Publisher: CS Publishing Ltd.
For 40-plus years the author battled with attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that are commonly labeled as symptoms of three psychological disorders: muscle dysmorphia, orthorexia, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). The consequences were grave. This book explains Stuart’s struggles and self-inquiry, and then describes the five elements of his psychological healing. Each element helped him, but their synergism profoundly improved his mental health, his relationships, his physical health, and his overall life.
This book isn't targeted only at male bodybuilders and other exercise enthusiasts. The great difficulties Stuart dealt with are experienced by millions of men and women who struggle with their body-image and/or eating, and/or who are tormented by perfectionism or workaholism. His success story may inspire any of those people to start their own self-inquiries that lead to their own success stories.
Interview with Stuart McRobert
Which section of your book was the hardest to
write?
The reports of my therapy sessions.
The sessions
required self-inquiry that was often demanding and moving, and then writing the
reports was challenging. Some were less tricky to write than others, depending
on what topics we covered. My therapist helped me with the reports. At the
start of each session she read my draft report of the previous session. Then we
discussed it, which raised issues I hadn’t explained clearly enough, and
sometimes we uncovered additional matters. Then at home I revised the report.
Each report required a few hours work and further thought, which enhanced the
value of each session.
My therapist
advises all her clients to write up their sessions
Why did you choose to write in your particular
field or genre?
As a freelance writer since 1981 I’ve
had around 1,000 articles published in print magazines. Those articles and all
my other books were founded on my life experiences related to physical training
and body image. Over those decades I earned a reputation for providing honest,
thorough, non-commercialized and trustworthy information in that genre that
often runs counter to conventional understanding.
In late 2015 I kept notes on my
initial investigation into my mental health problems. And in 2016 my progress
from personal therapy motivated me to become more and more involved with my
self-care. Then I thought I may eventually have a story that other people would
appreciate. So I wrote an account of my journey. And that’s how I crossed into
writing in the mental-health genre.
My eventual success with my mental
health justified putting my story in book form: A Man Devoured by His Body, Food
& Work. I used the same criteria of honesty, painstaking effort,
and so forth that I applied when I wrote my other books. This one’s topics are
much more complex, though.
There is, however, overlap between the
two fields because matters to do with body image, so-called perfectionism, and
unusual eating behaviors, are common to both genres.
If you write in more than one genre, how do
you balance them?
While I was working on my
mental-health book, I also worked on a book on physical training. I had
different days for each book. I liked the change of topics. When I felt drained
from working on one manuscript, I’d switch to the other and be reinvigorated.
During the final 12 months of working
on my mental-health book, I suspended work on the training book. I was so
wrapped up with completing the mental-health book by the deadline that I didn’t
have any time available for working on the training book.
What did you enjoy most about writing this
book?
Two things, and please keep in mind
that I worked on this book, on and off, for four years.
(1) That my own mental health
benefited profoundly from the great effort I put into writing this book.
Writing it was self-therapy—or writing therapy, or expressive therapy, or
writing cure—and was one of the five elements of my overall therapy and
healing. Furthermore, my self-inquiry, research, self-knowledge and
self-understanding wouldn’t have developed so extensively had I not written
this book.
(2) That I started out knowing next to
nothing about the mental-health topics covered in this book, but four years
later I’d become very knowledgeable about them.
What book that you have read has most
influenced your life?
There isn’t a single book that has
most influenced my life. There have been many very influential books, a few of
which I referred to in A Man Devoured by His Body, Food & Work.
Here are two of them: The Power of Now,
by Eckhart Tolle, and Choice Theory®: A
New Psychology of Personal Freedom, by William Glasser, MD.
Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Perhaps something not many people know.
I’m English and was born in 1958. I
moved to Cyprus in 1983. Cyprus is an island country in the Eastern
Mediterranean Sea. I moved there to work as a schoolteacher at a private
school, and to escape the inclement English weather. I met my future wife
there. She was a teacher, too. I worked at that school for nine years prior to
becoming a full-time author and publisher. And I still live in Cyprus now.
Over the four years I worked on this
book, I improved my mental and physical health. This included slowing my life
and stopping overworking. The changes included, in May 2016, starting to learn
to play the Greek bouzouki. Learning a musical instrument from scratch was a
huge challenge, but it’s been tremendous mental “exercise” and a lot of fun.
Can you tell us something about your book that
is not in the summary?
Something I’ve already mentioned in
this interview, but it’s so important that I’d like to explain it further: the
reports of my therapy sessions—a real-life case study. Those reports were the
foundation of my success story, and without them the book would never have
happened.
While my therapy sessions are
personal, they illustrate how good therapy takes place. As readers go through
the session reports, they will probably relate to some of the content. And that
may help them have their own realizations, self-awareness, self-knowledge and
self-understanding that can help them with their own self-inquiry and healing.
About the Author
Stuart has had around 1,000 articles published in print magazines. He wrote a monthly column for the UK’s leading bodybuilding magazine for 22 consecutive years. He also authored several acclaimed books including BEYOND BRAWN and BUILD MUSCLE LOSE FAT LOOK GREAT, and published his own magazine for 15 years. But his success as a writer was born out of his efforts to survive the profound struggles he had because of his psychological challenges, which resulted in suffocating distress.
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