Carrie Bickmore gets emotional on-air as she reveals private 20-year battle

Beloved TV and radio personality Carrie Bickmore has opened up about the private battle she has fought for the past 20 years.

Carrie Bickmore has entertained Aussies on TV and radio for many years.

But behind the scenes, the beloved personality has secretly battled anxiety for the past 20 years, which often prompted panic attacks throughout her career while co-hosting Rove Live, The Project, and her current radio gig on the Hit Network’s Carrie & Tommy show.

For the first time ever, Bickmore publicly revealed her private battle in an emotional on-air discussion with co-host Tommy Little on Monday afternoon.

“I’ve suffered from anxiety and panic attacks since I was about 20,” the 43-year-old began in the segment.

“It’s hard, actually, to describe what I felt. It was like shame, I think, [also] embarrassment. I don’t think I really fully understood what was going on in my own head. I think talking about it almost made me feel more anxious, so I just kept it in my own head.”

It wasn’t until recently, when she saw old footage of herself on Rove Live that she remembered feeling anxious for most of her time on the show, from 2006 to 2009.

“I just saw in the vision of me on Rove Live and all I could see was anxiety and I was just permanently in a state of panic on that show,” she told Little.

“I saw that girl in the vision, and I just wanted to reach through the phone and hug her because I was like, oh my God, that was terrifying.”

Carrie Bickmore’s on-air confession was prompted after seeing old footage of herself on Rove Live.

Bickmore said every time she did her regular ‘Carrie at the News Desk’ segment on the show, she was on “the verge of a panic attack”. She said this was pretty much the case “every single time I went on air in any capacity on TV and radio for a good decade”.

“Sometimes, I’d have the panic attacks while I was on air reading the news and I would disguise it as shortness of breath or my quavering voice with coughs or laughs or technical difficulties,” she admitted.

“I kind of never know when they were going to come, so I was constantly on alert – hyper vigilant, I guess – in case one was around the corner, so it’s just like all I could think about. I often think about how I managed to string a sentence together any time on air because that was at the forefront of my mind.”

Bickmore got emotional as she revealed her secret 20-year battle with anxiety.

The 2015 Gold Logie winner revealed the first time she had her first panic attack was at age 20 while working as a newsreader on Perth radio station 92.9.

“I had to stop reading the bulletin part the way through. I just pretended that I was having an asthma attack because I didn’t really know what to say. I didn’t really understand what had actually happened at that moment,” she recalled.

“It was weird because I’d always been so confident, you know, I did drama at school and I was always the one putting myself out there. But something switched in that moment, and from then, it was like ‘game on.’

“The threat of an attack would come every time I’d go on air when I was reading the news. So that was every fifteen minutes doing traffic, I’d have it in my head that I might have one.”

Co-host Tommy Little was among the few who knew of Bickmore’s ongoing private battle.

Her private battle also got in the way of her career choices, with Bickmore initially wanting to turn down the hosting gig on The Project because she was “so scared of doing something new”.
“There were so many jobs over the time that I’ve said no to and I look back and I think, ‘Oh my God, where could that have taken me?’ Incredible opportunities because I was worried that something would set me off and that I’d be humiliated forever,” she confessed.

“But then I also look back and I think for some reason, sometimes I’d want to like lean into the challenge and, and my brain would say, ‘No, don’t let the anxiety win, like you can do this.’ And that’s why I said yes to The Project and ended up doing it for 14 years.”

Bickmore isn’t the only Australian presenter to open up about panic attacks recently. In 2022, ABC weatherman Nate Byrne opened up about a private battle with anxiety, revealing that he had in the past suffered several debilitating panic attacks while live on-air.

This morning, Byrne had to pause mid-broadcast while presenting Queensland’s weather on ABC News Breakfast after once again experiencing a panic attack live on-air.

“I’m actually going to need to stop for a second,” he said. “Some of you may know that I occasionally get affected by some panic attacks, and actually that’s happening right now.”

“Lisa, maybe I could hand back to you,” he told co-presenter Lisa Millar.