CNN —
In the midst of his struggle, Luke Combs wants to help others.
The superstar country singer talked to “60 Minutes Australia” about living with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety.
“I do really well with it for the most part,” he said. “It’s something I think about in some part every day.”
Combs said he has an “obscure” form of OCD and suffered probably his worst flare leading up to his recent trip to Australia and in his initial time there.
“It’s thoughts, essentially, that you don’t want to have,” he explained. “And then they cause you stress. And then you’re stressed out, and then the stress causes you to have more of the thoughts, and then you don’t understand why you’re having them, and you’re trying to get rid of them, but trying to get rid of them makes you have more of them.
Combs described his thought patterns as “really complex” and “really detailed,” adding he’s become “an expert” on how to manage flare ups.
According to the Mayo Clinic, OCD “features a pattern of unwanted thoughts and fears known as obsessions.”
“These obsessions lead you to do repetitive behaviors, also called compulsions,” the site states. “These obsessions and compulsions get in the way of daily activities and cause a lot of distress.”
His particular OCD is “particularly wicked” because it’s not outwardly obvious and his thoughts are sometimes “intrusively violent,” Combs said.
Related article What OCD is — and what it isn’t — according to the experts
“I think the craziness of the particular disorder the I have is… the way to get out of it, it doesn’t matter what the thoughts even are,” he said. “You giving any credence to what the thoughts are is like irrelevant and only fuels you having them. It’s learning to go ‘It doesn’t even matter what the thoughts are.’”
“The less that you worry about having the thoughts, eventually they go away,” he added.
Combs said he has dealt with intrusive thoughts on stage, thinking about it “45 seconds of every minute and thinking about it for weeks. He said he started having OCD around 12 or 13 years old.
“I definitely want to spend some time at some point in my life doing some outreach that kids who deal with this,” he said. “It held me back so many times in my life where you’re trying to acomplish something, you’re doing really great and then you have a flare up and it ruins your life for six months.”
Combs said he has the tools now to not be as afraid of the disorder as he had been in the past. His message is “it’s possible to live your life and be really successful” with OCD.
