NEW STRESS BOOK EARNS A REVIEWER'S CHOICE DESIGNATION

My new stress book recently earned a Reviewer's Choice designation from the premier online magazine, Midwest Book Review. I'm quite honored to receive this review, so - shamelessly - I have published it below.

Construction work on your home while you're living in it can be a very stressful thing. "Now We Know Why It's Called a Punch List" is a guide for the homeowner facing renovations and wants to try to get their development pushed along in the most painless way possible while having a laugh along the way. "Now We Know Why It's Called a Punch List" is a light hearted yet highly useful read. James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief, Small Press Bookwatch

You can check-out my new book at www.stresscomedy.com. Below you can read an interview with me about the book.


Dr. Parrino…Why did you decide to write an advice book about the stress of home renovation projects?

Every homeowner has a renovation nightmare story. Over the years, I’ve heard many of them from neighbors, family and friends, and then my wife and I had a personal experience with renovation stress. So it seemed like the perfect scenario for stress management training.

What’s the central message or piece of advice from the book?

It’s about self management: If you can’t control the people and events that hassle the heck out of you, learn to manage your internal reactions to them. Humans are naturally prone to engage in crooked thinking, especially in situations that provoke anxiety and anger. And when our emotions override logic, we react with a fight/flight response that exacerbates stress. So we must learn the very important skills of: 1) recognizing, challenging and correcting crooked thinking; mental and physical relaxation; and assertiveness training.

You mentioned crooked thinking as a stress inducer. I haven’t heard of that before. Can you give me a concrete example?

Absolutely! Expecting life events to unfold exactly as they are supposed to is an example of crooked thinking. The key words here are “expecting” and “supposed to”. This happens chronically in renovation projects. We expect goals to be met on time and costs to reflect what we were promised. When the time frame is changed and the costs have doubled, we have a “stress fit”. Believe it or not, you can learn to be much less reactive to the inevitable changes that take place in a remodeling project…and life in general . That’s what I teach in the book.

Why did you combine advice and humor?

First, there is plenty of evidence that humor and a good laugh are exceptional stress relieves, and there are very few advice books that use them as teaching devices. Secondly, the coming together of homeowners and construction crews create a very diverse group of characters, an odd coupling if you will. Take my situation. I’m a bona fide egghead who wouldn’t know a drill bit from a sledge hammer. The subs looked at me like I was from another Universe. Yet we were thrown together in one of life’s most stressful encounters. It made for some interesting dynamics and – depending on the way you think about it - a lot of humor on the way to the punch list.

The book was a quick, fun read, and the advice was easy to follow. Did you have fun writing it?

Oh yes! It is my most creative book, no doubt. And working with a talented illustrator like Susan Antinori was a blast. I would write the narrative, think of an image that accentuated it, and she quickly captured my idea in a dramatic, funny illustration. She really nailed the humor that is inherent in the wild and crazy family that is created when homeowner meets a contractor and his subs.