Prince Harry says he didn't have 'support' after Princess Diana's death

Nov 20, 2023

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Prince Harry shaded his royal family members yet again, this time claiming no one was there for him after mom Princess Diana died in 1997 — or when he returned home from serving in Afghanistan with PTSD.

“The trigger to me was actually returning from Afghanistan, but the stuff that was coming up was from … 1997 from the age of 12,” the Duke of Sussex said in his new Netflix limited series, “Heart of Invictus,” which premiered Wednesday.

“The biggest struggle for me is that no one around me could really help,” he continued.

“I didn’t have that support structure, that network, or that expert advice to identify what was actually going on with me.”

Harry, 38, shared that he “suppressed” his trauma from losing his mother at “such a young age” and was “never really aware” of his emotions until it “all came fizzing out.”

“I was bouncing off the walls,” he recalled. “Like, what is going on here? I’m feeling everything as opposed to being numb.”

But it wasn’t until years later, when he was truly struggling, that he decided to seek help for his mental health.

“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 that you dealt with some of this stuff previously,” he said.

Harry said he was finally able to begin working through the trauma of losing his mom at the age of 28.

“I had no emotion, I was unable to cry, I was unable to feel. I didn’t know it at the time,” he said elsewhere in the series. “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.”

Harry explained that he wanted to learn how to contain his emotions, which he said were “sprayed all over the wall” everywhere.

“I’ve gone from nothing to everything and I now need to get a glass jar and put myself in it, leave the lid open. My therapist said, ‘You choose what comes in and everything else bounces off,’” he recalled.

Harry has previously discussed the alleged lack of compassion and support he received from his family after Diana’s tragic death.

In his scathing memoir, “Spare,” Harry claimed that his father, King Charles III, didn’t even hug him when they were rocked by the news that Diana had perished in a car crash.

“Pa didn’t hug me. He wasn’t great at showing emotions under normal circumstances, how could he be expected to show them in such a crisis?” Harry wrote in the book, which was released in January.

“His hand did fall once more on my knee and he said, ‘It’s going to be OK.’ That was quite a lot for him. Fatherly, hopeful, kind. And so very untrue.”

Harry recalled his father, now 74, sitting him down to tell him that his “mummy” had been in a car accident.

“I remember thinking: Crash … OK. But she’s all right? Yes? I vividly remember that thought flashing through my mind. And I remember waiting patiently for Pa to confirm that indeed Mummy was all right. And I remember him not doing that,” he wrote.

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After detailing Diana’s injuries and being rushed to the hospital, Charles confirmed she “didn’t make it.”

“These phrases remain in my mind like darts in a board,” he wrote.

The redheaded royal addressed the tense relationship between him and his father, as well as his estrangement from brother Prince William.

While the release of his book made tensions higher than ever, Harry has been on the outs with his family ever since he and Meghan Markle, 42, resigned from their royal duties in 2020. They moved to California, where they reside with their two kids, Prince Archie, 4, and Princess Lilibet, 2.