Anila from Habit Aware, which is the company I run, that's a mental health tech company. It's been hard the last couple of weeks. There is so much going on in the news cycle that is making it hard to keep up with life. So sorry, but we'll be back again.
Anila joined Cadre as a contributor because she wanted to be part of this space. HabitAware helps people with compulsive hair pulling, skin picking and nail biting. She believes that love is the answer for many mental health conditions.
When the car in front of you is going too slow, what can we do? Instead of honking, instead of cursing them, we can take a deep breath. That's what it's really about is how do we maintain our peace, no matter what's going on around us.
Hello, Cadre Sphere. Anila here from Minneapolis from Habit Aware, which is the company I run, that's a mental health tech company. And from a place of love is where I'm coming from. It is Thursday night. I haven't been around in a while. It kind of just fell off my calendar and then it's just been so crazy and I don't know, it's been. It's been hard the last couple of weeks. I think regardless of political affiliation, there is so much going on in the news cycle that is making it hard to keep up with life.
And so I kind of had to take a step away, take a break. Hi, Jules, it's good to see you. So, yeah, but I'm back for this week and the next week I'm going on spring break. So sorry, but we'll be back again. So real quick. I joined Cadre as a contributor because I wanted to be part of this space. Hi, Speak Wonder. It's good to see familiar faces and little tiny circle icons. I wanted to be part of the Cadre community because I really believe in this idea of hope scrolling, of this idea of, you know, you can find some of this content on Instagram and things like that, but ultimately those places also serve the kind of content that makes our brains go haywire, to be frank.
And so creating this safe space to just have access to content that I know is going to lift me up is just a really powerful thing. And so that's one of the reasons why I said yes to joining the the Cadre sphere. As someone who has mental health conditions, a multitude of them, and as someone who is in the mental health service space, I guess, if you will, but I don't have a treatment background and so I'm just kind of learning as I'm going, going as I'm learning, maybe both. And in my work at HabitAware, we help people with compulsive hair pulling, skin picking and nail biting, which are mental health conditions, not just bad habits.
And I actually pull from my eyebrows and my eyelashes and that is something that I hid for 20 plus years. And then a few years ago, my husband and I came up with this idea to create a smart bracelet that brings awareness to these very subconscious behaviors. And that bracelet has helped hundreds of thousands of people around the world to take control of these conditions. And in doing that, in doing that work, I've really come to believe and see that love is the answer. And so that's why I'm here tonight, to lead with love as I try to do now in everything I can.
And as I say that, I know that there are certain things right now going on in my life where I am not leading with love. I am leading with anger. I am leading with hurt, I'm leading with pain. But I know that that's happening, and that is part of the process too, is to understand where we are reacting from and why we are reacting from that space and then when we know that, we can change it. So I'm working on that. And that is what life is. Constant work, constant learning, constant acknowledgement that I can do better and I need to do better.
And so do you, in a sense. There's probably something that you're like, yep, you're right, I could. Or maybe you want to punch me in the face right now. Who knows? Let me know in the chat. But yeah, this idea of love and why love? So with these mental health conditions, they are rooted in self regulation. And what tends to happen is people will be stressed, they will be bored, they will be tired, they will need to be taking care of themselves, but they are refusing to do that. And so the brain says, well, if you're not going to take care of me by going to sleep because I'm exhausted, then I am going to pull out my eyebrows because it feels good.
And it's kind of like that dopamine hit that. It's satisfying a need in a sense, but it's not satisfying the actual need, right? So it's still like checking the box, but then it's like the box is still there. It's like, then it gets unchecked very quickly. And so when you meet the need, that is choosing love, that is choosing you, that is choosing to take care of you. And that, that is rooted in self love. Another way that these conditions are not choosing love is in how we talk to ourselves about these conditions.
Like, ah, oh my God, I just pulled out another eyebrow. Anila, you're so dumb. You're so ugly. Why did you do that to yourself? That kind of language, we become our own bully. And now after 20 plus years of hiding this thing, I realized, oh, it's not about yelling at myself, right? Like, when you yell at your kids to do something or when you yell at yourself, like, and you bully yourself. Doesn't feel good, right? Like, you want to use, for example, my kids with their violin and cello practice. You want to use positive encouragement to say, hey, you did really good last week on your music.
I want to hear the next song that you're doing. Like, not, hey, you suck you need to get better, you know, go practice. Right, that's not gonna work. But showing love and excitement for it will. And so in the same way, learning to give myself grace for the hair pulling that. Oh, okay, now I understand. I need something. What is it that I need? It's not Anila, what's wrong with you? It's Anila, what's wrong right now. What do you need? So it shifts it that love again, bringing love forward. And I really just think that this whole mentality of leading with love obviously transcends these mental health conditions and I think can really help solve a lot of the back and forth that we keep going through.
History just keeps repeating itself and I just don't understand why we just can't try a new way. We are constantly being fed fear. We are constantly. And it's. And when I say we are constantly, I mean just like throughout history, like non stop. If you look at every generation, every empire, every, you know, region, it's fear that's leading. It's fear that is pulling us apart. And that, that idea of lack and finite resources and if we can just shift to love and a truth that there is enough for everyone, we could all be living much happier lives.
And I think our brains would be a lot happier too. We wouldn't maybe even need a Cadre type app anymore, but we do. And so that's why folks like me keep showing up every day to impart hope, impart knowledge, and really hopefully to fuel your decision to actually change, make change in your life. And hopefully that ripple effect will create waves in good ways around you. So it was good to see you, Jules. It was good to see you. Speak Wonder. Thank you both for being here. And I will see you not next Thursday, but the following Thursday to talk more about love and to share some more stories from my journey with taking control of hair pulling.
And have a good night. Sleep well. Yes, Speak Wonder. That's really, really it. Right? It's. And Cadre helps give me a healthy baseline emotionally, is what Speak Wonder is saying. And that's exactly the same thing with the BFRB with the hair pulling, the skin picking, the nail biting. The acronym I just used is body focused Repetitive behavior, which is the umbrella term. And that's exactly. It is like the brain is using these behaviors, these self soothing mechanisms to get back to a baseline, but it's not technically, it's not very healthy way to do it because of the after effects of the skin picking or the nail biting or the hair pulling, like the bald spots.
Or the skin infections or the bleeding around the fingers. Like, we don't. We don't want that. But we do want to get back to our baseline. And to do that, we have to choose the right loving strategy for us in the moment. And. And when we are in a hard situation, it's the same thing. We have to choose the right loving strategy for the moment. When the car in front of you is going too slow, what can we do? Instead of honking, instead of cursing them, and instead of saying, oh, come on, we can take a deep breath.
We can say, I'll get there when I get there. We can say, this too, shall pass. We can say, it's not going to matter anyway. It'll shave 30 seconds off my drive. We can acknowledge that and we can just drive in peace. That's what it's really about is how do we maintain our peace, no matter what's going on around us. So that is what I'll leave you with tonight. Hopefully you can get to bed and feel some sense of peace as you drift off into dreamland. I'm wishing you love, strength and awareness, and I'll see you in two weeks.
Good night.
