How much more therapy does Harry need to realise there is no ‘truth’ when it comes to family?
It doesn’t matter how much he is loved or even apologised to, he will never stop hurting if he continues to play out his story over and over
Of the hundreds of Prince Harry-related headlines over the last few days, one hit home: it said that the Prince of Wales feared his brother was being “brainwashed” by his therapist. Indeed, sources close to the Royal family have said there were “concerns” about the way the Duke was engaging with therapy.
As a trained counsellor myself, it has been a hard story to stomach. Therapists are supposed to be a force for good, yet inevitably there are occasions when they aren’t, and in the case of the Duke of Sussex the question on many people’s lips is this: given that he has had so much therapy, why does he not appear to be healed, or ‘fixed’, or at peace?
In his various interviews, and those joint ones with the Duchess of Sussex, various forms of therapy are referenced: daily meditation; years of talking therapy; coaching; even EMDR, a relatively new style of therapy involving rapid eye movement. But regardless of the therapy type, I was particularly surprised, if concerned, to learn that he called his therapist before anyone else after the incident in which William allegedly knocked him to the floor in the kitchen of Nottingham Cottage, in 2019.
Therapists are not supposed to be your first port of call in an emergency; we are not the cavalry. Rather, we are there for exploration, to bring insight, provoke thought and feelings and ultimately self-knowledge. As a therapist who has practised for 10 years, my view is that this sort of relationship with one’s therapist leans towards a form of unhealthy codependency.
The first rule of any therapist is to build a relationship with healthy boundaries. The client should know very little about the therapist – it means they don’t have to think about him or her or ask them how they are or have a two-way conversation. Ultimately, therapy isn’t a support system on speed dial.
Admittedly, some US-based therapists have a different approach. A few of my American clients have come to me, assuming I will be available 24/7 as their former US-based therapists were. They often tell me they spoke to their therapist every day; one client wouldn’t even leave the house until their therapist had okayed it. But, to me, this is deeply unhealthy. It encourages dependency and a lack of autonomy, when really your purpose as a therapist should be to help your client to become a contented, focused, authentic adult who can manage their own emotions.
My alarm bells also go off when I meet someone who is ricocheting from one form of therapy to another, as the Duke appears to have done. The long list of acknowledgements in Spare names several therapists. There is John Amaral, a Los Angeles-based “energy practitioner” who says his “Energy Flow Formula” can heal depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress, and London-based acupuncturist Ross Barr, who used acupuncture himself to cope with the sudden death of his father.
Another London favourite mentioned in the acknowledgements is clinical psychologist Lesley Parkinson, a specialist in “neuro-psychophysiology.” She runs a clinic in London that offers treatments including “neurofeedback brain training” and “cranial electrotherapy stimulation” to treat mental health issues and improve brain performance. Meditation has also brought “a sense of calm”, Harry says.
I am not saying that any of those forms of therapy are invalid, but going from one therapy to another is like a dog desperately searching for a bone. Therapy takes time and attention and is not a quick fix. And all therapists would advise not to mix your therapies – it’s like mixing your drinks.
I’m certainly not discrediting the Duke for trying therapy. Indeed I have long been a supporter of his approach to mental health. His openness was, at first, refreshing. Years before he left the Royal family, he was something of a campaigner in this field. In 2017, when he gave an interview to The Telegraph about his mental health struggles, his ability to be warm and empathetic, as well as to verbalise what suffering meant to him, helped open up a dialogue for many others, especially young men.
Given that the suicide rates among young men were soaring, it felt necessary for someone with his public profile to raise awareness – indeed brave of him too.
But now, six years on, what started off as openness has become an endless wail of pain, of hurt, of retribution. It is extraordinary to watch this laid out in minute detail, but it is also like watching someone have a breakdown in front of you. Every emotion is expressed, but this is something to be worked through in the privacy of a therapist’s room.
In Spare, he even links a breakdown in his relationship with his older brother to his focus on his mental health, claiming the fact he was having therapy was used as evidence by William – in an angry exchange of texts – that he was not of sound mind. Successful therapy, Harry says, made him “independent” but a “stranger to his brother”.
In the recent interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby, the Duke reiterates that he is somehow better, professing to be happy. And yet the public nature of all these desperate revelations is one of the loneliest things I have witnessed. For it doesn’t matter how much he is loved or looked after or even apologised to, he will never stop hurting if he continues to play out his story, over and over. This will not help him heal. And whatever narrative Harry is telling himself, it’s not going to end.
Rather, as a therapist, I would advise a client in this situation to work out, specifically, what he or she wants to achieve from all this, and from therapy, and then to explore whether that outcome is possible.
The Duke appears to want his father and his brother to change in some way, but quite often the realisation, after a course of therapy, is that we cannot change other people. In fact, the only thing we can really be in control of is how we feel about things. This is the work of the therapist – to ask the client to contemplate these things. How does it serve you to be so angry? So full of righteous ire? What are you getting from this? And what does it cost you?
The other thing I would tell him to be mindful of is how much more time he intends to dedicate to exploring old wounds. I am currently training as a coach with the bestselling American author and therapist Katherine Woodward Thomas, who argues that sitting for endless years in the therapy room or chanting daily on our meditation mats can prevent people from moving forward. Though it is important to know your wounds in order to heal them, she argues that dwelling inside them in therapy for years keeps the person stuck, constantly replaying the past rather than moving towards a better, brighter future.
I often ask my clients what steps need to be taken in order for them to move towards this contented future – for this should be a future where we have settled old resentments and come to terms with what has happened to us that feels ‘wrong’.
If Harry were my client, I would also set clear boundaries, sticking to our sessions (rather than phone calls between appointments). And I’d have suggested that we did far more therapeutic work before he set pen to paper to share ‘truth’ with the world. Really, there is no such thing as one ‘truth’. There is only perspective, and whilst he no doubt sees himself and Megan as ‘good’ people who have suffered at the hands of ‘bad’ people, families are more nuanced than this.
The question is whether he will – or how much more therapy it will take for him to – see that.