Carly Pearce Discusses ‘Crippling OCD’ Battle With Bunnie Xo: ‘I’ve Had Anxiety My Whole Life’

Carly Pearce opened up about her battle with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder during a new interview and revealed that she’s been struggling with her mental health since childhood.

Pearce, 35, discussed her anxiety during the Monday, August 25, episode of Bunnie Xo’s “Dumb Blonde” podcast. When Bunnie, 45, asked when the country singer’s anxiety started, Pearce explained that it took her a while to realize how long she’d actually been battling it.

“I would have told you three years ago my anxiety started during my divorce in Covid,” the Grammy winner said. “But I’ve had crippling OCD since I was a child. So like, checking my backpack over and over and over, checking my alarm over and over and over. … And my mom would just try to calm me down, or I would freak out over storms. I remember her taking me to the local library to meet a meteorologist to try to calm that. I’ve had anxiety my whole life.”

Pearce said that she “still” struggles with OCD, but the 2020 pandemic made her decide it was time to work seriously on her mental health. (That same year, she split from husband Michael Ray after less than a year of marriage.)

“I think it just really came to a head of me wanting to do something about it in Covid,” Pearce recalled. “Being taken off the road, going through a public divorce, it was like, I think my body just had a visceral reaction of like, ‘Oh, my God.’ I can’t tell you how many interviews I sat through trying so hard to keep myself together. It’s been a journey for me. … I felt like I was trapped in my own body.”

The “Every Little Thing” artist said that she realized fairly recently that she needed to take some time to work on herself.

“I got really conditioned over the last 10 years to just zip it up and deal with it, and it just kind of got to a place where a couple years ago I just had to really start back into therapy, start really, like, trying to figure out all of these different things,” Pearce said. “Like, recognizing OCD was something — no, that didn’t come in 2020, that’s been there since I was 6 or 7.”

Bunnie asked whether there were any specific triggers in Pearce’s childhood that might have caused her OCD, and Pearce pointed to her mom’s perfectionism. She noted that her mom never put pressure on her to be perfect, but she still tried to emulate her behavior.

“I watched and led by example, so then I wanted to have everything perfect,” Pearce recalled.

Pearce has previously opened up about how important therapy is to her, especially since her divorce from Ray, 37.

“I became more open, in my daily life, with talking about how I’m feeling and owning whatever emotion is coming up,” she told Prevention in 2021. “I think in the way you take care of your body, you have to take care of your mind — it’s a muscle as well.”