Prince Harry says he was left curled in the “foetal position” and “bouncing off walls” after he left Afghanistan.
Prince Harry says he was left curled in the ‘foetal position’ and ‘bouncing off walls’ after he left Afghanistan
The Duke of Sussex, 38, makes the admissions 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 says in episode two of the series about his tours of duty in 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 adds in the show he felt he was also left without a support network in the wake of his mum Princess Diana’s death in a Paris car smash in 1997 when she was aged 36.
Harry, who has son Archie, four, and daughter Lilibet, two, with his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, 42, added about his post-Afghanistan trauma: “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.
“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 show comes after Harry used his 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.
Tagged in Princess Diana Prince Harry