Meet the Disney Child Star Who Exposed Hollywood and Took Back Their Power (ft. Alyson Stoner)

0:00You'll remember Alison Stoner dancing in that unforgettable Missy Elliott music video or Disney's Camp Rock. That child star has grown up and is peeling back the Hollywood curtain in a new tell-all memoir. Semi-well-adjusted despite literally everything. I uncovered a box of documents that had a completely different story about what happened in my childhood. I'm Alison Stoner and you're watching The Burnouts. Alison, you went from being one of the most recognizable faces on Disney Channel to deciding to walk away from Hollywood. When was the moment you decided you wanted to leave that behind? It's interesting to frame it as walking away because I think I was asking myself a lot of different questions.

0:43I think what was driving it was recognizing that I was sacrificing my health to such a severe degree that I would not have been able to do anything sustainably after I pause to get treatment for an eating disorder, that was the first time since six years old that I had taken a break. Recovery, for anyone who's been through it, is quite an active process, so it's not really a break, but it was a shift in my environment. And in that shift, I had enough consistency and routine and support from professionals who were able to start asking these deeper questions. So I sought help for my health, thinking that I was just going to recharge my battery to go out and be just as ambitious.

1:28And what actually happened was it sparked an entire new set of questions about what am I doing on a daily basis? How does this fit into the larger picture of systems? What's the impact on the world? And when I started asking those questions, I was like, yeah, no, something big has to change here. And talk to me about that moment when you decided, okay, I need to seek treatment because you talk about working relentlessly. You were training seven hours a day to try and get the role as Katniss. When did you decide, okay, this isn't healthy for me. This is an eating disorder. I need to step away. I had been managing, navigating what it meant to have food and exercise related obsessions and behaviors for many years before that.

2:11And so I had already tried on a lot of different methods for recovery in terms of self-guided plans, working with a dietician, trying things that, you know, where I was still trying to move 150 miles an hour but heal at the same time. Spoiler, that didn't work very well. It was actually out of desperation seeing that this issue had become so magnified that I was forced to give it more attention. Of course, it's a privileged to have been able to go to inpatient treatment. I think once I was in there, I, like I said, my orientation to myself started changing because I had only ever seen myself as a product for consumption.

2:56I had never thought about myself as a human. So my body was just an object to fix, a project to complete, a tool to optimize for output. And here in treatment, suddenly they were saying, well, you know, what are you noticing in your body? And I was like, what are you talking about? What am I noticing in my body? I haven't listened to my body since I was six years old. That's why if you're listening and you're like feeling a disconnect between your mind and body, strongly encourage you to start rebuilding that trust before you have to be inpatient somewhere. Why do you think that so many of these high achieving young people like teen stars often deal with issues like eating disorders.

3:40Do you think social media also has exacerbated that? I do think social media adds more elements that can make things even more challenging. When I talk about what I call the toddler to train wreck pipeline of child performers, it's something that I think also young athletes or young academics or children who are encouraged to pursue something at any super high level, super young, might experience. And that is, these are no longer developmentally appropriate levels of training. The environments have adult responsibilities. You are expected to also be in highly visible spaces where you're kind of propped up for someone's entertainment or for someone to admire temporarily.

4:30But then And a lot of us culturally don't think about what happens to that child after. And typically, you have some kind of expiration date. If you're an athlete and you don't go pro, then you got to figure out what you're doing. If you're a young academic and suddenly now everyone around you knows how to do that calculation, then you're no longer quote unquote special. Culture, society often discards you. You've lost your symbol of, you know, whatever people are projecting onto you. that early success. And then with social media, I think a lot about as a mental health practitioner now, for young people losing what's called a play-based childhood.

5:09And it doesn't just mean being in a sandbox and having fun. It's having a private enough space where you can make mistakes and you can experiment with identity without that permanent digital footprint. So with social media, if we're constantly comparing and consuming and expressing, but then we also have this track record, it can feel not only super embarrassing when you look back on your outfit choice from five years ago, but also you lose that sense of play and that sense of being able to not know what the heck you're doing and not have to have it criticized by random strangers online. You started dancing and acting from such a young age.

