Conrad Fisher’s panic attack in Season 2 of The Summer I Turned Pretty is triggered by a specific moment: he finds out he got into Stanford, the college his late mother Susannah always dreamed he’d attend. That single piece of news cracks open months of suppressed grief, isolation, and pressure that Conrad had been holding inside since her death. The scene plays out on the beach in the episode “Love Game,” where Steven helps talk him through it.
But the Stanford news is really just the final straw. Conrad’s panic attack is the result of compounding emotional weight that had been building across both seasons, and understanding why it happens means looking at everything he’d been carrying.
Susannah’s Death and Unprocessed Grief
The core driver of Conrad’s breakdown is the loss of his mother. Susannah’s illness and death sit at the center of nearly every emotional problem Conrad faces. Rather than processing that grief openly, he retreats inward, pushing away the people closest to him, including Belly, Jeremiah, and Steven. His roommate at college even notes how visibly depressed he’s been, yet no one in his inner circle is paying close enough attention to intervene.
This pattern maps closely to what psychologists call complicated grief. Research published in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that people who suppress or avoid grief reactions are more likely to experience panic symptoms. The fear of losing control, of crying, of being overwhelmed by emotion, can itself fuel panic. Essentially, the harder someone works to keep grief locked down, the more explosive it becomes when it finally surfaces. Conrad is a textbook case: he appears composed on the outside while falling apart internally, and a seemingly positive event (a college acceptance) becomes the thing that breaks through his defenses because it’s inseparable from his mother’s memory.
The Weight of Being the Oldest
Both of Conrad’s parents placed enormous expectations on him as the firstborn. Even before Susannah’s death, he was cast in the role of protector and responsible one. His father Adam reinforces this constantly. In one scene, rather than checking in on Conrad’s emotional state, Adam lectures him about how he should have been watching the other kids, blaming him when things go wrong. Conrad internalizes this: he believes it’s his job to hold the family together, and that showing vulnerability would be a failure.
This pressure doesn’t let up after Susannah dies. If anything, it intensifies. Conrad carries the emotional burden of his family’s grief on top of his own, while also managing the revelation that his father was unfaithful. He tries to open up at certain points. He nearly confides in Laurel but gets interrupted. He wants to talk to his dad but gets shut down with more responsibility instead. Every attempt at vulnerability is blocked, which reinforces his belief that he has to handle everything alone.
Isolation After the Breakup
Conrad’s breakup with Belly strips away what little emotional support he had left. He believed Belly wanted to end things, so he didn’t fight for the relationship. The fallout goes beyond losing a girlfriend. His relationship with Jeremiah fractures because of Belly, and Steven, who was once a close friend, has been struggling all season with how much Conrad has shut him out.
Without Belly, without Jeremiah, and with Steven at a distance, Conrad is left with no social structure at all. He’s a grieving teenager at a new college, isolated from everyone who knew him before his life fell apart. His roommate can see how badly he’s doing, but a roommate isn’t the same as a lifelong friend who understands the full picture. This kind of social disconnection is one of the strongest predictors of anxiety escalating into panic. When there’s no outlet for emotional pressure, the body eventually forces one.
Why Stanford Was the Breaking Point
Getting into Stanford sounds like good news. For Conrad, it’s a grief bomb. Stanford was Susannah’s dream for him, not just a school but a symbol of everything she wanted for his future. Receiving that acceptance means confronting the fact that she’ll never know he got in, that he can’t share the moment with her, and that pursuing it means living out a life she mapped for him while she’s gone.
This is the cruel math of grief: milestones that should feel like victories become reminders of absence. The acceptance letter forces Conrad to feel his loss in a concrete, unavoidable way, at a moment when he has no one around him to help absorb the impact. His body does what months of emotional suppression have been building toward.
What a Panic Attack Actually Feels Like
The beach scene resonated with many viewers. Comments online described it as deeply validating, with fans saying it captured what real panic attacks feel like. Clinically, a panic attack involves a sudden surge of intense fear that peaks within about 10 minutes. Physical symptoms can include a pounding heart, shortness of breath, trembling, chest tightness, dizziness, numbness or tingling, nausea, and chills or hot flashes. Many people also experience a frightening sense of unreality, as if they’re detached from their own body, or a genuine fear that they’re dying or losing their mind.
You don’t need to have a diagnosed anxiety disorder to experience one. About 2.3% of adolescents and 2.8% of young adults in the 18 to 29 age range meet the criteria for panic disorder in a given year, but isolated panic attacks are far more common, especially during periods of intense stress or unresolved grief. For someone like Conrad, who has been suppressing emotion for months with no support system, the conditions are almost textbook.
How Steven Helps on the Beach
One of the most meaningful details of the scene is that Steven is the one who shows up. Despite feeling shut out all season, he doesn’t hesitate when Conrad needs him. He talks Conrad through the panic attack on the beach, grounding him back to the present moment.
This kind of support reflects what mental health professionals recommend during an acute panic episode. One widely used technique is the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding method: naming five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste. The goal is to redirect attention away from the spiral of fear and back into the physical world. Having another person guide you through that process, staying calm, staying present, can make the difference between a panic attack that escalates and one that passes. Steven instinctively provides what Conrad has been missing all season: someone who shows up without judgment and stays.
The Bigger Picture of Conrad’s Mental Health
Conrad’s panic attack isn’t an isolated incident. It’s the visible peak of a mental health crisis that spans both seasons. He shows signs of depression at college, avoids emotional connection as a coping strategy, and carries responsibilities that would overwhelm an adult, let alone a teenager. Psychology Today has described his behavior as a classic avoidant attachment pattern: appearing strong and self-sufficient while being deeply afraid of vulnerability. People with this pattern often don’t seek help until they physically can’t hold things together anymore, which is exactly what happens to Conrad on that beach.
The show portrays something important about how young men in particular experience mental health crises. Conrad’s suffering is visible to nearly everyone around him, yet no one intervenes until the breaking point. His family assumes his mood is about a breakup. His father responds to vulnerability with more expectations. His friends feel pushed away and stop trying. By the time the panic attack hits, Conrad has been in crisis for months with zero meaningful support, and the Stanford letter is simply the moment his body refuses to keep the grief contained any longer.