in plastic and their bodies in pieces.
“I saw what most people have only heard about. That was the real trigger—to see the real cost of war. Not just those individuals but also their families and how their lives would change forever.
“Stepping off the plane, I was angry at what happened to these guys, I was angry that the media weren’t covering it.”
