Alyson Stoner on Healing Childhood Fame, Identity & Mental Health
Hello and welcome to the Dr. Leaf Show. Today I’m really happy to welcome Allison Stoner to the podcast. You may know Allison as an actor, dancer, singer, and activist. But what I find most remarkable is the way they’ve turned their personal experiences into a platform for collective healing. They are the founder of Movement Genius, a platform that blends movement with mental and emotional wellness. They’ve spoken powerfully about navigating fame, identity, and mental health. and they’ve done so with such clarity, humility, and courage. One of the things we often explore on this podcast is how our experiences shape our mind and how with awareness and intentional practice, we can shape it back. Allison’s story is a profound example of this. They’ve gone through the fires of public life, intense pressure, personal transformation, and emerged not only with insight, but with tools that really help others. So whether you’re familiar with Allison’s work or meeting them for the first time today, I invite you to listen with curiosity because this is a conversation not just about the spotlight, but about what it means to reclaim your inner world and make it a safer, wiser place to live. [Music] Allison, I’m so happy to have you back again. Honestly, we had the most beautiful discussion before. You touch on a subject that is not spoken about enough yet has implications globally for all of us for mental health. So that you know talking about the impact of how we grow up as a child and what I really love about the fact that you know you’re a famous actress, you’ve done all these incredible things, you’re so well known, you’ve touched millions of lives, but you talk about things we meet here so much about trauma and how childhood trauma shapes us. But you talk about a different experience of childhood trauma. You you had so many different levels of it and things that people don’t really think about but do have long-term consequences. So I think the bigger picture of what you bring to the table if I just you know from reading your book and from listening to you and talking to you before and just you know seeing your amazing evolution that you’ve gone through is that you really encourage people to you know be open about finding their identity and I love that. I love and enjoying the small things in life. So there’s a lot of without giving all the questions away and the discussion away. Welcome back. I’m really looking forward to this discussion. Thank you so much for having me and I have to say a deep thanks for supporting the book. You provided a blurb. You are one of the first people I reached out to and I didn’t know if anyone else would believe in it and I deeply appreciate it. I I look up to you and your work so much. And as we sidebarred, um, I now am coming to the table with different trainings and certifications in the mental health space. So, I’m looking forward to seeing how that informs this round of our conversation. That’s amazing. So, let’s start. Well, let’s do this. Let’s people know you and they and I’ve done your intro, but let’s just maybe give a little walk through of why you wrote this book because I think this is a great intro and then we I would love I definitely want to come back and hear about why you’ve done these trainings and what you hope to do with them and just the organization you’ve set up and it’s everything you’re doing. It’s just amazing. So, let’s start with your story and then let’s transition over to how you’ve used the pain to grow and change and the impact that you’re now making in millions of people’s lives, which is it’s it’s wonderful. So, you wrote this beautiful book and it’s and I love I love the title semi welladjusted despite literally everything. I mean that that title is wonderful and I was very honored to do the to do a blurb for it and it is it’s it’s hilarious and it’s heartbreaking to just hear what you went through and I was listening to your interview with Tay and Tay Lner and one you said a lot of stuff but one thing that just really grabbed me was you you things like little things like brushing your teeth and combing your hair and that sort of thing when you on set as a child that was just done to be in front of the camera. So those normal things that we do that are kind of mundane and boring were things that you didn’t think about. It wasn’t done for you. It was done for the camera and everything was done for camera for what people were seeing. And you said made a comment that was very very grounding. You said um you said appreciate those things that seem boring that seem so I’m trying to paraphrase your exact words but the things that seem so boring and so mundane and so dayto-day and the routine those are such incredibly beautifully important things and we need to rejoice in those things that are kind of boring and I’m paraphrasing you a bit but but that was incredible so can we start there before we dive into the depths of your book why did you make that kind of statement from all the excitement of being an actress and singer and I mean an artist you, you know, really very accomplished in so many areas. Well, you’ve brought up so many things already. So I’ll I’ll start with the most recent comment which is for those of us who grew up in any kind of dysfunction or perhaps you know our attachment figures were less consistent or we were navigating extreme highs and extreme lows as a performer or an athlete or a high achieving student or simply being in a neighborhood that had a lot of intense activity or being in a community where you know it was hard to tell the truth cuz you might be punished for it, whatever that might look like for someone. Yeah, obviously that can add to consistent dysregulation. And what I recognized as I began to heal over the years is stability and balance are a mandatory part of being able to signal to the brain and body it’s it’s okay to actually experience safety again. Because for those of us who, you know, whether it seems literal or metaphorical, it was difficult to experience a sense of safety and ease and accessing, you know, your full authentic self. Well, sometimes safety actually sounds like danger cuz it’s so unfamiliar. And sometimes building trust with your mind and body actually seems like the hardest thing to do because you’re used to outsourcing, you know, people pleasing or neglecting your own needs. in service of some greater project whatever that is. So the journey coming back home really illuminated just how critical it is to savor the ordinary moments where things are stable enough. Maybe not always, maybe not perfectly, but enough to reaccess some kind of sense of well-being, groundedness, and reconnection with the body. Um, and so I’ll I’ll move along some of the other comments you made to give some context for people. 