5:54What was your first experiences like in your first roles? I think one of my early jobs was a Hallmark Disney commercial. I got to work at Disneyland for the day. So not bad for a first job. But I think that was a little bit like beginner's luck and Hollywood was luring me in. It didn't tell me that there were going to be jobs that weren't at Disneyland. And then I worked on, I think, a Barbie Mattel commercial where I was actually cut out in the edit because I didn't look enough like Barbie. And so as a child, that instilled a whole new level of self-consciousness around appearance that I would not have been thinking about if I was just playing in the dirt in Toledo, Ohio, where I'm from.

6:38I think by eight or nine, I had done the Missy Elliott video. That's when this whole map of the world started shifting because I would walk outside and suddenly, if people recognized me, that meant I had to be in customer service mode 24-7. So I was no longer connected to that authentic sense of self. I kind of established a persona. And you described being famous as like a young kid as kind of being weird and uncomfortable. Was there a moment when you realized like, OK, this is not normal? If I were to tap back into what it felt like around nine or 10 years old, I remember that I could no longer relate to children because either I was near peers who were also high performing children and none of us spoke like a child.

7:30or I was with a young person who might be a fan. And so I was still in service mode, kind of catering to their needs, helping them understand the emotions they're experiencing when they encounter the person from TV, kind of holding their hand through it. And I remember feeling just so absolutely awkward trying to speak to a child, but so comfortable around adults. Because by then, you know, I was on the job every day and, you know, people are taking their smoke breaks and I'm outside hanging out with the 40-year-old crew shooting the shit. And, you know, and then I, if I went to the mall or something and I saw a child, I'd be like, what do you do out here?

8:19were in the wild um and i think another aspect was playing all of these roles that had um their first kiss first date first this first that and i had experienced none of those things so a lot of my firsts were on camera and i would have to google references what does it mean to go to prom what is it like living in a dorm and watch other movies where characters had done that because i I legitimately had no life experiences off camera. And so I think there was probably a lack of authentic representation in some ways because we were just enacting things written by adults. How toxic of a work environment would you say Hollywood is?

9:07Well, every set is different. And I actually think a lot of people are wanting to be kind-hearted humans. They are very hardworking, but it's embedded in the expectations of completing a massive project in the shortest amount of time possible for the least amount of money possible. Like, does this not sound familiar across the board with U.S. culture? So I think it's unrealistic expectations that then end up exploiting the humans involved, whether it's their labor, time, energy, resources. And my hope is that as a mental health coordinator for SETS now, that I can help establish protocols and work practices where we're just thinking about literally the bare minimum of humanizing everyone involved so that we can actually do our best work and not absolutely hate ourselves and not burn out after the first week.

10:06Something I noticed is that Hollywood sells attention as if it's the equivalent to financial currency. And attention does not pay your bills, y 'all. I think attention is used as a way to exploit often because everyone says, this is for exposure. It's for exposure. And I'm like, if I actually had a dime for every time I've done something for exposure, I would be a billionaire by now. And that's like an unfortunate reflection, I think, of just breaking into so many industries. People are like, how much do I have to do just for exposure before I can actually be compensated? So I resonate with anyone who's dealing with that right now.

11:02I want to touch on this idea of exposure not paying the bills because you of course are known for a lot of really viral iconic moments whether it was in Camp Rock or the Missy Elliott music video. When you think about these did you expect any of them to go viral and do you wish you could have chosen what things would have gone viral. I don't wish this level of visibility on anyone. I know that going viral is something that's maybe propped up as admirable sometimes to people, or they see that as a way, a ticket to be able to launch their business or find a career as an influencer, whatever that might be.

11:41But I don't think we prepare people for what comes with that. And I don't just mean the criticism, which is its own journey of learning how to manage, but also issues with privacy, issues with physical safety. I absolutely had no idea that the Missy Elliott video would blow up in the way that it did. And, you know, if I were at the doctor's office or when I was at the doctor's office, I was a child. But because the practitioners recognized me, even while I'm sick and seeking care, I'm signing autographs. And when I'm going through airport security and I'm being pulled over and you're not really supposed to pat down a minor, but they say, oh, it's actually just because we wanted a photo.

