Christy Carlson Romano Didn’t Speak to Her Family ‘for About a Year’ After Asking Her Mom to ‘Step Down’ as Her Manager

Warning: this story contains spoilers from the Jan. 29th episode of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test.

Christy Carlson Romano is opening up about a difficult period in her life.

After a “big fail” during a hostage mission on the latest episode of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, the Even Stevens alum, 40, opened up about the personal and professional challenges she has faced since her days on the Disney Channel.

“I have failed in life before, getting less and less work over the years,” she admitted. “I couldn’t help but feel like a failure that has sort of affected the way that I process things.”

Later, during a conversation with the Directing Staff (DS), Romano revealed that she didn’t feel like she had reached her full potential on the reality show as she struggled to keep up with her fellow recruits. 

“I think that I can push myself harder. I do. I don’t think I’ve done 110%,” she shared. “Sometimes, I overthink things. I get very upset if I fail any of the DS… I’m kind of a perfectionist. My work ethic is really high. I started doing Broadway when I was like 8, and then I ended up doing Disney and stuff when I was in my teen years.” 

Romano — who starred on Even Stevens for three seasons from 2000 to 2003 — admitted that her time as a child star was “stressful,” adding, “The infrastructure isn’t really there to help people feel anything but competitive against each other. I feel like I lost a lot of choice growing up.” 

Navigating stardom at a young age took a toll on the relationship between Romano and her mother, Sharon. She explained, “My mom, she was my manager… until I was 21 and I asked her to step down.”

She told the DS that she “had to” ask her mom to bow out as her manager. She said, “I was seeking autonomy. I was seeking independence, but I’m sort of still uncertain if I handled it the right way.” 

She said her relationship with her mom is now “complex,” adding, “There were some financial disagreements. For about a year, I didn’t talk to my family.”

The family strain caused the actress to struggle with addiction. “I became an alcoholic…I drank to feel less stressed out,” she admitted. “I was self medicating. But I’ve met my husband, and when I got pregnant, we decided this is a great time to just stop. But I’ve been sober eight years, and I’ve worked through all of that truly.”

In a confessional, she added, “I was very confused about who I was meant to be. Once I became an adult, I want to figure out who I am and then find an inner strength, but I got to put in the work to get it.”

Later in the episode, Romano was eliminated — and stripped of her arm band — when she couldn’t keep up during the endurance challenge. She was told that she was “a liability to the rest of the group.” 

“If I don’t make it through selection, I will feel like I’ve disappointed my husband, but I know that he will still be proud of me,” she said.

Romano previously opened up about how alcohol “almost ruined my life” in a YouTube video posted to her channel in 2021. “The thing is that once you lock in a habit, a habit can become something that becomes a part of your personality, especially when you’re young,” she said. “So what I wasn’t realizing was that I had a little bit of shyness from being sort of an awkward preteen and tween. What was happening was I was learning how to have fun as long as alcohol was involved.”

Later in the video, she shared how alcohol negatively impacted her life. “Having alcohol in my life influenced a lot of the negative thought process that I had,” she shared. “I wasn’t understanding my self-worth, I wasn’t very accountable for my actions, and I was quite numb about what I was doing to people.”

Romano continued, adding, “I wasn’t thinking clearly about the future. When I was drinking, I was never thinking about being a mom. In fact, it was the furthest thing from my mind. I could barely take care of myself. I didn’t really have any goals. I didn’t have any dreams. I didn’t have a lot of feelings. A lot of those things were just pushed down. Alcohol kept pushing them down for me. It wasn’t helping me. It wasn’t giving me anything I could grow from. It was a bad presence in my life.”

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Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.