In the stories of Rules for Escaping, each of the characters have undergone or are in the midst of trauma/suffering, and are in one way or another looking for an escape. From subtle traumas such as bad father facing punishment; a hike in a barren wasteland followed by an existential breakdown in an emergency room; a man who thinks he sees himself on a billboard wanted for murder. To more deeper traumas such as a young man dealing with guilt and regret after his uncle's suicide; a theoretical physicist who believes she is on the cusp of a breakthrough and meets a depressed man who has taken up driving with his eyes closed for fun; a Colombian immigrant and charity care officer who, amidst reoccurring panic attacks, finds comfort in pressing her panic button in hopes to be saved; a young man who in therapy discovers his trauma may have been a fake memory implanted by a hypnotherapist; and for the title story, a man who awakes every morning in an Escape the Room of his own design, showing the ways in which people with mental illness have to go through difficult routine daily tasks to function.

Throughout the collection are interwoven themes of identity, race, grief, depression, anxiety, suicide, and obsession, mixed in with humor, satire, surrealism, and Postmodern twists on format.