Prince Harry receives a lot of flak for going his separate way from the Royal Family. Whenever there’s an important public gathering of the senior Royals, the criticism intensifies all over again. Take this past weekend for example, when King Charles, Prince William, and Kate Middleton gathered to mark Remembrance Sunday in the U.K. In another timeline, Harry would’ve been in attendance, too, alongside Meghan Markle.
It’s worth remembering that Harry has shared his side of the story time and time again and made clear the toxicity of living within the high-pressure, suffocating sphere of the Royal world. While some of the claims in his autobiography may be sensational, the shocking behavior he faced from his relatives has never been addressed or denied by the Palace. Given these experiences, it’s no real wonder that Harry decided enough was enough.
Case in point, Harry has previously revealed how low he had to get, both literally and figuratively, to realize how desperately he needed a change.
Prince Harry knew he had to get help when he was reduced to “lying on the floor in the fetal position”
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have transformed themselves into spokespeople on all things to do with mental health and wellness in recent years, and in the 2023 Netflix documentary Heart of Invictus, Harry spoke openly about his struggles with facing up to his “trauma” and how he found the dedication to work through it.
Harry recalled that it took until he hit rock bottom for him to know that he needed to seek out therapy, noting that he realized it was time when he found himself curled up in “the fetal position.”
“Unfortunately, like me, the first time you really consider therapy is when you’re lying on the floor in the fetal position, probably wishing that you’d dealt with some of this stuff previously,” Harry stated in the Netflix doc. “And that’s what I really want to change.”
The Duke of Sussex discussed how it was his time serving with the military in Afghanistan that caused long-seated trauma from his childhood — specifically, losing his mother, Princess Diana, at such a young age — to resurface, forcing him to deal with his repressed feelings head-on.
“After returning from Afghanistan in 2012, there was an unraveling, with triggers from my childhood surfacing,” Harry explained. “Losing my mum at such a young age caused trauma that was never addressed. I suppressed those feelings and, like many young people, never really spoke about them. But when it all came fizzing out, I was overwhelmed, feeling everything rather than being numb.”
Clearly, Harry was not getting the emotional support he needed from his family, which speaks to how important it probably was for him to break away from the Royal atmosphere for the sake of his own family with Meghan — the pair share a son and a daughter, Prince Archie (5) and Princess Lilibet (3). Past experiences like this are why it’s somewhat hard to believe when rumors allege that Harry could be on the cusp of a Royal return.