12:27And you start to realize, oh, there's actually nowhere that's safe to relax. I need to be monitoring myself and others at all times. That kind of hypervigilance I don't think is, it's not helpful for the nervous system if there's no chance to come down from that. Would I like more control over what goes viral? Of course. But I recognize that I didn't have a choice getting into the industry And I cannot go back in time and remove all of the material that's been posted about me since I was a child. I have to accept it for what it is and now just try to make as mindful of decisions as I can. What's your mode of relaxation?

13:13I'm learning actually that meditation and stillness are not really my go-to. They can absolutely be helpful. But as someone who runs anxious, I've learned that I usually have to do something that involves expressing that energy before I can find any kind of equilibrium. So that could be dancing. It could be just shaking things off after a tough meeting. I have to hit the peak first of that energy before I can come down. Whereas before, I used to try to skip that part and just go to relaxation. and I would just be sitting there and my mind would be rushing through a bajillion thoughts. How do you do the stress shake off?

13:58I want to see this after a long meeting. So thankfully, you can think about this. If you've ever seen an animal after being frightened or spooked or in some kind of threatening situation, many animals will briefly shake off the stress before moving on. And that's actually a response to the adrenaline and cortisol running through our veins. And then, yes, we give our bodies a chance to signal, okay, the threat is over. We can complete that cycle and return to a sense of calm. So you can truly honor whatever your body wants to do. I like to personally begin kind of wiggling or shaking in a way where I can use my focus to see what part of my body is moving.

14:42And then I might do, you know, head to toe or toe to head or one side to the other. Just to give myself a chance to kind of like process, express, release whatever's coming out. Sometimes I mentally also picture whatever was stressful actually like being lifted off my body. Usually just between three to five minutes, it can make quite a difference. I will say for some people, they may feel more activated by that. So I would encourage a gentler wiggle. and for those who feel maybe lethargic then it might be helpful to actually add some zhuzh to your shake. I love that I'm gonna start doing that when we're in the office we have all clear doors people look through I'm like yeah right Sophia's like texting me she's gonna be like I know what you're doing.

15:31I took a mindfulness class at Stanford for a requirement and I still to this day always use this one technique that the teacher told us he said anytime you're stressed about something and you can tell you're overthinking about it and it's no longer productive or healthy you need to pretend that the thought is in a box and then you need to put it on a moving train and you need to let it leave i thought it was so silly but then i was like well i might as well try it and it it worked incredibly if your body is activated and that kind of stress response some people call it fight or flight but there's actually a lot more f words um that we can think about not just fight, flight, or freeze.

16:10There's also fawning. If you tend to be someone who is people-pleasing as a stress response to try and minimize conflict, some of us are also fixers. So if you're like, there's a problem, I just need to get it over with, and I need to get this off my plate as soon as possible. These, yeah, relatable? Yeah, maybe a little. These can also be signs of being in what some might call more of a yellow state if you're looking at polyvagal theory from Dr. Porges. And if you want to find access to that green state, you can use a variety of these tools. If you're past the point of being able to just have someone tell you, calm down, take a few deep breaths.

16:50If your body's on fire, sometimes we first need a body-centered tool like shaking or bilateral tapping or progressive muscle relaxation. just for a few minutes to actually start to bring the rest of our cognitive capacity back online where we can move through some of those other mindful exercises. What other mindful exercises, asking for a friend, would you recommend in situations where you feel really anxious? If we think about, I think Dr. Dan Siegel talks about the window of tolerance. you can think about if this is the green area then on either side we've got some yellow and then full red and if you're running anxious that might be we can just visualize it as the yellow up here then we're going to be looking for exercises that are movements strategies techniques that help us down regulate the body whereas again if you're experiencing depression then you're going to look for movements that we're upregulating.

17:55And I say that because I think a lot of times when we talk about mindfulness or relaxation, we all use the same go-to as if it's going to work for every state of being. So we actually have to start learning which tools support which states of being and even further understanding what your particular kind of trauma responses are so that you're not agitating your body further when you're just trying to seek safety. So some things that might work for folks who are feeling anxious, you can adjust your body temperature. Oftentimes, if the body is getting cold because the anxiety is sending all the blood to the organs, maybe you remember to bring a sweater with you so that you're not feeling super clammy and freezing.

