Gideon's Anxiety

Gideon’s anxiety is presented not as a single crisis but as a recurring way that everyday situations can become overwhelming. It affects his confidence, his willingness to approach other people and his ability to manage routine demands; even so, he develops language for what is happening and, with support from his therapist Robbie, gains ways to respond without treating every anxious thought as fact.

Profile and Pattern

Gideon describes himself as a seventeen-year-old who is nervous much of the time and finds it difficult to talk about himself. His anxiety is especially pronounced in situations where he expects to be judged or must interact with unfamiliar people. A job interview at a menswear store becomes the focus of an extended spiral: before it begins, he is already anticipating the questions and worrying about how he will perform. His self-description links this fear to a wider lack of confidence, rather than to one particular interview or workplace.

The episode also shows how closely anxiety and self-consciousness can reinforce each other. In a toilet cubicle, Gideon tries to regulate his breathing and settle himself by focusing on small, immediate details: the print advertisement on the door and the movement of his toes. He repeats an instruction to redirect his attention away from the approaching interview and toward those concrete objects. The effort offers a makeshift way to stay with the moment, but the interview is nevertheless derailed; later, Robbie observes that Gideon has dodged a job that would not have suited him. The contrast is characteristic of his account: he can recognize the absurdity of his fear while still being caught in its force.

Anxiety in Ordinary Situations

Anxiety also disrupts Gideon’s driving lesson. When his instructor asks him to parallel park on a busy street, he worries about his ability, then becomes increasingly distressed after a car stops behind him and he fails to park twice. Rather than treating the waiting driver as part of a normal lesson, he becomes preoccupied with inconveniencing her and disappointing his instructor. He abandons the attempt, drives home, and spends hours in his room feeling intense pressure in his chest.

Robbie draws attention to the imbalance in Gideon’s concern: he is more troubled by the possibility that the other driver has to wait than by his own distress. When asked whether he himself would resent waiting briefly for a learner driver, Gideon recognizes that he would not. This exchange gives a concrete shape to his tendency to turn ordinary events into high-stakes catastrophes. The problem is not that he lacks all insight; it is that insight does not automatically prevent his mind from assigning danger or blame to situations that, viewed from outside the anxious moment, are manageable.

Gideon organizes these experiences into five states. They range from a milder pre-anxious condition, with a racing heart, some sweating and jitteriness, to high anxiety, in which he feels unable to breathe and imagines disaster. In a hyper-aware state he notices details and conversations intensely, then overprocesses them and assumes others dislike him or regard his presence as an inconvenience. He also describes a version of normality in which these states become less dominant, and a depressed state marked by depleted energy and emotional distance. This is his own working map of his experience, not a claim that each state follows a fixed sequence. It emphasizes fluctuation: anxiety may recede for a time without ceasing to be part of his life.

Therapy and Practical Coping

Robbie has been Gideon’s therapist for four years, beginning after the family moved. Gideon had seen three therapists before him and found them old, frustrating or patronizing; Robbie’s approach makes a different impression. He asks quick, ordinary questions, including about Gideon’s interests and whether he has had a girlfriend or boyfriend, without assuming his sexuality or drawing conclusions from his appearance, his mothers or his scars. Their first session includes conversation about celebrities and television rather than an immediate interrogation about depression, self-harm, hospitals or medication. Robbie’s humor and lack of presumption help establish a relationship in which Gideon can return and speak openly.

Over the years, Gideon has also had hospital visits and medication, and says that he and Robbie have worked through difficult experiences. He reports that he has not been in the full force of his depressed state since starting therapy and medication, though he still has days, moments or afternoons when it begins to return. His account is therefore neither of an uncomplicated recovery nor of unchanging crisis: treatment has made a substantial difference in one severe state, while fluctuations and anxious episodes continue.

The strategies available to him are modest and specific. During the interview panic he tries breathing, focusing on his toes and the advertisement, and mentally redirecting his attention. In the driving incident, loose mindfulness strategies are part of what he ordinarily uses to bring early anxiety down, although they do not always work. The narrative does not present these techniques as a cure; they are efforts to manage distress at different intensities. Robbie’s questions help Gideon examine the assumptions that amplify it, particularly his belief that he is responsible for preventing any inconvenience to other people.

Social Life and Connection

Gideon’s anxiety narrows his social world. He describes a deep-seated fear of people and says that he has no friends at school, while his sister Annie is his best mate. He calls himself a slow burn: it takes him a long time to become comfortable enough not to panic. Even the possibility that Issy might like him makes his throat tighten and his breathing difficult. The example connects anxiety to intimacy as well as public performance: attention from someone he might want to know is not simply reassuring, but can itself become an occasion for fear.

Writing offers a form of communication that feels more manageable. Gideon says he prefers it to many real-life conversations because he can revise or delete what he has written. That control matters to someone who becomes anxious when required to speak about himself in the moment. His writing is not evidence that he has stopped wanting connection; rather, it gives him a route into it at a pace he can tolerate. In letters, he makes room for honesty while setting himself a thirty-minute limit and promising not to reread the result, a structure that counters his tendency to think over every detail. He also tells the recipient that he gave up his phone and internet because they were not making him happy and because he wanted to make more choices for his own happiness, despite not feeling naturally carefree or confident.

Course and Significance

The novel makes Gideon’s anxiety legible through its repeated movement between anticipation, physical distress, interpretation and attempted coping. A job interview and a parallel-parking lesson are ordinary events, but his attention transforms each into a test of whether he will embarrass himself or burden someone else. The recurrence matters: the anxiety is not limited to one dramatic turning point, and his ability to describe it does not erase its effects.

At the same time, Gideon’s account preserves moments of agency and connection. He can recognize, after Robbie’s prompt, that another driver would probably not judge him as harshly as he judges himself. He can choose writing over an uncontrolled conversation, and he can make a deliberate decision about the technologies he uses. These actions do not prove that he is free of anxiety; they show him finding limited but meaningful ways to act within it. His story consequently treats improvement as an uneven practice supported by therapy, self-observation and relationships, rather than as a sudden conversion to confidence.