Portraying Anxiety: TV Shows That Get It Right

By: Abbie Overdorf 

Trigger and Spoiler Warning: This article contains talk of anxiety, death, depression, cancer, panic attacks, and suicide, as well as spoilers from the shows Alexa & Katie, Normal People, and The Summer I Turned Pretty. 

To be able to watch a TV show and connect so deeply to a character because they struggle with anxiety and panic attacks is very comforting. Mental health representation of any kind in television is important, but correctly portraying it is even more significant. Viewers want to relate to a character or two as they engage in what they are watching. A character with anxiety can help someone who is going through the same thing. Alexa & Katie, Normal People, and The Summer I Turned Pretty are excellent examples of how to write as well as portray a character with anxiety and panic attacks. 

Alexa & Katie 

Alexa & Katie follows two best friends trying to navigate high school after Alexa is diagnosed with cancer and undergoes treatment. Throughout the series, we watch Alexa’s journey of battling cancer as Katie supports her. As Alexa wins her battle with cancer, Katie experiences anxiety that leads to her having panic attacks. 

In season three’s episode “Panic! At the Putt Putt,” Katie and Alexa are in high school getting ready to take the SATs. They’re having a normal conversation about the high school they’re in and how the test determines their future, until we see that Katie starts to hold onto her chest and is barely responding to Alexa. Katie’s panic attack comes out of nowhere. She tries to carry on responding to Alexa, keeping up with her smile and laughing mood. Her eyes become glued in one place as she holds herself against a wall, struggling to breathe properly. At one point in the scene, Katie looks like she’s in a trance; then, at another point, she frantically looks around like everything is disoriented. Alexa realizes something is wrong and tries to help Katie the best she can. 

According to Better Health Channel, a panic attack is a brief episode of intense anxiety that can cause a physical sensation of fear. One may experience a racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, dizziness, and trembling. Panic attacks can occur frequently or unexpectedly. They can last for a few minutes or a half an hour. 

Katie’s slow walk to another wall, her hands shaking, the tugging of her shirt, and her wheezing sounds from not being able to breathe are very accurate representations of a panic attack. The depiction of it comes to life through her facial expressions. We can feel the panic and distress she is dealing with through the screen.  

In the season four episode “Choose Your Own Adventure,” Katie is working at a coffee shop, cleaning off a table when she encounters another panic attack. We see again how it comes out of nowhere. Her hands start to shake as her breathing picks up. This time around, she knows what’s going on and attempts to calm herself down after trying to contact her mom. She shakes her hands out, takes deep breaths, and starts counting down by one hundred. Her friend, Aiden, walks into the coffee shop and notices her having a panic attack. He sits her down and has her name the most annoying customers in the shop, interrupting and redirecting her thoughts. It’s an excellent tactic to use when someone is experiencing a panic attack.

Her approach to try and calm herself down is a great one, but sometimes the anxiety is too much to handle by yourself. As a viewer, we can relate to the pain she is going through of not being able to calm down, even with the appropriate coping mechanisms. When TV shows try to depict panic attacks, they tend to put a meaning behind them. Alexa & Katie shows that panic attacks can come out of nowhere with no explanation. Viewers of the show have commented on how accurately the actress who plays Katie, Isabel May, represents anxiety in these two scenes. 

Normal People 

Normal People follows Connell and Marianne through their on-again, off-again relationship during high school and college. Their relationship is complicated because of their insecurities and social statuses. This miniseries, which is based on a book by Sally Rooney, covers a vast amount of mental health issues, one of them being social anxiety, and does so very well. 

Throughout the series, we watch Connell struggle with anxiety, specifically social anxiety. According to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America, social anxiety disorder, also known as social phobia, is the anxiety or fear of being judged, evaluated, or rejected in a social or performance situation. Someone with this disorder may worry about acting or appearing visibly anxious. They also may be concerned about being viewed as awkward, boring, or stupid. Because of this, they may frequently avoid social or performance situations. If they are not able to avoid a situation, it can result in anxiety and distress. Physical symptoms someone may experience are rapid heart rate, nausea, and sweating. 

Connell has a difficult time transitioning to college. On top of trying to adjust to college, he loses his close high school friend to suicide. Connell starts to experience panic attacks, which physically drain him. His anxiety spirals into a depressive episode. Connell’s roommate, Niall, notices the change in him and suggests that he go to the on-campus therapist. 

Episode ten is when the therapy appointment takes place, and we get to see what Connell is really going through in his mind. Before this episode, we could only see his body language, his facial expressions, and what was going on in his day-to-day life. With the therapy scene, we catch a glimpse of how everything is affecting him. Before the actual appointment, Connell has to fill out a mental health survey. One of the questions is about self-dislike, and Connell circles, “I dislike myself.” His self-hate is caused by his anxiety. 