18:45Sensory experiences can be helpful for grounding. so if you don't have anything on you like a fidget or a soothing this or that then you can do things like um counting uh on on your hand tracing your hand as you count your your breaths um that tactile sensation can be helpful for some and then something that I like is bilateral tapping because it's rhythmic and repetitive movement and you can do it without anyone noticing you can cross your arms over your shoulders, but you could also tap your legs or even tap your feet side by side. What that's doing over time is helping synchronize both hemispheres of your brain.

19:28So if you find yourself, let's say, feeling super emotional and unable to access logic or super rational and unable to access your feelings and emotions, calibrating with bilateral movements can help bridge that communication. So you're able to approach the situation with a more whole sense of being and not that compartmentalized way of thinking and feeling. Now fully thinking about that meditation class, sorry. I really struggled with this idea of stillness where I could not get my mind to just be blank. So I'm curious what you think about that. I have a lot of thoughts about that, actually. I think we in the States sometimes talk about mindfulness and we automatically assume it's someone sitting cross-legged and attempting to think about nothing.

20:21Now, there are particular teachings and communities who do focus on allowing the mind to be emptied. But in reality, there are many other kinds of meditation and mindfulness practices that are about learning to fully be with whatever arises. And I've found for managing my lifestyle, which is very busy and it's very fast paced, that whenever I finally sit down, I'm first going to have that rush of thoughts and feelings. And so if I'm just trying to get rid of that, I'm actually not processing what's there, which means I'm also not maybe learning whatever lessons those experiences had for me. So I found that somatic mind-body tools have been the biggest game changer because they have helped me learn how to tolerate the discomfort of having the busy mind and having the feelings and not just automatically burying them.

21:28Those are actually the tools that I started learning when I was in treatment for recovery. And they've actually now formed the foundation for the library of tools we have with my company, Movement Genius, which I'm like, y 'all should just, we'll get you some logins. And if your audience wants, we can get like a code so you can access the platform and try out some of these techniques. 100%. We would absolutely adore that. I'm curious for you when you reflect, you've mentioned that you kept a diary during Camp Rock. What does it feel like to read that and go back? What's wild is that I decided to include things from the journal in my book.

22:10So my inner monologue, as you read throughout the chapters, it's based on real journal entries. And I just, I see a young person who is trying to manage something that is too much too soon. too intense, too everything. And honestly, I have to say I admire the human will to try and cope. Like I could see the strategies and yes, many of the strategies were ultimately kind of obsessive or, you know, not actually helpful. But my younger self was truly doing the best that I could at the time. So I feel a lot of compassion. And I just wish young people, I wish we were all presented these tools so that we understood our own operating system.

23:00But instead, we have like technology in our hands, that's a whole different operating system. And we don't even know how our own mind and body work, you know, so I'm like, this is kind of a setup, y 'all. I want people to reclaim their sense of agency. I don't want people to feel like they're being controlled by either systems or their device or even what's happening in their own mind and body, but that it's like you're actually creating a deeper awareness. You're building your resilience so that you can make the choice that you want, that you feel proudest of making. You have a memoir that came out two days ago, semi-well-adjusted.

23:42I want to ask, Why is now the right time to share that story? Well, I'll give you the professional answer and then I'll give you a more personal answer. The professional answer is that I've seen the same pattern of young people burning out again and again and again. But it seems like no one is unpacking why it happens and what we can do to intervene. so I not only wanted to finally dish all of the intimate juicy details of what happened on all those sets growing up and get that out of my system but also recognize that because of our digital world a lot of the experiences that used to be reserved for entertainers are things that anyone with a wi-fi connection and social media profile can be facing right now things like parasocial relationships and the mental health challenges from having an online persona and, you know, addictive algorithms.

24:41So I think if you show up for the childhood chaos, I'm hoping you stay for the cultural critique. And if you make it to the end, there is hope. But man in the middle, we do. It's a roller coaster. I'm excited. For you, what was the hardest chapter to write? Oh, goodness. There are a lot of really dense topics covered because I talk about things like discovering my queerness while being deeply involved in a church that was very against queerness. I talk about experiences of violence and addiction within my family. I talk about my own experiences. So it was a very heavy process. The hardest, oh, I know.

