DR MAX PEMBERTON: The real reason Meghan plays the victim

Poor Meghan. That’s what we’re supposed to say, isn’t it? Back in the UK this week, one wonders which sympathy card she’ll play next. After all, every interview she gives centres on the ‘woe is me’ mantra.

Clutch your ethically-sourced pearls and reach for the tissues while she sits in her multi-million pound house, surrounded by staff and security. How does she get through the day?

In all seriousness, I do wonder if she can really believe she’s so hard done by and that the average person on the street would have any sympathy?

Can she really be so insulated against the plight of ordinary people that she doesn’t think she’s coming across as phenomenally out of touch and self-obsessed?

I’m sure she’s had struggles in her life, just as everyone has. I don’t doubt that marrying into the Royal Family was a big culture shock, especially if you thought it mostly entailed swanning around a palace and putting on pretty frocks for film premieres when the reality is more cutting ribbons at a new sewage processing plant in Stevenage.

But most people would keep this to themselves. It’s not a trauma by most people’s standards. The awful truth is that Harry really has had a trauma; losing your mother at such a tender age is dreadful.

So why is Meghan ‘constantly looking back at how awful it was to briefly be a royal’, as one source who knows the Sussexes was quoted as saying this weekend?

It helps no one to be a prisoner to their past. That’s not to say we have to just sweep what’s happened to us under the carpet. Far from it. But there does come a point where if you don’t learn to move on, it starts to define you.

At some stage, you have to let the past go, or at least build on it to stop it festering and consuming you.

But with Meghan, I think there’s something profound going on here, something I’ve seen with some of my patients.

A few years ago I worked for a charity and in order to fund this I worked a few days a week in a private clinic. Many of my patients were eye-wateringly wealthy, with some even flying in on their private jets just for the appointment.

They had a life of unparalleled privilege. Yet as I talked to them, there were some who seemed to feel maligned and injured, slighted and upset. They were extraordinarily sensitive and at pains to paint themselves as the victim at nearly every opportunity they had.

It was quite bizarre and in sharp contrast to the poor, disenfranchised patients I saw at the charity, who seemed to just accept their lot, do the best they could and get on with things.

It took a while for me to realise that it was precisely their privilege and the pressure that this brought that made those wealthy patients so quick to play the victim card.

They had great privilege but, unless they also achieved great things, they would always been seen as a failure. Perversely, their privilege was like a millstone round their neck.

The problem was that no one had any sympathy for this. I would have people in their 20s and 30s who were children of the rich and famous trying to convince me they were one of life’s victims, rather than having been handed a golden ticket — through no real merit or talent of their own — that few could have imagined.

They had a toxic, noxious combination of self-entitlement and over-inflated self-esteem that resulted in a bitterness and bewilderment that not everything always went their way.

Rather than sucking this up as life, they used this as evidence that they were the real victims. And the key thing I realised was that the sense of victimhood was a perfect way of absolving themselves of life’s problems.

It meant they always had a ready-made excuse for why things were going wrong, or hadn’t worked out how they wanted. It was always someone else’s fault; there was always someone else to blame.

Of course, regardless of how rich, privileged and well-connected you are, life can feel an uphill battle at times.

But getting some perspective on things and realising this is part of life’s tapestry is a key skill. I find it truly astonishing that someone as apparently bright and intelligent as Meghan seems to struggle to grasp this and, therefore, comes across as increasingly tone-deaf.

The Duchess of Sussex wants us to think that she’s the victim of all sorts of injustice that she’s gallantly battling against, when I’m afraid it just comes across as a self-indulgent, out‑of-touch whinge.

Sorry Kate, I’m not buying it

There’s been a trend recently of celebrities starting up wellness companies. It began with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop. Kate Moss is the latest with Cosmoss.

While I’m all for people making healthy changes and appreciate that celebrities can influence people, it worries me that many are promoting unproven or questionable products.

The reality is these people are incredibly wealthy and live rarefied lives, and it’s this, rather than some magical remedy, that enables them to look so fabulous. They are selling a fantasy. With cooks, cleaners, drivers and assistants, they are insulated from the realities facing most people.

They don’t have to juggle family life and work like most people. Remember that when you hear them going on about miracle wellness products. 

Health Secretary Steve Barclay has launched a plan to root out waste, wokery and dead wood in the NHS to cut costs and free doctors from red tape amid a backlog crisis. This is long overdue. Bureaucracy is crippling doctors’ work and preventing us from seeing more patients. It’s exhausting and frustrating. 

• Doctors warned last week about Britain’s ‘terrifying’ laughing gas epidemic after a rise in patients with ‘life-changing’ nerve damage and paralysis from using the drug. The gas — nitrous oxide — is the second most commonly used recreational drug in the UK, after cannabis. Where I live in central London the streets are strewn with the small shiny metal canisters the gas comes in. It’s incredibly popular with teens and gives a brief high when inhaled. But it can also cause breathing difficulties, a dangerously-increased heart rate and even death. We need to educate people about the risks. Part of the problem is that because it’s termed ‘laughing gas’, it’s assumed to be harmless. In fact, it’s a potent chemical and its use can have tragic consequences. It seems part of a generally quite confused and illogical view of the world held by Gen Z, who don’t drink alcohol because of health risks but blithely inhale laughing gas. Madness.

DR MAX PRESCRIBES…

SOBER SEPTEMBER 

Traditionally it’s Sober October, but this year the buzz is Sober September. Many of us have over-indulged during the first proper summer after the pandemic, so it’s time for a reset after all those parties. And no, it’s not too late to give it a go!