I Am Anxious... Stephenie Magister
The editor, writer, and documentarian talks Queer history, growing up in a cult (and escaping), and living with Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Stephenie Magister is the second-only trans 40 Under 40 Nominee in history from UGA. After a career as an editor for bestselling authors, she suffered a traumatic brain injury that left her disabled but not defeated. She transitioned to a role as a documentarian for queer representation throughout history and media. Her work has appeared in outlets such as Xtra Magazine, Writer's Digest, Script Magazine, An Injustice, and a variety of others. She now lives quietly with her wife and fur babies, who all wish their human daughter would visit more often.
Queer History with Step-Hen-ie covers queer representation throughout history and media.
Our upcoming releases include documentaries covering:
1) the career of legendary sci-fi/fantasy author CS Friedman; now includes recently recorded interview with author
2) intersex, trans, and non-binary existence as depicted in the documentary Every Body; now includes interview with Julie Cohen, Oscar-nominated director of RBG
3) a feature-length biographical documentary about my life inside mental institutions (and what it took to actually leave)
You can find Stephenie on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Substack, and here.
How long have you been an anxious person?
My journey with anxiety began when I was still inside my mom’s womb.
I am a queer trans woman born into a cult in 1983 in Mississippi.
I survived being their Object of Worship, rampant sexual abuse, and gender conversion therapy in which they used worship services to try to turn me into a boy. I "escaped" into mental institutions from 9 years old to 15.
I have a twin brother who was treated as their next leader and the template for who to turn me into. When they saw I wasn't going to "turn," they taught me that the only person who would ever keep me safe was my brother.
They believed the Rapture was imminent. Any abuse was justified because if Jesus was coming tomorrow, my soul was at stake.
At nine years old, I began starving myself to the point that my family couldn’t hide what was happening. The state removed me from their care and I “escaped” into mental hospitals from nine years old to fifteen years old. The trauma as a baby disrupted the natural process of childhood identity integration and instead left me with lifelong Dissociative Identity Disorder (we are okay now; we have different names, but it's okay to refer to "us" as Stephenie). My mom escaped while I was hospitalized but didn't take me with her once they let us out at 15. She was in no shape to do so.
So I returned to live with my father and his latest wife. I escaped at 17 with my brother, not realizing that while I'd grown up in mental institutions, he’d been raised by predators and would-be cult leaders. I hated being in the hospitals, but they at least encouraged me to be well. My brother was instead raised to believe he was meant to lead like a cult leader. He grew from a childhood victim to an adult predator with a long history of violence toward women. He has spent his life building and coordinating countless fake identities so as to function as a better predator.
I’m ashamed to say that despite trying to break free from him more than once, I fell for his cons over and over and over. I’m disabled from the childhood trauma. I am also disabled from a traumatic brain injury as an adult. I couldn’t see all he had done to exploit my disabilities until someone intervened to help me get out for good.
By that time, I was living with my brother and in a strange polyamorous relationship with him and a girl he’d casually dated off and on for years. I didn’t know that when she saw what he was doing to me, she saw my brother in a new light.
She entered into a relationship with the three of us, but as a subterfuge to help me escape without triggering his rage. She helped me follow the steps to escape abusive narcissists. It's up to me to never reach out to him again.
What is your earliest memory of being anxious?
Epiphanies hit you when you least expect them. Mine came as I was walking with my family to our car. We were coming from the 99 Cent Store, one of the most treasured places a kid could go.
Everything was, well, 99 cents (or less!). Our family was so poor that we often lost our electricity and got groceries from a food pantry.
In the season 1 finale of Mad Men, Don Draper tells a story about how every time he ate a Hershey bar, he felt like he was home. In the days when a piece of candy could be had for a dime, it didn’t matter if I bought a Hershey bar or anything else. Going to the 99 Cent Store with even $1 made me feel like royalty.
We didn’t have much money. We sometimes didn’t even have electricity. We got evicted when we couldn’t pay the rent — but for $1, you could take home a bounty of joy, each piece separate and savored.
I loved Hershey bars.
I also loved Milky Ways. Three Musketeers. Whatchamacalits (that’s their real name). Hershey bars and a lot of other things made me feel better about what was happening at home.
My parents had always been addicts, but now they were deep into an end-of-days cult. They promised me the world was going to end, and it would happen so soon that I wouldn’t have the chance to die. God had promised His swift return.
We were supposed to be the lucky ones.
When I died, I would go to heaven with my parents , but only if I kept their secrets. Only if I agreed that as long as no one knew what was happening, no one could tell God a different story.
As long as no one else looked, everything they did was good, holy, and of God.
On the day the sky opened and God came down and took all of the worthy souls to Heaven, he would take us too. As long as I stopped talking. As long as I became silent. Quiet. Hidden.
On that day outside the 99 Cent Store, I became convinced that the only way to feel safe — because actual safety would never be possible again — was to starve myself into invisibility.
Have you ever experienced a panic attack?
Daily.