2025 is my 25th year as an entertainer in front of the camera and behind. And now it’s my 10th anniversary pursuing a second career in the mental health field. And how that’s looked, of course, it started with my own very very deep uh healing journey which was necessary. You know, my body collapsed. I was in rehab. I didn’t have a choice, you know. Um I didn’t I didn’t read the warning signs. Uh and then over time I fell in love with learning about the mind body connection. Um and through things like sematic psychotherapy and EMDR and you know we can name drop theoretical frameworks and get into um I discovered that I really wanted to be able to simplify some of these concepts so that these mental health tools and these ideas could be way more accessible because everyone deserves to understand their own operating system. And you know better than anyone, everyone’s system is so specific to them. So we can’t give these blanket wellness recommendations without looking at the full context, the full all of the nuances of who someone is um and and who they aren’t. So as I started dissecting uh you know my own genetic history or sorry my genetics my lived experience uh child development I realized that when I observed the industry I started to see patterns emergence emerge uh between my own uh coping strategies and my peers. And what that evolved into was realizing there is what I call a toddler to train wreck pipeline of childers where we see this systematic spiral downwards or you know this series of mental health challenges or what we might call reckless behavior um entitlement. That’s how it appears to the audience on the outside. But when you start to dig into all of the influences and factors um that uh you know create the the landscape for a child performer in the industry, you realize this is actually not surprising at all. It’s by design and thankfully there’s something we can do about it. But very few people stand at the intersection of child development, researching media culture, being maybe a mental health practitioner themselves, and having the lived experience. So, as much as I would love someone else to do this cuz it is very challenging, um, so far, I am recognizing writing the book semi- well adjusted despite literally everything is hopefully I love the cover. Thank you. Powerful first step toward um letting people in, I mean to the nitty-gritty. And we’re connecting dots that hopefully feel fresh and provoke new reflections. And it’s not just about you learning about my story. It’s actually about seeing how all of this ends up creating an ecosystem that also affects audiences at home and, you know, the well-being of children everywhere. So, we can get into it, but that’s that’s some context for everyone. Beautiful. I love that. I love how you’ve painted that nice big picture of and you’ll dive into the details. And this is so it’s so wonderful how you have um the sort of way that you explain things. Um you without even realizing it or you probably do realize it, you’re challenging the current biomedical model which is very much and it’s good. It’s good. That’s what I’ve done for 40 years. Um, and it’s good because the current model is actually showing that was making things worse because you can’t, you’ve just described that the nuances of everyone’s story and the context of everyone’s story and the unique way that we each respond to those eos ecosystems of our lives um and the influences is so um it’s so complex and no one is ever the same. Yes, there’s patterns for like for example in your in your world child um actors go through a very specific experience which is different to maybe someone else but the general still your experience versus Taylor’s for example it’s different and um there’s similarities and differences point being is that we can’t take all that complexity and just simply say oh there’s something wrong with your brain and that’s why you’re sad that completely overlooks your story and it’s sort of a sidebar oh maybe there’s a little bit of influence but the current model so focused on the brain and that everything’s in the brain and that the brain is not functioning like it should. And that model created a problem. If it was successful, we would have a better handle on mental health. And you and I both know it’s worse than it’s ever been. We have Gen Z unhappy than they’ve ever been. We have all the YouTube the U curves swapping and flopping around when it comes to mental health. Um which we seeing um 8 to 10 people dying 8 to 25 years younger from um like preventable lifestyle diseases. you see all these the statistical trends. So what we doing doesn’t work and what we used to do um worked for definitely used to work and then there’s periods of mental health long winded way of saying that I’m very pleased that you are stressing the uniqueness of everyone’s stories and the ability of that you have shown in your in your work and what you do every day on on social media is your ability to stand back observe your story and say I understand that all these elements not my brain my brain my brain simply hosts It’s my mind. It’s what I’ve experienced with my mind. And then obviously your brain and body because you we’ll talk about the the the signs for your brain and your body in a minute, but it was your your mind that experienced that. Your mind that then broke down and your body that broke down. And this is what happens. Not just you, it’s it’s it’s people when we go through life. And how you but how you with your mind have stood back and you’ve done the work of healing. You’ve done the work. You and you’ve transformed. You made a choice. So that wasn’t your brain doing it. It was you doing it and your brain following along. And I know that’s very long what I’ve said, but I wanted to stress because my audience understands that I teach on the mind, brain, body connection. You epitomize that and your story really epitomizes that. So I just wanted to really say thank you for doing that. And now with based on that, now I will keep quiet and I’d love you to dive into your story. I know it’s a long book and I’ obviously you can’t