Carly Pearce has two crippling mental health conditions.
The 35-year-old country singer shared on a Monday episode of Bunnie Xo’s Dumb Blonde podcast that she suffers from both anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Both have taken a toll on her since the Kentucky native’s childhood.
Pearce explained it took her a while to realize the mental health conditions began long ago. ‘I would have told you three years ago my anxiety started during my divorce in Covid,’ the performer said of her 2020 split from Michael Ray; they were wed for only one year.
‘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.’
Carly Pearce has two crippling mental health conditions. The 35-year-old country singer shared on a Monday episode of Bunnie Xo’s Dumb Blonde podcast that she suffers from both anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder
‘I’ve had crippling OCD since I was a child,’ she said
When COVID-19 hit, she realized she needed to take action to feel better.
‘I think it just really came to a head of me wanting to do something about it in Covid,’ Pearce noted.
‘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.’
And that led to her carving out some down time to chill out.
‘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.’
Pearce also shared that her mom’s ‘perfectionism’ likely helped spark the OCD but she did not blame her mother.
‘I watched and led by example, so then I wanted to have everything perfect,’ Pearce said.
Anxiety does not take a vacation: ‘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,’ she said; seen August 20
This comes after Pearce had a heckler removed from her concert.
The star was performing at We Fest in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, on August 2, when her concert was disturbed by a man.
In a clip that has circulated on social media, she could be heard saying: ‘Somebody get him out of here. I do not want him at my show.
‘Get out of my show.’
The individual was seen being escorted from the audience at Soo Pass Ranch, after Carly declared ‘I do not have time for d****’.
She said: ‘If you’re gonna be an a****** – then you’re gonna have to say it to me and get the f*** out of my show.’
According to radio host Ian Godfrey, Pearce, who was among those to post the footage, the man interrupted Carly after she said she ‘wanted to tell you all a little about me’ by shouting back ‘no one cares’.
Pearce is currently dating entrepreneur and dog rescue advocate Jordan Karcher, having “hard launched” their relationship on Instagram in July 2025
She later fumed: ‘This is the first time I have sent somebody out of one of my shows, but if you’re going to be that mean and disrespect me, you are not welcome.’
The 34-year-old star isn’t the first artist to have their concert disrupted by a heckler.
Recently, Adele gave a homophobic member of her audience a grilling.
The ‘Hello’ hitmaker taught them a lesson after they shouted, ‘Pride sucks’.
The 36-year-old singer – who a huge LGBTQ+ following – was performing one of her ‘Weekends with Adele’ Las Vegas residency shows at Colosseum at Caesars Palace when she shut them down.
She fumed: ‘Are you f****** stupid? Don’t be so f****** ridiculous. If you have nothing nice to say, shut up, all right?’
