Prince Harry, who is expecting a girl with wife Meghan and is already the father to their boy Archie, stated that he did not want to pass on the pain he had gone through.

The Duke of Sussex opened up about his mental health in a new edition of the podcast “Armchair Expert,” which was launched on Thursday, and stated that while he did not blame his father, he had committed to avoid making the same errors with his own 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.
The Duke went on to explain how, as he grew older, he began to notice parallels between his life and that of his father.

“I never saw it. I never knew about it. And then suddenly I started to piece it all together and go, ‘Okay, so this is where he went to school. This is what happened. I know this bit about his life. I also know that’s connected to his parents. So that means that he’s treated me the way that he was treated, which means how can I change that for my own kids?'” Harry said. “And, well, here I am. I’ve now moved my whole family to the U.S. but that wasn’t the plan. But sometimes you’ve got to make decisions and put your family first and put your mental health first.”

He added: “So living here now I can actually lift my head and I feel different, my shoulders have dropped, so have hers, you can walk around feeling a little bit more free, I can take Archie on the back of my bicycle, I would never have had the chance to do that.”

However, he stated that “we should be pointing the finger” at anyone.

Clarence House and Buckingham Palace both declined to comment on his views.

When the pair was dating, Harry also described how he met Meghan in a shop and pretended they didn’t know one other.

He explained: “The first time Meghan and I met up for her to come and stay with me, we met up in a supermarket in London, pretending as though we didn’t know each other, texting each other from the other ends of the aisle.

“There were people looking at me, giving me all of these weird looks, coming up to say hi or whatever but there I am texting her whilst we’re shopping, asking if this is the right thing and she’s replying ‘No, you want the parchment paper’.”

Since his early twenties, Harry has voiced a desire to quit the royal family. He and Meghan left their royal responsibilities last year, and they announced their decision not to return early this year.

“I don’t want this job,” Harry remarked, recalling his inner anguish at the time. “I don’t want to be doing this, look what it did to my mum.” Recognizing that he “can’t get out,” he changed his perspective to attempt to make the best of his circumstance by using his privilege to help others.

According to a source close to Harry, Meghan was the one who first introduced him to the phrase “ancestral healing,” which was verified by Harry himself on the podcast…. Meghan was a part of his realizing that there was a better path, and a better place for him to be. As a result, he’s quite forthright about it. Doria Ragland, her mother, taught her about generational trauma. Meghan is also said to be a proponent of tapping treatment, often known as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), which targets particular pressure points to reduce anxiety and emotional distress.

Prince Harry’s statements, according to BBC royal journalist Jonny Dymond, are “firmly on the private side of the curtain” for the palaces.

“That’s not to say that they don’t talk about it behind the curtain. It’s been put to me by various people in different quarters that this is largely as a result of Meghan, that Harry is – or was – happier in his role before Meghan,” he said.

“But Harry himself says in this podcast… that Meghan was part of the process of him u”

In promoting the next series, Harry told Shepherd that he understood in his early 20s that he didn’t want his royal obligations, in part because of “what it did to my mom.”

“The three major times I felt completely helpless — one when I was a kid in the back of the car with my mom being chased by paparazzi, two was in Afghanistan in an Apache helicopter, and then the third one was with my wife,” he added.

The Duke of Sussex also urged listeners to learn from the “bad stuff that happens to you,” adding, “The universe is basically saying to you, ‘I’m gonna school you.’ What can you take from each of those moments?”

Harry and Meghan are expecting a daughter and currently live in Montecito, about an hour north of Los Angeles.