Here's a bunch of Ryan projections/headcanons and their justifications
For me it's my dad for Ryan it's his mom. Ryan's mom has a actual valid reasons from canon to be anxious. We don't get many specifics about the abuse she and Ryan went through before. I do get the vibe that there was a physical element to it at the very least immediately preceding Ms. Cumming's decision to leave. At the very least given what little we see of Mr. Bowers he's very erratic so I imagine in the years leading up their escape it was a high stress household.
Then after they finally do start their lives over she's essentially living in witness protection. She is very aware that Mr. Bowers is still out there and could potentially find them. This leads her to parenting discisions like Ryan being the first kid in his friend group to get a phone (ditto dude) specifically to relieve some of this constant worry.
Anyway I think after all that, there's no way his mom is chill and unbothered. I'm sure there are days where she fully falls back into witness protection mode or abusive household mode.
Subsequently I think Ryan also has anxiety issues stemming from his mom. Basically he both is very cautious not to trigger her anxiety and also has a problem with borrowing her anxiety for himself. This leads him to say no to things purely because he thinks his mom would be worried about it even if she did say yes (specifically I was talking to someone about how Buck and Cooper would totally go camping together out at trickle lake and I think if Ryan ever got invited he would preemptively make an excuse about not wanted to go rather than go through all the stress of asking her)
I know the exact line in the books that sparked this one:
"She leaned over my desk until her long, brown hair was almost swinging in my face. It smelled like strawberries, and for a split-second I was distracted. But I shook off the momentary crush and stared her in the eyes"
This line stuck with me for years because it reminded my of my experience so acutely. As a teen there were so many times where I would see something aesthetically attractive about a guy and then be like "crush? oh wait no he's also annoying because of xy&z so nah" Anyway I came to the conclusion that Ryan doesn't know what a crush is and believes that's just a thing people choose to do for fun based on various aesthetic qualities and degrees of compatibility.
From there it was pretty easy to start interpreting everything through an aroace lens (I apparently full blocked out all of the Ryan/Jill stuff until I reread them last year and I was so upset to find it T-T. I'm choosing to interpret the romantic undertones of their relationship as one sided and also completely ignoring Ryan's secretary because that plot was weird anyway) Ryan is frequently shown in the books and the radio show to be "immune" to the crush that every boy has on Valerie.
and then when Ryan asked Jules out I was like him dating a non-Christian is like way out of left field for him what happened? OH! he must be asking her out because this is the least likely relationship to turn long term, duh
3. being the kids who gets lumped in with any friend group,
He's got a weird assortment of friends, he's a sports guy, he's in the tinkerer's club, I get the feeling that generally people seem to like him no matter what context he's in. That to me says he's
4. him bottling up every issue he has because he doesn't want to burden the people he loves
This is fully from the books. He had to keep major information about himself secret from all of his friends from a young age. I fully think he kept that secretive mentality going forward. This also links back to his mom. I don't think he takes any of his problems to her for 2 reasons. 1 she'd probably overact and 2 if she is also stressed about it at all he's going to wind up being stressed about that too and just compound the issue
I don't think we acknowledge as a fandom enough that both Ryan and Vance are fans of the same princess movie.