tell us the whole book, but I would love you to just tell us a little bit about just your background, the I mean there’s a lot of stuff in your background. There’s abuse, there’s there’s trauma, there’s levels of trauma, there’s, you know, there’s sexual trauma, there’s suicidal ideiation, there’s um body disorders, body eating disorders, there’s rehab. There’s a lot of things that you went through. Um I’ I’d love you to be as vulnerable as you want to be and just share your story and how you have shaped that and you know we we’ve now know the direction that you’re going in to help people but I’d love people to really understand your story and your context. Absolutely. My pleasure. I’ll touch on the background but I would like to comment on a few things that you said. I’m sure you’ve explained this before, but just to reiterate with, you know, a biomedical framework, a few of the components that I found myself um, you know, left with unanswered questions and lots of symptoms that didn’t make sense until the switch, you know, occurred in my perspective at training and understanding is that the biomedical framework tends to, uh, use, you know, a pathological, a pathizing um, approach. So you’re looking at okay, what’s the surface level symptom issue? We’re going to slap a label on it like a disorder or a condition and we’re not going to look at the holistic view of what’s going on per se. Another element is that the biomedical framework does segment parts of the body or different systems. So instead of everyone talking to each other like the best collaborative teams do, now we’ve got everyone siloed. And you’re saying, “Well, we’re treating the mind, so that must just be neck up. There’s nothing going on in the body.” Those things are completely disconnected. And of course, now we know that is very untrue. And to try and treat something with, let’s say, just talk therapy when your nervous system is on fire and unable to regulate. Well, we’re going to lose access to executive functioning and creative problem solving and all of these wonderful aspects of what our brains can do when they feel safe enough to come back online fully. Um, so that’s the the non-technical language. You can clean that up for me in post. Um, but I just wanted to name that. And you also mentioned um, you know, this idea of deconstructing identity and understanding the stories that drive us. And I know we can get into this a bit later about how um, being in a religious setting came with its own. I’d love you to talk about that. Yes. And and being in, you know, a particular family dynamic um, that involved abuse and addiction came with its own um, map for identity formation. then the industry of course did uh did so as well. So, you know, once we start to unpack all of these layers, um I I’ll save it for later, but uh I’m I’m looking forward to all of us creating a bit more of that distance between the story and what we internalize because that, at least in my experience and in my training, has been a gateway to actually experiencing civil liberation from some of the suffering um that accompanies the narratives, the myths um that can really plague us. Um, and of course that’s not to dismiss real symptoms, real lived experiences. It’s more so to say, okay, if all of this, then what is still possible to do hereafter? Um, so keep moving through all of the the different components that you mentioned. you know, growing up in the spotlight, uh, if I could ground this in some research, you were sharing some statistics about the mental health crisis and what all of us are facing collectively. If I could get more specific um, and name some statistics and and research uh, around the experience of fame. So, for a person who experiences fame, there’s some great research from Donna Rockwell on the phenomenology of fame. A fun word to look up if you haven’t ever looked up phenomenology. Um, it’s our best attempt at I shouldn’t say our I wasn’t a part of creating this field, but an attempt to explain someone’s subjective experience in uh in an objective way, right? Um and so when uh the the paper came out, wow, so many things clicked. It showed that the experience of fame actually follows the same trajectory of becoming addicted uh to a substance or any other kind of emotion. And so the the experience is it it can and is it can be and is addictive. Uh and then on top of that uh Jib Fowls shared some research that um I believe this was his work that uh experiencing fame can shorten the lifespan of 12 to 14 years and that’s due to a number of factors right it could be safety issues of maybe a stalker being involved or mental health challenges or XYZ but 12 to 14 years shave life. And unfortunately, it also there’s a correlation between experiencing fame and dying by suicide. I’m not sure if you provide content warnings or if we want to pause and just say if this is too much, you don’t want to hear this, just skip ahead a little bit. Yeah. Move on to another topic. Absolutely. Can you just Yeah. Just to reinforce that if if anyone is feeling um dis disrupted in any way or uncomfortable just fast forward past this po point and you can pick up it. We totally understand. Yes. And so the research shows that the rates are three to four times higher of folks dying by suicide if they’re also experiencing fame. So let’s just situate that in the context of a child being addicted to a drug that’s going to fundamentally alter their neural wiring. It’s going to provide a very warped map of reality and that’s their only map that they have. So there’s no alternative. There’s no norm or baseline. this is the line and it’s going to inevitably lead to a higher risk for so many kinds of challenges. So I I share that. Then if you take one step back and just look at um the mental health of creatives and artists, we see a lot of research that say while on one hand creative outlets can be and are such a beautiful gift for us when we’re coping or looking to express ourselves. It also shows that artists whether they’re pursuing it professionally or in some kind of you know community level tend to have higher rates of anxiety, higher rates of depression, um more coorbidity. So living with a lot of different experiences um that may or may not already be treated. So, if they’re entering very vulnerable mental states as they portray characters, but they’re not even aware of some of their own um uh vulnerabilities internally. Yeah. That can create a recipe for unexpected challenges. Um and