For years now, there’s been this weird thing happening in the British media. They keep writing these pseudo-psychological analyses of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, as if they’re trying to understand why Harry and Meghan left them and/or why the Sussexes are bad/unhealthy/immoral people for leaving the UK. These pretend “psych work-ups” go hand in hand with the “remember when Harry and Meghan did such-and-such” articles which often read as more than just SEO slop – those pieces read like spurned lovers sifting through the ashes of a long-dead relationship. Anyway, throughout this decade-long Sussex drama, I’ve come to understand that the British press is in desperate need of intensive therapy. But until then, please enjoy the Independent’s Charlotte Cripps arguing that Prince Harry has “main character syndrome” because the press has made Harry the main character of everything for years. It’s like your abuser arguing that you have “abuse syndrome.”

The Duke of Sussex is reportedly considering a fresh offer to stay at Buckingham Palace when he returns to the UK from his Montecito home in California for round two of “Harry’s homecoming” saga. Harry will visit Britain for the annual WellChild Awards in September, and is said to have been once again offered a room at Buckingham Palace as somewhere to stay. At present, it’s not known if he will be joined by his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, and two children, Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five.

It comes only weeks after the 41-year-old Prince’s last dramafest over his five-day visit to the UK, which involved a litany of intense rounds of will-he-won’t-he to-ings and-froings before he even got here. As we now know from Meghan’s Instagram post last week, the family thoroughly enjoyed the joys of the English countryside via a visit to Uncle Charles’s stately pile (Althorp) and Grandpa Charles’s home in Highgrove.

For someone who is said to enjoy the quiet life and crave privacy, Prince Harry is never far away from drama. Popping up everywhere like he’s in a game of Whac -A-Mole or suffering from “main character syndrome”, when he can’t help placing himself at the centre of every story.

To ramp up the drama in his life full-throttle, he also gatecrashed Meghan’s MasterChef Australia cameo at the weekend by video-calling her while she served as a guest judge on the TV show….After the call, Meghan claimed that her family connect over food, but this latest episode suggests they also connect over drama. Harry’s behaviour is like him putting his head round the door of a party he’s not invited to, or around the bedroom door of your kid’s sleepover to check on them. It signals a desperate need not to be left out.

That’s why I suspect Harry could be tempted to return to the lion’s den for another round-two UK visit so soon. With Buckingham Palace back in play, there is another plot-line to explode. It reminds me of how Diana was portrayed in Netflix’s The Crown; her therapist advises that the adrenaline she gets from chaos is “addictive”.

It’s exhausting to both watch and to be part of it. I know what it’s like to get sucked in myself, as I spent the first half of my life on an emotional rollercoaster thriving on intensity, using over-the-top gestures and exaggerated language, making dramas out of nothing, all so I could be the centre of attention. It helped me feel connected and avoid my own feelings of low self-esteem. I wonder if Prince Harry feels the same way his mother did.

And as Dr Scott Lyons, a holistic psychologist in the US and author of Addicted to Drama: Healing Dependency on Crisis and Chaos in Yourself and Others, explained to me when I spoke to him about Diana’s addiction to drama, it’s “the most accessible and contagious of all the addictions” because “it’s free and can be produced at any time”. He told me that drama addicts “chase drama to avoid trauma” and it’s “a dependency on stress”.

According to Kathleen Saxton, psychotherapist and author of Sly and Mighty: How to Recognise, Resist and Rise Above Toxic Power, to be published in September, not everyone who creates drama enjoys it, but sometimes it’s the only language they’ve ever learned. “If you grew up in a family where attention only came through conflict, where love was unpredictable, or where you had to be loud to be noticed, your nervous system may have learned a simple equation: intensity equals connection,” Saxton tells me. “As an adult, peace can feel unfamiliar, while chaos feels strangely like home.”

While Harry was always the spare, not the heir, he always had the bigger personality from childhood, taking up the space that his brother’s birthright would eventually make impossible for him to properly fill. As the outgoing brother, he, not William, is the one who had the charisma to become a compelling leader. Yet, it was never going to be.

So the endless spiral we see now? Perhaps his way of still trying to take up the space outside the system; to show the “men in grey suits” he refers to in his memoir Spare that, despite their best intentions, there is no keeping Harry in his place. By constantly being at the centre of the drama, Harry becomes impossible to ignore. But the truth is, to find any peace, Harry needs to step away from all the noise that he, in part, creates. Only then will he heal – and have a chance of finding his true place post-Megxit and a potential role in the firm. But there is no sign of this drama ending soon. The next chapter has only just begun.

[From The Independent]

None of this is actually “main character syndrome.” Main character syndrome is centering yourself in every single conversation, subject, event and relationship. That’s not Harry. Harry simply IS the main character to the British press, and Cripps can’t acknowledge the difference. “Harry gets so much attention whenever he does or says something” is not the same thing as “Harry centers himself and creates drama wherever he goes.” There are two hilarious admissions slipped into the piece though – “As the outgoing brother, he, not William, is the one who had the charisma to become a compelling leader.” Once again, being outgoing and charismatic does not equal “main character syndrome.” It just means that Harry is a natural leader and people gravitate towards him, and not his dull, angry-egg brother. “Harry needs to step away from all the noise that he, in part, creates. Only then will he heal…” All of that psychobabble just to argue that Harry needs to go into hiding!

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.