I read a powerful book called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. It says that the body remembers trauma. It says that the body remembers things you may not consciously recognize as trauma. It says that even if you make sense of what happened, there may still be unhealed trauma stored throughout your body.
Even if you forget what happened, the body keeps the score.
What are some of your anxiety triggers? What makes you most anxious?
Questioning my integrity is a big one. I think because honest answers didn’t matter to my parents or my siblings or the doctors. They were teaching me to conform to their desires, so I began to hold on to my integrity and sincerity as the things no one could take from me.
But that turned me into my own kind of monster. A person will blind themselves to the impact of their actions if they’re obsessed with the sincerity of their intentions.
It’s easy to make me feel like I’m in trouble and someone is coming to get me and put me back in the mental institution. That’s my internalized concept of “God.” Someone is always watching and always ready to throw me back in there.
How do you feel physically and emotionally when you’re anxious?
I am a mess.
I am not actually “I.”
We have Dissociative Identity Disorder. My name is Prime. We use the name Stephenie for the body we all share. The name is convenient for other people.
The intense physical, emotional, and sexual trauma as a baby disrupted the natural integration process we all experience as babies. As far as we know, once the integration process is disrupted, true re-integration isn’t possible. We will always be like this. Most people with DID now focus on cooperation rather than integration.
We switch a lot when we feel anxious. But we also switch a lot when we feel good. We can’t really control it.
The physical sensations include our head feeling like it is on fire from inside, burning up inside and out. Sometimes we black out and we’re not sure who will wake up or what we will have forgotten.
We used to struggle a lot with self harm. Sometimes we were in so much pain that it felt like the only way to not be in pain was to overwhelm our body with so much pain that we blacked out into nothingness. It is a kind of addiction — a compulsion for mood-altering substances, situations, and people.
What do you do when you feel anxious? How do you take care of yourself in those situations? Do you have any anxiety management tips or tricks?
In my worst moments, I have hurt my body. I starved myself so much as a kid that I was put into mental institutions. I’ve hit myself hard enough to black out. The pain can be too much to process or negotiate.
For a long time, I used suicidal ideation to calm myself without realizing that this is a very common technique to overwhelm and bottom out a person’s emotions.
When my body feels what cannot be negotiated, I use left-right movements to coordinate my body like I’m in an EMDR session.
Example: twist my left foot out then back in, twist my right foot out then back in
Example: fill the left side of my chest with a big breath and let it out, fill the right side of my chest with a big breath and let it out
Alternate technique: a hot bath feels like a long hug
Alternate technique: an actual hug from my wife while she tells me it's safe, I am safe, those things are in the past and we are safe now
How do you feel your anxiety affects your family, friends, and overall social life?
I have become increasingly aware and able to show gratitude and grace for how divergent my brain and body and personhood are from most people. Things make sense to me that don’t make sense to everyone else. Things make sense to everyone else that don’t make sense to me and maybe never will.
When you're not feeling anxious (simply in your day-to-day life), what do you do for self care?
Play piano, walk our dog, arts and crafts, read/watch interviews and documentaries, listen to meditations, and sit in the grass with our dog.
How do you feel about the portrayal of mental health and anxiety in Pop Culture (books, movies, music, etc)? Do you feel it's accurate?
It’s gotten so much better with every year.
Unfortunately, the majority of representation still comes from people who have no experience with the topic beyond a sincere interest and passion for those affects.
Unfortunately, the nature of mental illness means that it can be a struggle to find a person who has the experience, insight, and storytelling ability to share their story. Sometimes we have to rely on the people who are not us in order to tell the story that is ours.
What are some of your favorite examples of Pop Culture that gets anxiety and mental health right?
Out of Mind, Out of Sight (documentary)
What is the best advice you've ever received?
No one gets to choose the terms available to us, but we can choose how we engage with them.
Emotions exist on a spectrum — numb one, you numb all of them. Which is why it can feel overwhelming to simply come back to life. Even the good feelings can feel like too much.
No one leaves a cult until they're ready.
Editor’s Note: This interview was edited slightly for length and clarity.
Thank you so much, Stephenie!
You can check out Queer History with Step-Hen-ie right here:
If you are interested in being a part of the newsletter in the coming weeks and taking the I Am Anxious… questionnaire, please email me (scott.neumyer@gmail.com) and I’ll get you on the list. I’d love to have you!
Be well and keep talking.
DISCLAIMER: I am, by no means, a medical profession. If you need help, please seek qualified medical attention. This newsletter, while informative and fun, is no substitute for the real thing.
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Thanks for having us, Scott. You're really doing the work bringing so many of us anxious people together :)
Two stunning comments!!
1) “Sometimes we were in so much pain that it felt like the only way to not be in pain was to overwhelm our body with so much pain that we blacked out into nothingness.”
2) “Unfortunately, the nature of mental illness means that it can be a struggle to find a person who has the experience, insight, and storytelling ability to share their story. Sometimes we have to rely on the people who are not us in order to tell the story that is ours.”