Harry's documentary series tells the stories of injured soldiers competing in his Invictus Games. Photo / Netflix
Harry's documentary series tells the stories of injured soldiers competing in his Invictus Games. Photo / Netflix
Prince Harry has appeared to hit out at his family in his latest Netflix documentary series - claiming they did not provide him with a support network after Princess Diana’s death.
The Duke of Sussex, 38, has claimed he was left curled in the “foetal position” and “bouncing off walls” after he left Afghanistan.
Making the confessions in his new project ‘Heart of Invictus’ – his latest Netflix show, which delves into the life of injured and ill military veterans who take part in the Paralympic-style Invictus Games he founded. He said in episode two of the series about the aftermath of his tours of duty in the British Army, which saw him become a helicopter pilot: “I can only speak from my personal experience – my tour of Afghanistan in 2011 flying Apaches.
“Somewhere after that there was an unravelling and the trigger to me was returning from Afghanistan.”
Harry added in the show he felt he was also left without a support network after his mother Princess Diana died in a Paris car smash in 1997 when she was 36.
However, it appears to contradict previous claims made by the prince in which he credits his brother, Prince William, and several friends for encouraging him to seek therapy.
Harry, who has son Archie, 4, and daughter Lilibet, 2, with his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, 42, continued to talk about his post-Afghanistan trauma saying, “But the stuff that was coming up was from 1997 – from the age of 12.
“Losing my mum at such a young age, the trauma that I had, I was never really aware of… when it all came fizzing out I was bouncing off the walls.
“I was thinking what is going on here – now I’m feeling everything as opposed to being numb.” He added, “The biggest struggle for me was that no one around me could really 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 foetal position probably wishing that you dealt with some of this stuff previously.”
The now estranged brothers were once very close. Photo / Getty Images
It comes after Harry told Bryony Gordon, of the Mad World podcast in 2017, that he was a typical 20-something thinking “life is great”, then, after a few conversations, he would find the grief would hit him and he would realise there is “some stuff here that I need to deal with”.
He said after speaking with his older brother and others close to him, he began moving forward and recalled William telling him: “Look, you really need to deal with this. It is not normal to think that nothing has affected you.”
The Duke also said during the interview, “It’s all about timing. And for me personally, my brother, you know, bless him, he was a huge support to me. He kept saying this is not right, this is not normal, you need to talk to [someone] about stuff, it’s okay.”
Heart of Invictus has been released almost nine months after Harry used his bombshell memoir Spare to open up about the trauma he felt in the wake of Diana’s death and his mental health struggles growing up in the royal family.
