Luke Combs details his struggles with Anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and how he has worked to overcome them in an upcoming interview.
During The Big Interview With Dan Rather on Wednesday (Jan. 13), the country superstar gets super personal about his struggles with anxiety and how the disorder has impacted his life.
“It’s something that I always struggled with, and always affected me,” Combs explains. “First time I can remember is probably middle school kind of up to the end of college, and I still have my moments here and there. It’s something that I’ve learned about and something that i’ve been able to get a hold of and so it’s been great to kind of felt free from those things for a long time now.”
“So it’s kind of like a unique form of OCD that I have, that’s called Purely Obsessional OCD. I know when you see people that have OCD you think of them like messing with the blinds or fixing the carpet,” Combs explains of his unique form of anxiety. “Essentially, my version of messing with the blinds or straightening the carpet are kind of thoughts that I play over and over in my head, [For example] it comes in waves and it’ll be something about my health like I’ll be worried that I’m about to have a heart attack or a stroke and it becomes this very obsessive thing that you literally can never have an answer to. So that’s kind of the awful part of it.”
Combs says that education has been key in helping to largely put his issues with anxiety behind him.
“You have to teach yourself to becoming comfortable which the fact that you’ll never get an answer and that it is a super uncertain thing,” He concludes, “It’s something that you learn about yourself, and arming yourself with the knowledge of exactly what’s going on is the most important thing, I’ve found.”
Combs also talks about his whirlwind success and reflected on life before stardom when he was a bouncer at a bar and his deep love for music. He also performed his hit single “Hurricane” during the show.
The episode was filmed both virtually via Zoom and in-person with camera teams.
The Big Interview With Dan Rather airs on Wednesday (Jan. 13) at 8PM ET on AXS TV.
