Hannah Ferrier's Panic Attack on Below Deck Mediterranean May Not Have Had Anything to Do with Conrad Empson After All

Who among us can't relate to feeling anxious — and even overwhelmingly so — at times? Hannah Ferrier, for one, is open about having struggled with anxiety in her life, and Below Deck Mediterranean viewers even saw the chief stew suffer a panic attack on a recent episode. At the time, the assumption was that Hannah's feelings for Conrad Empson were contributing to her nerves. But was that really the case? 

In a recent interview with Decider, the Australia native opened up about the (mostly) positive response to her showing her vulnerability on air. "The response was really amazing ... A lot of people reached out and said, 'I didn’t know that anyone else got the physical symptoms that I got.' Because people don’t talk about it. There are obviously a lot of people in the world that feel really alone in terms of getting that sort of anxiety. People who don’t suffer anxiety or aren’t close to somebody [who does], get stress and anxiety confused and they are two very different things. So I think it was good to see people’s response that they felt less alone ... I think the viewers appreciated the fact that they could see another side of me." 

When the reporter mentioned that Hannah had said, during her moment of panic, "I think I'm falling in love with [Conrad]," Hannah shared more of what had happened before her panic attack.

"The anxiety had been going quite badly for eight days leading up to the attack; it didn’t just come out of nowhere," Hannah said. "What I was doing at the time [was asking], 'What is different from Season 1 to now?' And all I could think was Conrad. Looking back and watching the season now, actually there was a lot that was different. We had the most vile charter guests that we have ever had. The first two weeks I was doing four hours of sleep a night consecutively. Sandy was really quite hard on me throughout the start of the season. Also you don’t get away. You can’t get away from the cameras, you can’t get away from the work environment, the charter guests just keep coming. In a normal job you can go home and sit down with your partner or your girlfriend and have a glass of wine and unleash and talk about it. Even when we are speaking with our families we don’t have much time. Everything just goes into your head as opposed to coming out, which is what you do in a normal scenario."