What is your name/position in the company?
Hi! I’m Aneela Idnani and I am co-founder of HabitAware and co-inventor of the Keen & Keen2 smart bracelets for body-focused repetitive behaviors, which include hair pulling (trichotillomania), skin picking (dermatillomania), nose picking (rhinotillexomania) and nail biting (onychophagia). I wear a lot of hats at HabitAware — from product owner to social media to app tester! But my favorite part is leveraging my lived experience with a 20-year struggle with trichotillomania (compulsive hair pulling) to build community and help others heal through behavior change methodology and our bracelet as a tool to take control!
What type of coffee do you enjoy best and how do you like your coffee?
My favorite coffee is what I make at home, but my husband, Sameer, will tell you it’s mostly milk. Haha!
It’s half a cup of coffee with a teaspoon of coconut sugar, and a few pinches of Indian Chai tea masala & oat milk. I recently switched to oat milk and coconut sugar after a breast cancer diagnosis — I trust that the cancer was telling me to take better care of myself and these nutritional changes are part of my “answering the call.”
What is the name of your company? How did you come up with the Name?
We named our company “HabitAware” because it is exactly what we do for our Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRB) community: make them aware that these subconscious behaviors of hair pulling, skin picking, nail-biting, and nose picking are happening so they can break the habit cycle and take control! We named our bracelets Keen & Keen2 because they deliver “keen” awareness in real-time, allowing folks to pause, take stock of what is happening, and make healthier choices.
What is your background? Tell us about your company/brand and mission.
Growing up, I saw my parents and family friends run their own businesses. Entrepreneurship is in my blood. Also growing up, I was very taken by the concept of injustice. My grandparents had to flee present-day Pakistan during the Partition of India in 1947. I was an avid reader of Gandhi, who also inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. and the US Civil Rights Movement. I always wanted to help people and fight injustice, but I was just a shy, anxious, hair-pulling kid — what could I possibly do!?
Fast forward to today. HabitAware provides me with the opportunity to be an entrepreneur and to make an impact by serving a largely underserved mental health community that I am a part of! I want to ensure that no other “little Aneela” ever goes through the pain I did simply because they pull their hair, bite their nails or pick their skin.
Tell us about your product. How does it work? Did you come up with the design?
A few years ago, Sameer caught me without eyebrows. By this time I had 20+ years of experience hiding! And Yes, I even hid my compulsive hair pulling even from the man I promised: “in sickness and health.” At that moment, he asked me, “Aneela, where are your eyebrows?”
A deer in headlights, I froze and whispered, “I pulled them out.” I shared my diagnosis of trichotillomania and in the coming weeks, with loving curiosity, he took to the internet to understand the shame I was harboring. During this time, I was still pulling without realizing and one day, as we watched TV, he noticed. He gently grabbed my hand and that was my “aha!” moment — I looked at him excitedly, as I wrapped my fingers around my wrist and said “I wish I just had something that notified me!”
It didn’t exist so he and I and two friends in Minneapolis, Kirk Klobe and John Pritchard built it!
The result is the Keen and Keen2 smart bracelets. They both work similarly: You record your hair pulling, skin picking, or nail biting “scanning” motion onto the bracelet. When the bracelet senses a match, it vibrates, creating a “hug” on the wrist and gently bringing you into awareness. You can’t change what you don’t know is happening. But once aware, you can take back control!
We designed Keen and Keen2 to blend in and look like an everyday activity tracker because we understand the shame that many of us have with BFRBs. We didn’t want to design a device that creates unnecessary attention.
Tell us about your other products.
After 5 years of helping tens of thousands of people in 70+ countries, and coupled with our lived experience and success, the HabitAware team developed a methodology that coaches you through the behavior change process of taking control of hair pulling, skin picking, and nail-biting. We offer our BFRB Change Methodology as an e-course of 10 short videos, which when coupled with our smart bracelet, helps you pause, notice what’s happening and encourage you to replace the unwanted BFRB with a healthier soothing strategy. For a nominal fee, you can shatter shame, boost confidence and be free!
What have been your most challenging moments as a business owner?
Our most challenging moment has been convincing people outside the BFRB community that our product needs to exist! I was once in a pitch meeting with a well-educated person at a top-tier healthcare fund who looked me in the eye and told me “well at least it’s not cancer” as I told her about my struggle with trichotillomania. And we’ve heard similar subtle brush-offs of the pain our community goes through. Others have doubted me when I’ve shared that 1 in 20 has a BFRB, which is MORE than the number of people with OCD or Alzheimers. It’s just that the SHAME that develops from the guilt that it is MY hands pulling MY hair keeps people in silent suffering. To counteract this judgment, we aim to raise BFRB awareness and educate others so they can meet their loved ones with compassion. One of these ways has been through my TEDx Fargo talk, “Overcoming Trichotillomania: The Power of Awareness” which has been seen over 150,000 times!
What do you do for self-care?
For a very long time I thought, “Because I can, I should.” This put immense internal pressure to “Always be doing.” Whether it was cleaning the house on the weekend while the kids played video games, or taking on lots of different volunteering roles to fill my time. Now I realize that this way of thinking was running me into the ground. I now understand that self-care is SELFLESS — I can’t take care of my kids, my Keen family, my home, and my friendships, if I am not fully present or filled with vitality. I now calendar in self-care in the form of taking walks, scrapbooking, writing, and hanging out with my kids or friends. Additionally, I set myself up for success throughout the day with fruit and nuts, water, and short breaks from my work through stretching.
What is your favorite quote?
My favorite quote is from Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist:
“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
I love this quote because I feel like I’m living it with HabitAware — we’ve been so blessed for many doors to have opened to make our product a reality and to help the largely underserved Body-Focused Repetitive Behavior community. I believe it is because the “magic” of the Universe is guiding the development of our “life-changing” bracelet and our methodology to take control!
What books do you enjoy reading?
I am currently working on my memoir, so I love reading those as they give me inspiration. I also love all things light and comedic, so right now I am going through all the memoirs of the actors and actresses on Saturday Night Live: Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Cecily Strong, and Colin Jost – just to name a few. Interestingly enough, while they are all talented comedians, their lives have not been all fun and games. It’s poetic to read how they’ve overcome their challenges. Outside of the SNL cast, I’ve read Cazzie David, Frank Bruni, and Matthew McConaughey’s memoirs as well. And while I say “read,” I really mean “listen” because hearing these folks voice over their books just adds another layer of connection — and it helps me use my kiddo school/camp drop-off time more productively!
Do you have any blog/podcast/other media people can follow?
YES! We are here for the BFRB community and offer tons of encouraging resources. If you or a loved one has a BFRB, please sign up for our newsletter, follow us at @habitaware on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok and check out our Blog for loads of advice, stories of hope, strategies, and more!
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