{"product_id":"things-you-think-about-when-you-bite-your-nails-isbn-9780143134916","title":"Things You Think About When You Bite Your Nails","description":"\u003cb\u003e“Relatable and comforting and challenging all at once. Don’t be afraid to read this book.”\u003cbr\u003e—Jenny Lawson, author of \u003ci\u003eFuriously Happy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA funny and wise guide and workbook for conquering fears, from the existential to the everyday, and defeating the monster those fears can become: anxiety\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is a book about fear. About how it works, how it takes hold over us, and how it dogs us from childhood (the monsters under the bed) to adulthood (careers, relationships, accidentally sending that risky text to the wrong person--all the things that make us want to bite our nails). But this is also a book about that monster our fear can warp into when it grows too powerful, a phenomenon we are all too familiar with and that more and more of us are struggling against: anxiety.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAuthor and illustrator Amalia Andrade had her own battle with anxiety, and not only did she make it out the other side, she learned sometimes it's the very thing that almost sinks you that can save you. Through the lessons, exercises, and often hilarious personal stories Amalia shares in these pages, together you will learn how to make those feelings your friends and turn your fears into superpowers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA PENGUIN LIFE TITLE\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eThings You Think About When You Bite Your Nails\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Available in English and Spanish, this is a beautifully illustrated workbook about fear—how it works, how it develops from childhood, and how it can morph into adult anxiety. Mari Andrew calls it funny and compassionate, ‘a must-have companion that reminds us how much power we actually have over our own lives.’”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Book Riot\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThings You Think About When You Bite Your Nails\u003c\/i\u003e is a tender and witty examination of fear, in which Amalia Andrade shows us that fear is as universal and useful a teacher as heartbreak. She gives us an empowering opportunity to be observers of our own anxieties, and therefore become better caretakers of them. By the end of this funny, compassionate, and interactive deep-dive into the things that scare us, I was ready to ask my fears to dance! During an era when the unknown future seems especially frightening, this book is a must-have companion that reminds us how much power we actually have over our own lives.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Mari Andrew, author of \u003ci\u003eAm I There Yet?\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMy Inner Sky\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e   \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Relatable and comforting and challenging all at once. Don’t be afraid to read this book.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Jenny Lawson, author of \u003ci\u003eFuriously Happy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Amalia Andrade is back with another book packed full of kind-hearted, relatable, slightly manic, pop-culture-infused personal insight, and reflective prompts. Deeply human, this book on fear and anxiety has already touched many like-minded souls and is sure to continue its impact with this English translation.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Adam J. Kurtz, artist and author of \u003ci\u003e1 Page at a Time\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThings You Think About When You Bite Your Nails\u003c\/i\u003e is a comforting, humorous, and unique endeavor into demystifying fear. Amalia Andrade so cleverly explores universal truths behind anxiety, while making room for the reader's own terrifying thoughts.”  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Jordan Sondler, author of \u003ci\u003eFeel It Out\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e “As a fellow artist, I can certainly say that I hate Amalia. I’m deeply envious of her vulnerability, and her clever ability to make me confront my own fears and traumas, all while making me laugh. Can you believe the nerve?! If you’re interested in rediscovering yourself, or just laughing hard, please read this book and hate love her along with me.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Timothy Goodman, author of \u003ci\u003eSharpie Art Workshop\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This book is a comprehensive toolkit wrapped up in a soft warm blanket. It gives you the courage to fight your darkest fears, and it offers you the comfort to quieten your loudest anxieties. It is a safe and supportive space that will encourage you to live a fear free life. Most of all, this book succeeds where most self-help books fail, it actually helps.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Lee Crutchley, author of \u003ci\u003eHow to Be Happy (Or at Least Less Sad)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eAmalia Andrade \u003c\/b\u003ewas born in Cali, Colombia, in 1986. She studied literature at Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogotá. She's been drawing forever. She's written for several magazines in both Colombia and the United States. She believes strongly in the power of keeping a diary. When she grows up she wants to be a mix between Sylvia Plath and Tina Fey. She lives in Bogotá with her cats and is the author of \u003ci\u003eYou Always Change the Love of Your Life (for Another Love or Another Life).