HabitAware Keen Bracelet 6 Month Review, Here's What I Think Now!

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Do I Still Use My Keen Bracelets After 6 Months?

I’ve had my Keen bracelets for a half year now, I’ve been blogging about my experience using them since I first set them up.

In that time I’ve had to reset them twice, meaning I had to go into the app, delete my settings and reset them again.

Why? I don’t know, but besides that happening, they work perfectly. Perhaps it was an update?

I’ve had to clean them a couple times because goobies get stuck in the rubber bracelet if you wear them a lot (which I do).

It Takes A Week To Get Used To Keen

Once they are calibrated for the different gestures, it took about a week for me to get adjusted.

You press the button on it every time Keen has a true postive and it will record it for you in the app on the phone.

If Keen keeps buzzing you too much, you may need to adjust the settings in the app.

You can widen and lessen the gesture detection area.

It’s not instant – patience grasshoppa…it takes time to get used to them.

Related: Keen FAQ – How Does It Work?

After 3 Months, I Had Awareness Without Keen

After about 3.5 months is when I really started to have a heightened awareness of my hands and where they were even when I wasn’t wearing Keen.

That was a huge success for me because once I was aware on my own, it made my confidence shoot through the roof.

For some reason, when I bought them, I thought I was going to have to wear them forever but that’s not the case at all.

I don’t know why I thought that but my brain made a connection in a few months and I realized that I wouldn’t have to wear them all the time just to be aware of where my hands were.

I’ve Managed My Hair Pulling for a Half a Year With Keen!

Along with Keen, I did a lot of self monitoring in my therapy journal and that helped me pinpoint the people, places and things that we’re the biggest triggers.

I’ve been doing a lot of inner work, focusing on my value and worth as well as working on stress management solutions to keep my anxiety low.

I’ve been keeping my hands distracted and busy and for the most part, I don’t pull my hair at all anymore.

I did make some changes in my diet, I eliminated sugar completely because that was causing me to want to pull more.

There’s been a few slip ups but for the most part, I’ve retrained my brain to do other things instead now that I’m aware.

It’s almost automatic now for me to do something else – first comes awareness and then the distraction.

Besides knowing where my hands and avoiding certain things, I also have to keep a good handle on my thoughts and feelings!

If I don’t watch where my mind wanders, it won’t matter how much awareness or distraction I have – I will still pull because it feels good when I’m sad, mad or scared.

Keen Is Only A Tool (But A Good One)

Awareness is just one part of overcoming hair pulling but it’s a BIG part of it.

If you’re not aware, how can you stop?

I was ready to make a change in my life and that’s why investing in these bracelets was the right option for me.

Keen bracelets are just a tool to that help make me aware, its up to me at that point to change the behavior.

Once I had the bracelets I was able to move forward with my therapy journal and work towards overcoming trichotillomania.

A lot of the things I did are common therapy tools used by TLC and trichotillomania therapists, I just put my own spin on things and made it work for me.

Awareness, self monitoring, stress management, finding distractions, stimulus control and working on beliefs are all tools used in CBT therapy.

I personally don’t have health insurance or a doctor so I had to take the resources I found online and figure a lot of this out on my own.

Investing in Keen bracelets was a choice I made for my health because I knew that awareness was a MUST if I was going to attempt to stop pulling my hair on my own.