Carla Bezanson’s New Show ‘Don’t Think’ Proves If You Can’t Outrun Your Anxiety, You Might As Well Post About It

Most people try to hide their mental health struggles from the internet. Carla Bezanson built a following by filming hers from her car. Now, the TikTok creator who became known for her brutally honest takes on anxiety, depression, and post-breakup spiraling is launching Don’t Think, a Dear Media show that digs deeper into the messy reality of living with what she calls her “stack of mental illnesses.”

Bezanson found her lane in a crowded but crucial space. The #mentalhealth hashtag on TikTok has amassed over 25 billion views, making it one of the platform’s most engaged-with topics. Her approach—sharing lived experience rather than clinical advice—fills a gap in a landscape where as many as one-third of Gen Z users seek health advice on TikTok, with one in five consulting the app before their doctors.

The 31-year-old from Halifax, Nova Scotia has spent the past year documenting her journey through a public breakup, cross-country moves, and the kind of mental health lows that usually happen behind closed doors. Her brand of radical honesty has resonated with millions who recognize themselves in her car-confessional videos about anxiety attacks, questionable dating decisions, and the particular hell of trying not to text your ex.

The breaking point

“I joke that my stack of mental illnesses is taller than yours,” Bezanson says during our interview, rattling off her diagnoses like someone reading a grocery list. “And if it’s not, I’m so sorry.” She’s been open about living with anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder, and OCD—a combination that makes even routine life changes feel overwhelming.

The podcast launches at what she describes as a “really special time” in her healing journey. After spending months running from her problems through compulsive travel and rebound situations, she hit a wall that forced her to confront everything she’d been avoiding. “There were some times over the last year that were just so difficult. I really didn’t want to continue with social media. I didn’t want to continue with anything. I just wanted to give up.”

What happens in Miami doesn’t stay in Miami

The turning point came after a particularly disastrous trip to Miami—a story that becomes the foundation of her first episode, “Wherever I Go, There I Am.” The trip was supposed to prove she could have fun without her ex, maybe even orchestrate an accidental reunion. Instead, it became a masterclass in why you can’t outrun your anxiety on a plane ticket.

“I had this experience of thinking that if I went somewhere else, I could leave my anxiety behind,” she explains. “I would get there and I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, no. I’m so much more anxious here. I need to get home.’ And then getting home and immediately thinking, ‘Oh my God, no, I’m so anxious. I need to get out of here.'”

The Miami trip crystallized something in her. She was trying to prove her independence while secretly hoping to run into her ex, attempting to party away her problems while her mental health deteriorated. “The exact things I was running from hit me square in the face by the end of that trip,” she says.

Staying still to move forward

What followed was a radical shift in approach. Instead of booking another flight, she made a decision that would have seemed impossible months earlier: She stopped traveling entirely. “I made a decision to stop traveling in April. I haven’t been on a plane since. I haven’t left my small hometown in Halifax, Nova Scotia in four months now,” she says.

This forced stillness became the foundation for actual healing. She ended toxic relationships, found a therapist she connected with (after the exhausting process of “speed dating therapists”), and committed to the unglamorous work of recovery without the escape hatch of constant travel.

The decision to turn this journey into a podcast came at her lowest point. She first met with Dear Media while still in the thick of her Miami-hopping phase, typing up podcast ideas in a hotel room between dates. At the time, it felt “very pie in the sky,” she admits, remembering her inner critic then. “I don’t have what it takes to do a podcast. I can barely keep my head on my shoulders.”

But as her life stabilized, the podcast became both a creative outlet and a test of her commitment to change. “I think proving to myself that I was able to commit to that and prioritize that, it went a long way,” Bezanson says.

Beyond the highlight reel

The show promises to tackle the topics that make for awkward dinner conversation but perfect TikTok content: medication trials gone wrong, the particular humiliation of drunk-texting your ex, and the daily reality of managing multiple mental health conditions while trying to maintain a social media career.

“When you’re a content creator, you don’t have sick days. You don’t have paid time off,” she notes, describing the pressure to stay functional while dealing with mental health crises. “It was like, I need to get my shit together.”

Her approach to mental health content challenges common misconceptions about what mental illness “looks like.” She regularly fields comments questioning whether her struggles are real because she appears “well put together” in videos: “People will say, ‘Well, is it all an act? You don’t look like you have anxiety or depression.'”

Rather than getting defensive, she’s learned to use these moments as teaching opportunities. “I think a lot of the stigma that exists about mental illness, especially like BPD, that’s a really stigmatized one…it’s because these things are misrepresented if they’re represented at all in the media,” she explains.

Overthinking, oversharing

The vulnerability required for her content creates a complex relationship with oversharing. While she’s pulled back from discussing her dating life after her public breakup, she continues sharing because of the response from her audience.

“I’ve received hundreds of messages from people who have actually really been helped,” she says. “People that are going through divorces or just really bad breakups or just really serious periods of mental illness. When I see those messages, it almost stops something in my brain. My brain is very much a lot of the time in overdrive, like business mode…but that puts me back into the mindset I was in when I started.”

She keeps a folder on her phone of screenshots from supportive messages—a digital lifeline for moments when the pressure feels overwhelming. “Whenever I get one, I’ll take a screenshot, I’ll add it to that folder, because in those moments where I’m like, ‘I can’t do this. I want to quit,’ I’ll go and look at it and I’m like, ‘Oh, wait, okay, this is why I’m doing it.'”

So, should you text your ex?

For anyone currently refreshing their ex’s Instagram or Googling therapy questions at 3 a.m., Bezanson offers hard-learned lessons wrapped in humor. Her philosophy involves what she calls “growing the muscle” of resisting unhealthy impulses, even if you slip up sometimes.

“I would tell myself, ‘Okay, I’m not going to text him today, but tomorrow if I still want to, then I will,'” she shares, describing a technique that helped her through no-contact periods. “The wave would pass and the next day would come and I’d be like, ‘Okay, today I don’t even feel like it anymore.'”

The show title Don’t Think reflects the ultimate goal to stop overthinking everything. Sometimes the path forward requires acting before your anxious brain can talk you out of it—whether that’s starting therapy, ending a toxic relationship, or launching a podcast about your messiest moments.

As she prepares for launch week (coincidentally during her cousin’s wedding, providing the perfect distraction from compulsively checking download numbers), Bezanson is characteristically honest about her expectations. “I’m so excited that everybody will hate my podcast,” she jokes, embodying the anxious creator’s mindset of preparing for the worst while hoping for the best.

What she wants for us as listeners is simple but profound: “I want people to just feel that it’s okay. It’s normal and you can laugh about it.” In a world where social media often presents polished versions of struggle, Don’t Think promises something rarer—the messy, funny, ultimately hopeful reality of what healing actually looks like when you stop running away from yourself.

Don’t Think is available now on all major podcast platforms. New episodes drop every Thursday.

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