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eIsabella Corletto\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala. She graduated from Wesleyan University with degrees in English and Italian Studies and speaks Spanish, English, Italian, and Portuguese. She translated Amalia Andrade's \u003ci\u003eThings You Think About When You Bite Your Nails\u003c\/i\u003e and has published translations in \u003ci\u003eLatin American Literature Today\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cb\u003eINTRODUCTION \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBUT WHY A BOOK ABOUT FEAR?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eDear reader, this is a book about fear— and as such, it’s very likely  that  while  reading  it  you  will  experience  some  mo-ments  of  terror.  This  doesn’t  mean  that  this  is  a  SCARY BOOK.  There  are  no  monsters  here.  Actually,  yes,  there  are  some. But  their  purpose  isn’t  to  scare  you.  Their  purpose  is  to  help  you unmask your fears, to take power from them, to conquer them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis book is like stepping into a Freddy Krueger movie and, in-stead of being brutally murdered in your sleep, realizing that Freddy is actually a lowly modern- day adult who has to fill out his W- 9 and pay his bills again because his payment bounced (for the tenth time), who has just been dumped by his boyfriend, and who suffers from post-  traumatic  stress  disorder  from  that  time  his  brother—  on accident— dumped boiling hot tea on his face when he was thirteen years old, forever ruining his dream of starring in telenovelas.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNone of this justifies Freddy’s murder attempts— what I mean is that Freddy is most likely a sociopath and should probably go see a psychiatrist— but after learning all of this he doesn’t seem quite so scary, right? Okay, fine, yes, he’s still a little bit scary, but now that we understand him we think, “Poor Freddy, all he ever wanted was to be a telenovela hunk.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWell,  that  understanding  is  what’s  going  to  happen  with  this book—  not  understanding  Freddy  Krueger,  dear  reader,  but  rather understanding  your  inexplicable  fear  of  rats  or  your  fear  of  loneliness and rejection.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFear can either be your ally or your enemy, depending on how well you understand it and on whether it controls you or you control it. In my case, I decided to write this book because, as time went on, my personal list of fears began to grow at an uncontrollable pace. I wanted to understand how I went from being a girl capable of eating sand  straight  out  of  the  children’s  sandbox  (I  know,  this  is  gross; don’t ask) to being a young adult (this term makes me feel less old) incapable of touching the door of a public bathroom without suffer-ing a small panic attackthinking about the possibility of catching a deadly virus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA BRIEF HISTORY OF MY OWN FEARS\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eThroughout my life, my fear has worn many different masks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor years, it made itself known through horrible asthma. During the very worst times, I could barely breathe. As a kid my mouth always tasted like albuterol, like medicine, like the urge to cry. I’d chew gum, but the taste would linger, stagnant. I’d pilfer pas-tries.   I’d   sneak   the   grape-   flavored   popsicles   that   Jenny—   my nanny— would buy for me at the corner store after I’d promise that I would eat all my soup, I would be well- behaved, I wouldn’t bite her when I got angry for no reason— because that’s what I was like.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e(I don’t remember biting her, but Jenny shows me the scars on her  back,  the  marks  of  my  teeth  in  irregular  shapes—  like  warm- water lakes— embedded in her skin, and says: “The more I’d ask you to stop, the harder you’d bite.”\u003cbr\u003e“Like a crocodile,” I say, laughing.\u003cbr\u003eBut Jenny doesn’t laugh.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI remember waking up many nights and walking to Mom’s room, filled  with  fear  from  my  nightmares  or  overcome  by  the  need  to make  sure  she  hadn’t  died  in  her sleep.  The  asthma  attacks  didn’t strike in the moment— instead, they would come two or three days later, out of nowhere, for no reason, while I slept or read a book or played in the pool with my brother, pretending to be aquatic detec-tives or rulers of the ocean.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI didn’t understand that my asthma was a mask for my anxiety until I stopped having asthma altogether and the fear stuck around, growing inside me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs I grew older, the monster transformed into a fear of vomiting. I remember particular moments, like the time I woke up abrupt-ly and threw up all over my Disney Pocahontas rug. I ran to Mom’s room wailing, “Mom, I threw up!” as though it was the most grue-some thing that could happen to anyone, feeling like both a culprit and  a  victim  of  some  horrible  crime.  I  became  consumed  with  the fear that I’d throw up again and turned to elaborate rituals— refusing to sleep on my side, sticking my head out the window of the school bus  to  avoid  troubling  smells,  guzzling  Alka-  Seltzer  in  secret—  to ensure it would never happen again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt  wasn’t  until  a  few  years  later,  when  reading \u003ci\u003eBart  Simpson’s Guide  to  Life\u003c\/i\u003e (a  book  that  was  foundational  for  me  throughout  my teenage years), that I discovered my fear wasn’t just fear but a pho-bia  that  had  a  name:  emetophobia.  