‘Heart of Invictus’: Prince Harry Says ‘Trauma’ From Princess Diana’s Death Came ‘Fizzing out’ After 2012 Afghanistan Tour — ‘What Is Going on Here?’
Prince Harry’s opening up about the “trauma” he experienced over Princess Diana’s death. In Netflix’s Heart of Invictus docuseries about the Duke of Sussex’s Invictus Games and competitors’ journey to the 2022 games, the soon-to-be-39-year-old explained suddenly “feeling everything.”
[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers from Heart of Invictus Episodes 2 and 4.]
Coming home from Afghanistan served as a ‘trigger’ for Harry’s ‘trauma’ surrounding Diana’s death
In the second episode of Heart of Invictus, “Invisible Injuries,” Harry explained how a second tour of Afghanistan in 2012 (Harry spent 10 years in the military) prompted him to look back on how he coped with his mother’s 1997 death.
“My tour of Afghanistan in 2012, flying Apaches,” Harry said (via Netflix). “Somewhere after that, there was an unraveling. And the trigger to me was actually returning from Afghanistan and the stuff that was coming up was from 1997 from the age of 12.”
Diana died at the age of 36 on Aug. 31, 1997, in a car crash in Paris, France, along with Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul.
“Losing my mum at such a young age, the trauma that I had I was never really aware of,” he continued. “It was never discussed. I didn’t really talk about it, and I suppressed it like most youngsters would have done.”
Harry started ‘feeling everything’ without a ‘support structure’ to help
“When it all came fizzing out, I was bouncing off the walls,” Harry continued. “Like, ‘what is going on here? I’m now feeling everything as opposed to being numb.”
The duke went on, noting how a lack of “support” had been challenging. “The biggest struggle for me was no one around me really could help,” Harry said. “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 fetal position, probably wishing that you dealt with some of this stuff previously,” Harry added. “And that’s what I really want to change. I’ve always wanted the Invictus Games and the support that comes with that all year round to be a net to catch those individuals.”
‘Chaos’ ensued after years of Harry being ‘unable to feel’
Fast forward to the fourth episode of Heart of Invictus called “Group Therapy,” and Harry connected with Darrell Ling, a veteran of Canada’s navy, on trauma spilling out after tours of duty.
“It’s like shaking a pop bottle and twisting the lid and it’s a mess,” Ling told Harry. “I don’t want that to happen. I’m glad that you have been through this stuff and know how we feel.”
“I can’t pretend to know what you’ve been through,” Harry replied. “But the reason why I was smiling when you talked … is because I had that. I had that moment in my life where I didn’t know about it. But because of the trauma of losing my mom when I was 12, for all those years, I had no emotion. I was unable to cry. I was unable to feel.”
Harry continued, saying he “didn’t know it at the time” and wasn’t aware until the age of 28 when “there was a circumstance that happened that the first few bubbles started coming out and suddenly it was like someone shook it and went [explosion] and then it was chaos.”
“My emotions were sprayed all over the wall everywhere I went,” Harry said. “I was like, ‘How the hell do I contain this? I’ve gone from nothing to everything.’ Now need to get myself, like, a glass jar, and put myself in it [and] leave the lid open.” His therapist’s response? “‘You choose what comes in and everything else bounces off.'”
Heart of Invictus premiered on Aug. 30, 2023.