then I’ll start to give you some specifics about growing up in Hollywood as a as a kid. What a wild thing to say. It’s just so bizarre. I’m thankful that I’m on the outside of it enough now that I can look in and see the absurdity for what it is. Um, I do not personally wish it on anyone. Hopefully the book will, you know, call a lot to attention. Um, but I’ll give you some specific specifics on experiences. Um, as an actor, if you’re a child, let’s say you’re 6 years old, your brain is not differentiating between fantasy and reality yet, but you’re going to be asked to play a new character, maybe every day for a new audition. And some of that material might be very intense. It might even be reenacting trauma. And so your job, which at six you’re just trying to please the adults around you because they’re in charge of keeping you safe and fed and sheltered. Um your job is to be as deeply committed to this experience as possible. Yet your tiny young developing brain can’t make the distinction. Is this real? Is it fake? Is it me? Is it a character? It’s all one big soup. So you can imagine a young person who’s experimenting with so many different identities and lived experiences. Some of these in my case actually embedded themselves as if they were my own memory and I actually would have physical reaction. Yes. Um so we’ll we’ll just name that because I’ll spare you the long-winded version. You can read all of the stories in the book. Read with care. Take your time. Um then let’s talk financial instability. So there’s some research that shows only 2% of actors um actually earn enough for that to be their only job. So it’s very very very rare for someone to be able to support themselves solely as uh you know an actor in the industry. And that research was pretty old. So I’d say now it might be even more volatile even less predictable. Um, so now as a child, uh, you’re in this world where you’re most likely going to be rejected, you know, a hundred, 200 times before you get a yes. Uh, and there’s heavy competition. Uh, you’re, you know, trying to just win strangers over. Um, but there’s always the fear that you’re going to be unemployed because a job only lasts a day, half the day, a couple days. And if you don’t keep booking work, not only does your team not get to commission, but they might drop you as a client because you’re not earning money. So even for families who are not relying on the child to be a bread winner, there’s still a lot of implicit messaging for the young artists that this is serious and it’s on me to deliver. So then yeah I think too much pressure for I mean just two sorry to interrupt you Ellison but there’s two things I want to just make two comments first of all that level of pressure is just this as we all know the six-year-old mind and brain because the mind and brain are separate and body three parts to us are not wired for that they’re not ready for that so that’s already going to it’s amazing that any child actor actually gets through when you hear this and then the other thing you mentioned about paying taking on roles is this is something cuz I’ve spoken with quite a few people in in a pe quite a few people in in the with a profession in in the acting profession that you an adult battles to distinguish you know that what about and you know as a child so I’m speaking to the the choir here but literally um every experience you have does wire into your network and if you don’t know it goes mind first and that’s 99% so the whole the whole experience is being absorbed by the different levels of our mind and then that wires into the brain. And I’ve got actually some little props here for those of you that are listening. I’m holding up my famous wiry tree and my plant here. And I just want to show you this, Alison. I might have showed you these before when I interviewed you. But literally in your as you have an experience in your mind, it’s an energy field. But that energy field then moves into the brain and it becomes a protein chemical structure. And if it’s a toxic experience like what you’ve just described, taking on someone else’s trauma as an enactment, it wires in and into the brain as trees and then into 37 to 100 trillion cells of our body as littleike small little tiny hedged-ike structures. So it’s in three places. It’s in the 99% part of our mind. It’s in our brain as these treelike structures and it’s in our body. So now one day you’ve got this thought network coming and this network coming. So there’s and there’s no management of that. there’s no regulation. And that age, it’s hard enough for an adult, but at that age, the ability to distinguish. So, you build all these personas and toxic experiences into your brain as though they’re your own memories. And that is creating this tremendous pressure on on the body cuz you speak about physical symptoms. And I know you’re going to speak about them, but I just wanted to lay that foundation for the audience that when Allison explains the symptoms that she experienced in her life, it makes total sense that you experience that because you’ve got all this stuff that’s not you in your mind that you can’t really distinguish and even adult actors battle. Go ahead. Yes. And I love something you just said. Actually, in the context of what I was experiencing and what many listening were experiencing, the reactions within our body were normal. They were proportionate signals. Hey, this is too much, too fast, too slow, too little, too whatever u for me to handle. And so I’m I’m shouting at you. I’m I’m saying please, please, please stop. whatever that reaction is in the body. Well, of course, if that happens repeatedly and there’s no chance to recover or reconnect with safe community and stabilize, then of course see that toxic stress compounding and then giving way to things like chronic illness and other kinds of aches and pain tension in the body that maybe you’re not even aware you’re experiencing because at some point perhaps we end up disconnecting um because it’s too much to bear. And so I just want to highlight that while the reactions are not something I wish on anyone, um there there needs to be at least some compassion in our healing journey when we recognize, oh, okay, this was a response to an extreme experience. And let me go one step further. Perhaps that experience wasn’t extreme for someone else, but for us in in our unique system, it was. And that’s enough to say it needs attention. It needs care. And you know, just to name like