Prince Harry says he wants to break his family's cycle of 'pain and suffering' as a parent
- Prince Harry says he wants to break the cycle of "genetic pain and suffering" in his family.
- He appeared on Dax Shepard's "Armchair Expert" podcast to discuss his mental-health journey.
- Harry told Oprah in March that his father stopped taking his calls when he stepped back as a royal.
Prince Harry says he wants to "break that cycle" of "genetic pain" in his family.
Speaking on a new episode of the podcast "Armchair Expert," released on Thursday, the Duke of Sussex opened up about his mental health and said that he did not want to pass on the pain he experienced during his upbringing to his children.
"I don't think we should be pointing the finger or blaming anybody, but certainly when it comes to parenting, if I've experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I'm going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don't pass it on, basically," he told cohosts Dax Shepard and Monica Padman.
"It's a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on anyway so we as parents should be doing the most we can to try and say, 'You know what, that happened to me, I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen to you,'" Harry added.
As Insider's Anneta Konstantinides previously wrote, Harry wanted to step back from royal duties long before he met Meghan Markle, and that, during the podcast, Harry said that he thought about doing so while he was in his 20s.
"I was thinking, I don't want this job, I don't want to be here. I don't want to be doing this. Look what it did to my mom," Harry told the hosts. "How am I ever going to settle down and have a wife and family when I know it's going to happen again? I've seen behind the curtain, I've seen the business model and seen how this whole thing works and I don't want to be part of this."
Harry previously spoke about the sensitive nature of his relationship with Prince Charles during his interview with Oprah Winfrey, which aired in March, where he said his father had stopped taking his calls when he told him he planned to step back from royal duties.
"When we were in Canada, I had three conversations with my grandmother and two conversations with my father before he stopped taking my calls," Harry said in the interview.
He also said that Charles asked him to put his departure plan in writing noting "all the specifics," which included that the announcement would be made on January 7, 2020.
Opening up to Shepard and Padman, Harry said that as he looked back at his father's life, he was able to better understand his behavior and treatment of him.
"I never saw it, I never knew about it, and then suddenly I started to piece it together and go, 'Okay, so this is where he went to school, this is what happened, I know this about his life, I also know that is connected to his parents so that means he's treated me the way he was treated, so how can I change that for my own kids?'" he said.
In the podcast, Harry also said that he and Markle, who are parents to 2-year-old Archie and are expecting a daughter this summer, moved to Los Angeles to protect their family.
He said the move had not been part of the plan but "sometimes you've got to make decisions and put your family first and put your mental health first."
Harry has advocated for more candid discussions of mental health through a number of initiatives over the years.
In 2014, he created the Invictus Games to help mentally and physically rehabilitate active-duty soldiers and veterans through sport. On the podcast, he explained that "healing other people heals me."
He added: "That's where the compassion comes in. Once you've suffered, you don't want anyone else to suffer."
More recently, Harry created "The Me You Can't See," a mental-health documentary series alongside Oprah Winfrey which will premiere on Apple TV+ on May 21 and encourage viewers to talk about their own struggles.
Clarence House did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.