Alyson Stoner Talks Mental Health and Childhood Fame

From Disney auditions and Missy Elliott music videos to rehab clinics and church pews, Alyson Stoner’s childhood played out on a surreal stage—both literally and metaphorically.

By the time most kids were learning long division, they were navigating 80-hour work weeks, fielding fan letters that sometimes blurred into safety threats, and being told by television executives they weren’t “anorexic enough” to warrant help.

In their forthcoming memoir, Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything, Stoner unpacks the strange, often brutal terrain of growing up in Hollywood—a world where childhood is commodified, adolescence is skipped entirely and success can come at the cost of identity, mental health and safety.

What begins as a personal account—of addict parents, early fame, queer discovery in religious spaces and the disorienting crash after a precocious career peak—evolves into something broader: A searing indictment of the entertainment industry’s treatment of children, and a meditation on what it means to heal in public after being broken in private.

With unsparing honesty and dry, incisive humor, Stoner traces the “toddler-to-trainwreck pipeline” that so many young stars are funneled through, connecting the dots between celebrity culture, trauma and a society’s obsession with watching people fall apart. The result is a memoir that feels less like a confession and more like a reckoning.

My mom asked me over the weekend if I had any new books. I gave her the first-bound that I have from you, and she read it in one night.

“So many words! A lot of material to cover in terms of themes. I appreciate that. I’m glad it was a page turner.”

How did it come about for you to sit down, get pen to paper and get this out?

“I had actually been researching topics related to media culture, child development and the industry for more than seven years. I had outlined this book and then set it aside, thinking I might just be ready to move forward into my next career as a mental health practitioner. Maybe this was just for my own catharsis, but a literary agent resurfaced my proposal and said, ‘I think this is actually quite timely.’

We recognized that experiences related to early childhood performers are actually now becoming ubiquitous for anyone with a Wi-Fi connection or a social media profile because people are navigating things like parasocial relationships, issues with privacy, safety, mental health issues around tech use and comments and likes, et cetera.

My first inclination was to include as many memories as possible from the early steps because I thought if I’m going to share this, I might as well let it be the revelation that it can be. Then I realized stringing together 90,000 words and finding some kind of coherent through line is quite an endeavor. I worked with a writing supervisor specifically to hash out which stories would be included versus omitted.

I think the most challenging part, for someone whose early life path notoriously fits squarely into the description of people pleasing and perfectionism, et cetera, it was challenging to tell my truth without sugarcoating, and also without defending and protecting other people at my own expense.

I learned over the 14 months that the truth is not always polite, love isn’t always polite, but it can be delivered with a fundamental dignity and compassion. I spent 14 months making meaning, making sense out of early experiences, and then combining that with my now professional training as a practitioner. I’m hoping that it services timely conversations, especially as we see more and more children being filmed and monetized online.”

I love that explanation. Thank you for sharing that. How did it feel when you finally got that first bound in your hand and you felt all your hard work printed on paper?

“The truth is, I have not yet held my book in my hands…I am counting down the days. I anticipate a sort of surreality. I found that I vacillate between acceptance and excitement…grief and exasperation. I can feel my passion for getting this message across to as many people as possible and the simultaneous realities of being in a media-driven market that has such a fixed narrative around this topic.

I find myself wanting to shout from the rooftops on behalf of current and future generations of not only performers, but also young athletes, young academics, children everywhere, while also having to surrender to the fact that my level of honesty is going to have consequences beyond my control, and I don’t know what those consequences will be yet. Hopefully, the proactive social mission will drive to look forward.”

Something that stuck out to me was the whole 80-hour work thing, which is crazy. Also, you said there’s no guarantee that hard work is rewarded, which is pretty sobering. How do you feel about your work-life balance now?

“I’m still actively untangling myself from the internalized messages around, one, attention being the same currency as money. Attention does not pay your bills. Exposure does not pay your bills…unless you have some kind of business structure behind it. I’m also realizing how much labor I offer for free and without even factoring in my well-being, my other commitments. It’s as if I say yes before I’ve even critically thought about the requirements of whatever task I’m committing to. These are really deep patterns.

I’m also recognizing, while as a founder of a mental health company, I will admit I made what I would now call…you could say a mistake. I just think it was a lesson that I chose not to pay myself as I was getting my business off the ground because I wanted all the resources to go into our tools, supporting people and other practitioners.

The reality is, I cannot keep the lights on if I’m not covering my basic needs. That is something I’m actively working on. I do think this writing process illuminated just how deep that pattern is. I also recognize my values are quite simple and straightforward. I do not desire wealth, material accumulation. I’m just looking for the basics. Then the quality of life I’m seeking really is not tied to my level of productivity and output, but I’ve yet to realize that lifestyle. Very much human in progress as we speak.”

That really hits home and I know it will for a lot of people. I don’t want to make light of mental health, but how does self-care and wellness play into your day-to-day?

“It was a game changer for me to learn about my nervous system. I don’t mean the ‘broadly’ nervous systems. I mean my specific nervous system and how certain tools and techniques would be useful in some scenarios, but actually counterproductive in others. That kind of relationship building with my mind and body has been monumental for feeling like I can manage whatever a single day brings without feeling helpless to old habits or stuck in conflict between my own mind and body. That introductory period to my own system is, I believe, essential for all of us. I wish we all received these tools the same way that we study science, math and history. That’s why I now have Movement Genius. We have those tools, you can check them out. Then a concept I think about often is trigger stacking, which refers to these micro moments throughout any given day that pile on different kinds of stress.

If we don’t take moments to reset, even micro moments of shaking out our bodies or re-grounding, you can picture it as a can of pop being shaken repeatedly with the inevitable end being when you open it, it’ll explode. I am trying now to focus less on idealistic 30-minute to an hour sessions of movement and being able to check “self-care tools” off of a list and more so creating a rhythm where in between meetings and whatever the transitional moments are in my day, I take that to just check in with my body, check in with my capacity.

I ask questions like, if my mind and body were a battery percentage, where am I at right now? From there, I know if I need something that’s going to recharge and up-regulate me or I need something that’s going to maybe help down-regulate and find ease and calm. I play with those states of being over the course of the day. That honestly feels like a necessity for modern life, especially if we’re using technology so many hours in a day that has just such an impact on our physiology and psyche.”

I think all of us on our third coffee can take that to heart.

“Just so you know, we’re all trying to figure it out. If I can share one last idea that has been super helpful…it’s something a former partner shared it with me. He was talking about how our minds and bodies evolve at an ancient speed. Our systems and governments tend to reflect medieval structures and our technology is moving ultra rapidly. That discrepancy of speed and evolution is a lot playing out in our systems every day. We have to leave room for some grace and patience as we negotiate with real life variables. If you need your coffee, drink your coffee.”