you said, you know, we can all be in the same room, experience the same thing, and walk away with one person feeling traumatized, one person feeling completely resilient, perhaps they had access to resources, they’d been through something before, whatever the case may be, and you know, another person having a very different experience. So, you really have to get so specific. Um, and I wanted to I wanted to complicate things just a little bit further. Um, and name some components that I dive into in the uh more deeply in the book. Um, but when it comes to my own mind and body as a child performer in the industry and perhaps others will relate to this just in their own life path. Um, my body was literally a product and it was legally owned. my name, my likeness, um, owned by different corporate entities who were able to dictate what I said, what I did, where I went, uh, how I looked. And so being on a set, um, you know, you have so many different kinds of experiences where people are approaching you, uh, maybe touching you if they’re helping you get dressed or putting a mic pack on your body, even if it means slipping their hand down your clothing. Um, and so there were no conversations ever about anything like bodily autonomy, consent. I didn’t even know those words till I was in my 20s. And wow and I I I share that because you mentioned something else um that there were no resources available. So it’s really bizarre that in this world that we’re you know entering when we we come into the world that we don’t get a couple manuals for some of these critical essential life skills and basic things. Yeah. Yes. Basic things. So uh and therapy. I mean there literally needs to be therapists, caregivers, a whole team per child or you know have teams on set but they’re not I remember you telling me before there’s was nothing and is there anything now? Do they do is is there any change in the industry in terms of support for children? I’m excited to share that some strides have been made. Um, we’ve got a long way to go, but I’m actually um getting certified as a mental health coordinator for productions and sets and wonderful through the association of mental health coordinators. Now, the industry doesn’t necessarily know how critical this role is yet, but we’ve seen something uh similar in intimacy coordination where people who have to recreate or enact um intimate experiences often including uh violence. Um, yeah, for the past century of film making, no one was there to make sure anyone felt uh safe or comfortable with what was going to be done to their bodies. Uh, how many people would be in the room watching? Also, secondly on trauma. Think of the crew who might have gone through something and now they’re watching it out and they’ve got to hold the light in place, but there’s no support. So, intimacy coordination finally has become a thing. um and it’s still making its way into being truly standardized. Um but similarly, mental health coordination, it’s not just about onset support. They have an incredible suite of services that actually benefits the audience as well. Such as if the character is going to be depicting um an experience of mental illness, is it done accurately uh ethically in a way that um removes harmful stereotypes? Um, for example, a mental health coordinator could help review a script where there’s a person living with schizophrenia. And if they see that that person is also painted as the villain of the story, they could, if the production company is open to receiving this content note, let them know that statistically actually someone living with schizophrenia is not or something times more likely to be a victim of crime, not Yeah. Right. And so if we’re going to be sharing this kind of um uh media, then that’s going to further stigmatize the condition. And so there are a lot of a lot of different services that a coordinator can provide. I’m I’m grateful um beyond that track. I also designed artists well-being essentials. To my knowledge, it’s the first of its kind. Um, it’s a digital toolkit that young artists and parents and their families um can use and not only to learn about how to build a strong mental and emotional and physical foundation going into the industry, but then we provide artist specific activities. Um, so you know, helping a young person into character but also out of character at the end. um managing stage fright, uh coping with rejection, all of the things that subtly add up to, you know, what can be really challenging components of this particular life path. Um so there are strides being made. I’m also, you know, getting involved with SAG after the union, uh, and, you know, teaching classes and I’m really trying to just plug in. And then at a high high level, we are seeing, um, there are some federal policies that are going to be introduced in the fall specifically to protect kid influencers in digital spaces. Um, wow, that’s a whole new a whole new conundrum. It affects a lot of people. Um, so all that shredd strides needs more work, but I do lay out quite a game plan at the end. If you make it to the end of the book, I sort of say, “All right, listen up. Yeah, here’s what needs to change.” No, I love that. Wow. Just wow to everything. Thank you that you’ve taken your experiences and turned them into something so constructive. And it’s so wonderful that you’ve itemized so many very constructive pathways that for the acting industry, for that that whole industry, but there’s also life lessons for every person. So you don’t have to just be in some kind of, you know, in front of the camera. This is life skill work that you’ve translated into. So your Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about um your story. Allison, did you finish um did you finish everything that you were saying wanted to say earlier on cuz I know you you were on a roll and then then I wanted to emphasize those two points. Did you finish that point? Were you okay? It’ll probably roll back in. It’ll probably roll back. I know there’s just so many. It is. And there’s just so many incredible things to to talk to you about. Let’s talk a little bit about your story, your backstory, and why are you so absolutely driven and and convicted that this has to change and how and you not just talking about it, you are doing something about it as you’ve just described. H well, you know, I might be able to segue this in segue this into uh talking about the title, how the title came to be. Great. Great start. Great