During his therapy appointment, Connell talks about feeling isolated by reality, his friends, and himself. He also talks about having trouble connecting to people, which results in him being unable to connect to his emotions. He has a hard time adjusting to new environments and feels helpless. When he is around others, he keeps a mask on and tries to be cautious, quiet, and neutral to avoid rejection. This all stems from his anxiety that he has buried away, which results in his panic attacks and the depressive episode he is having. 

Connell’s social anxiety grew when he left high school and started college. He talks about how the feeling of not clicking with people is a familiar one. In high school, he felt that everyone liked him but also that he didn’t fit in at the same time. He was a part of a friend group that he felt estranged from but brushed it off as part of being young. In college, Connell thought he’d find his people and have a better life. This didn’t happen, which resulted in him hating his life and grieving over the fact that he couldn’t have his old life back. On top of his anxiety clouding his thoughts about never being able to go back, he’s also dealing with the death of his high school friend. 

Connell’s social anxiety has made him reminisce about his old life. He was never able to fully find another like-minded person, only Marianne, but their relationship is complicated.

This scene between Connell and his therapist is very powerful. The actor, Paul Mescal, does an amazing job portraying Connell’s struggles with anxiety and depression. During this scene, you can feel the immense amount of pain Connell is going through as he lives his day-to-day life with his deteriorating anxiety. 

Throughout the miniseries, we watch Connell deal with his anxiety and how his mental health as a whole becomes worse when he arrives at college. His therapy appointment is the breaking point for him, but it lets him express all the pent-up anxiety he was holding onto without the fear of getting judged. Normal People handles a lot of heavy topics, and social anxiety specifically is one of them, a category of anxiety that not a lot of TV shows talk about. The therapist scene has been widely discussed not only because of the acting by Paul Mescal but also because of how many viewers have related to it, making their own issues with anxiety feel seen. 

The Summer I Turned Pretty 

Based on a book by Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty is about a teenage girl, Belly, involved in a love triangle with two brothers, Conrad and Jeremiah. Belly and her family spend their summers with her mom’s best friend’s family at their beach house in Cousins Beach. 

Conrad, the oldest brother, starts to deal with anxiety that he bottles up, causing him to develop panic attacks. In the season one episode “Summer Tides,” Conrad is on a boat with Cleveland, a novelist who hired Conrad to teach him about boating for his next book. In the scene, Conrad starts to rip off old, bad wood from the boat they are on. As he’s pulling off the wood, he gets a splinter from one of the pieces, causing Cleveland to notice that he’s a bit on edge. Conrad tells him very vaguely about how the week has been bad, which causes him to freak out about not noticing that the more wood he pulls off, the more rotten it is. He begins to express that his heart is beating very fast and that it is getting hard to breathe. Cleveland talks him through breathing exercises to get him through his panic attack. We learn that Conrad is the only one who knows that his mom is battling cancer. This information he holds inside results in major anxiety that he bottles up until he has this panic attack. This depiction of anxiety shows that holding it inside is not always the best way to deal with it.  

Conrad’s anxiety only gets worse in the second season after his mom passes away. In the season two episode “Love Game,” Conrad leaves the beach house while everyone else is watching a movie. He ventures onto the beach and begins to have another panic attack. We see him breathing heavily and clutching his chest as he tries to calm down. Before even knowing the reason, viewers can assume this panic attack is because of his Aunt Julia, who is trying to sell the beach house, but that’s not the case. Steven, Belly’s brother, follows Conrad out to the beach to help him. He calms him down, talking him through it. Once Conrad calms down, we find out that he has received an email that he got into Stanford. This was his mom’s dream, for her oldest to move to the West Coast and study at Stanford. Conrad doesn’t want to leave Jeremiah on the East Coast as he feels like he is responsible for him. 

Throughout the series, Conrad’s parents put a lot of pressure on him as he is the oldest. This pressure brings out his anxiety, and in return, he feels like he cannot talk to anyone about what he is going through. We notice that Conrad’s anxiety makes him act moody and standoffish. Before he found out about his mom’s diagnosis, he was full of life. He would hang out with his friends and be excited about college. The circumstances around his mom battling cancer and his being the first to find out have changed him. 

Christopher Briney, the actor who plays Conrad, depicts this bottled-up anxiety very well, as we can see what he is feeling without any words. Being able to see the change from Conrad before his mom’s cancer, even if it was just in flashbacks and after finding out, is evident in the way he acts. The Summer I Turned Pretty does a great job of showing how the people around you can notice a change in your behavior but brush it off as a person being rude and temperamental when not knowing the reason behind it. 

Alexa & Katie, Normal People, and The Summer I Turned Pretty are just a few examples of TV shows that have correctly represented anxiety and panic attacks. The acting in each of these television series is accurate to real-life situations. We, as the viewers, feel seen while watching these scenes because some of us have been through the same exact thing. Each TV show portrays panic attacks and anxiety in a different but correct way. Not every panic attack will look the same for everyone, and having these scenes on television shows that you’re not alone in what you’re feeling.