The  tangled  mess  of  darkness living inside me had a name, and that meant it existed outside of me, beyond me. I wasn’t alone!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA  phobia  is  rarely  what  it  seems  on  the  surface.  Often,  it’s  a disguise  for  deeper  and  stronger  fears,  for  unprocessed  emotions that  find  a  way  to  escape  our  bodies  by  turning  into  something else. My emetophobia isn’t simply a fear of vomiting— it’s a fear of losing  control,  of  falling  apart,  of  being  violently  vulnerable.  In time,  I  came  to  understand  this.  But  not  without  first  spending too  much  time  locked  inside  a  prison  I  built  for  myself,  one wrought not of iron bars but of evasion, rituals, manias, and compulsions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhether  it’s  my  childhood  fears  of  asthma  attacks  and  vomit-ing, or more recent fears like the thought of going crazy or dying in a plane crash, my fear has worn many masks and dressed up as many things. It has stayed with me, like an enigmatic companion who is difficult to understand. Maybe as a survival mechanism. Maybe as an  antiquated  biological  response.  Maybe  because  of  my  inherited genetics. Maybe as a friend, one who could teach me lessons about courage and leaps of faith. Or maybe for no reason at all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFear is tricky, and it is so hard to overcome. That is why, when I found myself at age twenty- seven, cornered in the sterile and an-tiseptic  office  of  an  unknown  psychiatrist  who  looked  at  me  with both  pity  and  concern,  I  thought  it  was  too  late.  The  psychiatrist explained to me, “You have generalized anxiety disorder amplified by panic disorder with agoraphobia, as well as specific phobia dis-order,”  and  prescribed  me  medication  that  would  take  two  weeks to  start  working.  “You’re  probably  not  going  to  feel  great  at  first, but that’s normal,” she told me. “It’ll get better soon.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe was clearly being optimistic when she said “soon” and “not great.” I felt like I was dying. But I made it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI don’t know where I found the strength. It came from parts of me I had never known before, not because they were invisible but because  I  had  never  tried  to  acknowledge  their  existence.  I  man-aged to drag myself up and out of bed, trying to put the pieces of my  life  back  together  after  every  line  had  blurred.  I  went  to  the psychiatrist’s once a week, every week, for five months.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI came to understand that to feel is to heal. And so, I embraced my  torments  without  shame.  I  felt  the  pain  I  had  swallowed  as  a child  all  over  my  skin.  I  pushed  through  the  things  that  hurt  me cruelly,  delicately,  meticulously. I  looked  them  in  the  eye.  I  didn’t avoid any part of them; instead, I roamed their every corner, and I healed.  The  anxiety  disappeared,  the  darkness  lifted  from  my chest,  and  I  was  once  again  able  to  recognize  the  different  shapes and  pieces of my life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“It’s time to give new meaning to my life,” I said in one of those sessions. And my psychologist told me: “Write that down and hang it on the wall.” I said I would, but I didn’t.\u003cbr\u003eInstead, I wrote this book.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWHAT YOU'LL FIND IN THIS BOOK\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this book, I’m going to explore fear: the ins and outs, its com-plexities, its character, how it disguises itself so easily. To under-stand fear, we need to unmask it, and so the whole purpose of this book is to help you do exactly that. We live in an age where fear is always lurking around the corner like a creepy entity, but I think we can invite it into the light, make it a little less creepy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the following chapters, you’ll learn about the origins of your fears, as well as how to talk to them and navigate them. You’ll also find a chapter where I explore what it means when fear spirals out of control as an anxiety disorder, how to identify what is happening to you, and how to cope with it in successful ways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThroughout,  I’m  going  to  ask  you  to  draw  or  write  your  fears, because drawing or writing your fears helps you become conscious of them, and becoming conscious of them helps you articulate them, and articulating them is important because, as Stephen King said, “If a fear cannot be articulated, it can’t be conquered.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDedicating ourselves to profoundly examining our fears can be an  intimidating,  at  times  painful,  and  without  a  doubt  very  scary task. But we are NEVER alone in fear. On the following pages, you will  find  contributions  from  my  brilliant  artist  and  writer  friends that  I’ve  called  Support  Group  so  that  you  never  forget  that  you don’t have to go through fear alone. We got you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReady? Good. Let’s start with a quick test.. . . . . . . . . . . . . .","brand":"Penguin Life","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301333192933,"sku":"NP9780143134916","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780143134916.jpg?v=1767742446","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/things-you-think-about-when-you-bite-your-nails-isbn-9780143134916","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}