start. So initially when brainstorming after I had written the manuscript, the term welladjusted uh was pitched by my writing supervisor and it was it was a play on the former moniker I was given um by certain media outlets and families and fans growing up. On the one hand, you know, they’d expressed disdain toward my peers who seemed to be quote unquote acting out. Um, you know, they were seeing the memoirs and the documentaries about the drug addictions and the psychiatric hospitalizations and decimated fortunes and sexual trauma, incarceration and even suicides um that defied my my peers lives and for some of them their deaths. And then on the other hand, I at the time had this quote unquote squeaky clean uh tryhard Mother Teresa wannabe image um as the ultra compliant overachiever. Um, and it earned me that badge of being the quote unquote welladjusted one, but in reality I’d amassed a trove of unhealthy coping mechanisms. They were my best attempt, of course, at at coping. To cope. You were trying to cope. But you know it it the experience of chronic anxiety and for those who experience high levels of anxiety my heart is with you cuz wow it’s like living with a whole other being inside yourself sometimes um and also experiencing OCD tendencies and eating disorders something called alexathyia um that peopleleasing the workcoholism um codependent relationships etc. So all of these attempts to manage a chaotic and and unconventional life path were mostly hidden from the general public. Um or they were praised by society as admirable traits. You know, wow, you pulled another allnighter employee of the month. Um and so all that said, when uh my writing supervisor suggested well adjusted, I just thought, you know, it feels like a misnomer. It’s not really honest, even if we say it’s sarcastic. But when I jokingly said, well, semi well adjusted, that felt honest. It felt accurate. Um, it felt related. Um, and it sparked actually a whole different conversation. So yes, I’m sharing the truth of, you know, or my experience of what happened growing up, but I also I want to move beyond just examining this toddler to train wreck pipeline. I want to actually start to unpack some of these larger cultural myths about society that affect all of us. Like for example, what does it mean to be well adjusted if the society itself is dysfunctional? Do we want to be well adjusted in an unjust and broken system? Is it possible to be well adjusted to be truly well individually and collectively unless we transform the systems from the ground up? And until then, simply put, how do we stop doom scrolling at 2 a.m. and stop being so addicted to the phones that are designed to be addictive by nature? So, you know, these larger questions are really what I’m eager to, you know, hear uh people’s feedback um on. It’s it’s like what do you want to be what is the best we can do in an imperfect society? and imperfect is uh putting it lightly very lightly. I love that looking at the bigger picture. So we go from and if you know if everyone takes on the challenge a lot of what we the work that I do and my team and the research that we do and what I did for 25 years was to try and empower people to manage their minds and to really tap into the wisdom of their unconscious to tap into the wisdom of what ancients have talked about for years. You know, we talk about spirit, soul, consciousness. Very also very popular to talk about today um in this current ze. It’s very popular, but people kind of muddle it up with the brain. But the point is that these these um getting people to really understand who they are as a decent human. It takes one person at a time to when you see who you really are and how connected we are and what love actually looks like. not the romantic love, but being a decent human, operating in the currency of kindness, those kinds of things. If if we can make those kinds of changes as an individual despite what we’ve gone through and use all the things you’ve gone through, we’ve gone through, everyone’s going through um to grow like the kinugi vase principle, we change society from the bottom up. And I think that’s that’s how you know when I think of you and your work and and what I’m trying to do it’s we’re trying to help people to take your story see the kinugi principle you know see those parts all the things that have happened and you’re growing out it’s learning you can grow but more more importantly is how can you become a more a decent semi-adjusted human that is constantly learning so that you can then impact the next person because people are drawn to that. people are drawn to that level of authenticity that that change that happens inside of us and that creates a mass swell and that creates a change across society and then obviously you know you got to have the top down as well but it it starts with the individual you know it takes one person to make a difference and I think that’s really um a very it’s a very big goal that you have is to try and help people to if I’ve read you correctly and you know followed you and that kind of thing and talked to you before it’s very important that people find themselves um and you use your story to try and help people find that unique identity. Yes. And something you said um it it sparked the thought about the fact that things need to change bottom up and top down and there are obviously power dynamics at play. A lot of people feel very disempowered by very real circumstances and material impact of what’s happening at the top and how it ends up affecting you know millions and millions of people in their everyday lives. And so it’s it’s both and it’s all of it all at once. And it’s finding where you are located currently in this ecosystem and map of social change. And if you find yourself, you know, positioned in a place where you’ve got access to some resources but not all of them, then what can you do with what is available to you at the moment? And who might you know, so we’re not all trying to do this alone in an alienated way. Who might you know who has access to a couple different kinds of resources? And how can you help each other and start to build a community from the ground up where you’re enriching each other’s lives? You’re pouring into each other. You’re uh inspiring healing for one another and within yourselves while also recognizing that yes, we need to see some accountability from the quote unquote top um as well. Uh, and and it’s it’s all of it all at once. And it’s not I