25:30Y 'all, three quarters of the way into writing the first draft, I uncovered a box of documents that had a completely different story about what happened in my childhood than the story I was given. So I had already written what I thought the book was going to be about. And then suddenly I had completely conflicting information and I had to go back and reexamine in real time while I'm like need to deliver this on a deadline, my actual life story and what I what message I wanted to leave. it changed the takeaway of the book and thankfully I had a writing supervisor because she kept encouraging me she was like I think there's there's something not clicking what isn't clicking yet and I was like I don't know this is this is the narrative this is what I know I this is my life story and then the documents were like oh my gosh this is this is the missing piece and And I actually kept that in the book.

26:37So you'll be able to read that moment of discovery, where it happened, with whom, and what happened after.

26:55What was the reason you decided to title your memoir Semi-Well Adjusted? I think society often puts the pressure on people to appear, quote unquote, well adjusted. But the society itself is dysfunctional. So why would we want to be well adjusted to an unhealthy norm? so I think I realized it's kind of a play on words it's one way of owning I'm a human in progress like yeah I'm so so I'm healing but still got some work to do sure um but then it's also kind of calling out the absurdity of trying to conform to a world that is quite warped at the moment I would much rather come across like I do not fit in because I'm standing for other values than to uphold the status quo that is perpetuating harm and not looking out for the planet or people, you know, which I feel like Gen Z understands.

28:00Sometimes I'm trying to convince millennials and folks who are older. But Gen Z, I'm like, you all, you get that part. I was also really curious to dig into this with you. Like Phoebe and I both do a lot of activism work. I work in climate and she does reproductive rights. And I know you've also made a huge focus of your platform, of course, like media literacy and also mental health. How do you think that's played a role in your career? Yeah, I think so. As much as I wanted to be able to take up every cause under the sun, it turns out we actually only have 24 hours in a day. So I tried to assess what were the skills that I currently had, what was my current sphere of influence, and where could I plug in right away.

28:45And so that's where it became clear that working on media literacy or children's rights and entertainment was a place for me to at least start advocacy work. If you're trying to figure out your version of that at home, you can also just search like community organizations or mutual aid networks in your area. What major topics might you want to plug into and follow that curiosity? And I would encourage people to follow the direction where you find yourself feeling like you're pulled toward it. Not that you're trying to push yourself into it from behind, but that there's a natural magnetism. Because I think that's going to help you actually show up and put something on your calendar as opposed to like, I'm doing it because it's just the right thing to do.

29:38Set yourself up in a way where you can actually have the impact that you know you are aiming to have. How do you view success now for yourself and your career as opposed to what you did before? Success and purpose felt really intertwined before. And I also was, I had a completely different worldview through the lens of that particular church. And so it felt like this kind of divine climb, to quote Miley Cyrus. And now, purpose, I'm learning for me, is not always a North Star. When I was exiting the industry, I had no idea. I still don't really know what the destination is. So instead of one north star and then just reverse engineering your way there, I now understand purpose as a constellation, which my friend Joan P.

30:37Ball talks about in her book Stop, Ask, Explore, where you kind of assess, take inventory where you are right now. Pick the one star that seems like the skill you might want to build or the direction you might want to go. Give it some time and then bounce to the next star and let your sense of purpose be more emergent and dynamic as opposed to like having just a very linear awareness. And I think that gave me a lot of permission to not know where I was headed, but to still at least take action. action. I think that it's so easy to get caught just thinking you need to always be running and running and chasing after a goal.

31:20So that's super liberating to think of it more like just following a constellation instead of a star. Yeah, just letting it emerge and allow that to just be a way that you start to make sense of yourself and the world and what's possible. I think it also then becomes process oriented, not just outcome oriented. And the process is really where you evolve, you know, and where those moments of discovery happen. And looking back, you know, if someone were to say like, oh, I would trade lives with you in a heartbeat and they wanted just the outcome. Well, if they got the outcome, I think it would actually feel quite empty because you didn't learn all of the lessons that I learned.