don’t know that it’s a productive conversation all the time to try and say it’s only this or it’s only that or until you figure it out, I’m just going to be, you know, over here upset. Like, at the end of the day, I’m I’m hoping for each of us within our position um to be able to be honest about the experience. We’re not dismissing things and simultaneously consider how shifts in perspective, shifts in micro lifestyle changes, um, can really truly lead to a very different quality of life. Um, and I I want to be careful here because I I’m not saying we’re going to wake up and now we’re all on the beach somewhere and we’re never stressed as much as, oh, now we feel equipped with tools so that inevitably when these difficult things are happening around us or to us, we actually have grown some of the resilience. So, we’re, you know, to use your beautiful tree illustration, we’re not bending so far that we break each time, but now we’re there’s some flexibility cognitively, behaviorally, relationally. Um, and that that’s something for, you know, better and worse. That does come from at least stepping outside the comfort zone uh here and there. And yes, take some time to retreat and gather your wits after a challenge. But we also, I think in this day and age, can’t always afford to just shrink our lives and say, “That’s it. I’m staying inside forever more.” We actually do have to find whatever our version is of that stretch zone and what we can tolerate so that slowly we can build up capacities. you know, some of them feel a bit more fixed, but others there really are there’s a lot of room to grow. So, I just, you know, I share that as an encouragement, not to minimize um the reality of how challenging something might be, but to just say, “Hey, um you know, as you’re suggesting, uh if it’s just 1%, what can that 1% look like today?” Um and and we don’t have to get it perfectly right away. Like we can truly just practice some of these new tools, preferably in non-crisis moments because we all know what it’s like to try and do a new skill while the emergency is happening. Tough, but practicing some of these tools that you share in all of your books um that when I read your most recent book, I was like, “Yes, these are things I slowly began implementing 10 years ago and I still rely on.” And if we’re being fully candid, this book tour, this campaign, this is kind of like, you know, going back to the quote unquote scene of the crime. And so I’m I’m I knew I was probably going to struggle a lot more. And I’m having to put some extra guard rails up. And I can’t I I I’m trying not to blame my mind and body for being imperfect or not being, you know, perfectly uh you know, resilient and and ready for anything all the time. I’m trying to just say, “Hey, look, like this is a lot. It’s going to be a lot. We’re going to do our best. Um but at least there are tools. At least you have options and you don’t feel as helpless, which can just be so difficult when you feel like you’re in your own mind. That is the that is the most that’s the most awful thing to feel helpless. And that’s one of the things that we really try and what I really try and do with my work is to help people have hope. And you mentioned my my new book. Yeah. That’s coming out just before yours, Help in a Hurry. Um 5th of August. Yours is 26th of August. And this is as you quite rightly say there’s if we can manage what I’ve shown with my research is if you can manage the 63 seconds you can manage the the next hour the next day the next week. So what you can do now in this moment is set you up for how you’re going to then and then you want to change a pattern it takes around 63 days and multiple cycles depending on the level of trauma. The point being related to what you’re saying is you’re talking about taking little minute steps and it’s in that moment how are you going to react in this moment and in that moment how you react influences what your mind brain body network is going to look like. You direct the neuroplasticity. You can direct those changes and this is what you’re saying. So the science of what you’re saying is it literally does happen. If I can just in this moment make a change it’s going to change how I function. But not only that, there’s the whole honestly the concept of the butterfly effect, chaos theory, which I’m sure you’ve heard. Butterfly flaps its wings here, changes something in China. We all laugh at that, but it’s not actually it’s it’s it’s actually happens. Every every thought creates and every thought is and every and the thoughts you talking about creating with your with your life story and your vulnerability and your book tour and bringing out your book is to help people, you know, change their thoughts. This is how I’ve reacted. There’s a reason how I’ve reacted because of these adverse circumstances. This is how I can. This is how where I went. This is where I was. This is what I’m doing with this. And you’re trying to encourage people one step at a time to do that. So, could we transition to just a little bit? I know we don’t have a huge amount of time left, but could we maybe just transition if you could choose one story and then people can go and get the book. Allison’s book will be out on August 12th. Then you can get it wherever books are sold. Semi well adjusted despite literally everything. Could you maybe share in the last few minutes Allison just a a little one story from I know there’s so many there’s people must get the book but could you think of one story that kind of highlights the discussion that we’re having that sort of emphasizes maybe something from your childhood something whatever you’ve got so many stories that’s that’s too broad from your childhood pick one that maybe is really something that was a key turning point as you back to the the scene of the crime as you as you mentioned and you’re back at the scene of the crime and you’re being vulnerable about things that are hard to be vulnerable about and the impact in your life and so on. Could you think of one that was maybe that stands out as a turning point? Something that comes to mind is around 17, right before my 18th birthday, I started noticing my body was shutting down. And a lot of that was a result of these obsessive eating disorder behaviors um that have been going on for years at that point. And ultimately when I found myself in rehab um you know basically on bed rest for a couple of months cuz we couldn’t really stand or walk around. We had to focus on um stabilizing the body and getting more energy and and fuel to my systems. Um I had to finally um start to face everything that had been stored in my body for years. Um, but something I mentioned earlier was this term called alexathyia. And it’s, you can Google it if you’d like. It is different from dissociation. Um, so I want to be specific about my experience of dissociation here. I think that’s a word that gets thrown around quite a bit these days. Um, drown. And actually, some experiences of dissociation are very normal. their healthy responses to things around us. Um, absolutely. In my case, now I understand that there are a couple at least two different categories of a dissociative experience. One can be in the category of disconnection from the self. That’s where you hear terms like depersonalization, derealization, where you really you’re finding it hard to be in your body and and feel that connection to your embodied experience. Then there’s also um a category of compartmentalization. So perhaps you feel like you’re in your body when it comes to this part of your life, but this whole other part of your life has just been blocked off in some way, compartmentalized. So when I think about when I was in uh rehab, the disconnection experience was very pronounced. And as I started to remember things I I should say in my embodied experience, the memories were flooding forward through different symptoms and um experiences like you know panic attacks that felt random and um unprovoked from anything in the immediate um experience. And I was feeling, you know, the anxiety in a palpable way, not just getting rid of it by leaning on exercise or controlling my food intake. That was a really, really intense and vulnerable experience. It needed so much care, so much patience. And I walk through that story of what it meant to not only start to learn these skills, um, but to be working with a therapist who had seen all that was about to come forward and was so wise in how she maneuvered my unique embodied needs of going so so so so I mean so slowly. I think I was in her office for years before I was able to even label where I felt the emotion in my body. Um, and that’s just the pace that it that I needed. Um but if I can head uh the other kind of experience of dissociation um the compartmentalization factor actually writing the book helped me realize that I tend to I tend to lean on the part of me that’s hyper responsible that says you know everything that happened it must have been my fault. It’s kind of self-laming and yes yes of course we can unpack that. That’s a bit of a a a coping strategy. You know, if you can’t rely on the people around you, then at least if you blame yourself, you feel like you’ve got some sense of control, whatever. However, I was making sense of that. But in writing, my writing supervisor would come back um after I submitted my drafts for the chapter and she would say, you know, can we press on these buttons a bit more because I’m I’m noticing that you’re explaining what happened according to what you remember at the moment, but then you’re showing these really intense reactions in the body, responses, um struggles, But you’re only ever saying it’s purely your fault. Is that the full story? She said, “I’m not trying to help you blame other people. This is not about the blame game at all. But if you’re only hyperfocusing on the individual level and you’re missing maybe some of the systemic factors or familial dynamics, um we might we might just be missing the some of the story. And I realized actually it did not feel safe to assign responsibility to anyone else. So, I actually had to reintegrate some other parts of myself um that are quite messy. Woo! They are quite messy. And you’ll see the book is not written from my wise contemplative self. It is written as the psychological journey and development of the the messy thoughts, the messy feelings, the messy responses that happened in the moment. and it’s very very vulnerable. Uh so please you know read it in the most humanizing way as possible. Absolutely. Please um but I wanted to name that this kind of reintegration and reconnection um has been one of the greatest gifts and outcomes of the journey of writing the book. I finally feel like I’ve got a bit more of a cohesive story of my my past, my present, and my future. Oh, that’s really beautiful. That reminds me of something I say often, which is you can’t change your story, but you can change what it looks like inside of you in your mind, brain, body network, and therefore how it plays out into your future. And I think your, you know, your story really embodies that. Allison, thank you so much for your vulnerability, your time for writing this book. kind of people are going to be very touched and very moved and um for the way that you are turning that around as I’ve said um so much now in this interview how you’re turning it around to help people. So, thank you for joining me today and I’m really thrilled for you and excited for your new book. Thank you so much. It’s so nice to see you.
What happens when childhood fame shapes your identity, rewires your brain, and leaves no roadmap for healing?
🎬 In this powerful conversation, I sit down with Alyson Stoner—actor, dancer, singer, activist, and founder of Movement Genius—to explore the hidden costs of early success and the science of reclaiming your inner world.
Alyson shares raw insights from their new book “Semi Well Adjusted Despite Literally Everything,” diving into the pressures of the entertainment industry, the long-term effects of growing up on set, and the neuroscience-backed practices that helped them rebuild.
We unpack:
• Why stability and “boring” routines are essential for brain and body healing
• How fame impacts mental health and identity formation
• The toddler-to-train-wreck pipeline in child stardom—and how to break it
• Tools for reconnecting with yourself after trauma
• The role of community, neuroscience, and intentional practice in real recovery
📖 Pre-order Alyson’s book Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything: A Memoir (Out August 12th):
Follow Alyson on Youtube & Instagram: @alysonstoner
📖 Order my new book Help in a Hurry:
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DISCLAIMER: This podcast and blog are for educational purposes only and are not intended as medical advice. Please consult with a professional for personalized support.
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