Ways to Keep Your Journal Private

If you are a journal keeper then you may be concerned about keeping your journal private. Do you worry about others finding your journal? One person I know writes her journal in a foreign language that she is studying so that others cannot read her journal. Privacy is very important to journal writers.

Does privacy concern you? Perhaps one thing to think about is how much of an issue is privacy for you really. Do you have a family member who is constantly going through your stuff? Do you have a roommate that doesn't respect your privacy? Is there someone else in your life that just invades your space in other ways that gets on your nerves, and you are concerned that it is going to get worse? Sometimes all it takes is talking to the person in a gentle way and they will stop. But other times this person will not change and you need to focus on taking preventative measures.

I remember when I went to summer camp and some of my bunk mates found my journal. They read it and made fun of me. When I went to my camp counselors, they actually blamed me for writing things down. "If you didn't write things down, they wouldn't have anything on you." Well that knocked the journaling habit out of me until I reached college. My roomettes and I got along and I didn't think I had anything to worry about. If anyone read my journal, they didn't say anything to me.

When writing a journal one idea is to consider having a shorthand of some type. Someone else might call this a code. So if you are talking about someone, or a situation, instead of naming it directly you call it something else. Don't call Anne "A" or your code will be broken really quickly. It has got to be better than that. But if you are concerned about privacy, then a code or shorthand of some type may be a good preventative solution for you to consider. I kept a shorthand type of journal while I was in college and had roommates, so whenever I wrote about someone I would use different initials and I would add in some different information. So some words didn't actually mean what someone might think they mean. They stood for things. It took me awhile to come up with a shorthand that I liked but I found this worked for me.

Another thing to keep in mind when keeping a journal private is where you are keeping your journal. Do you keep it out on a table, where your nosy younger sister could read it? Or do you stash it in your sock drawer? Keeping something private hidden is a great way to help ensure that it is hidden and kept only for your eyes. One way you can do this is also to hide it in plain site - if you have other notebooks then keep your journal notebook with these other notebooks. This is just another idea of a way to keep down a lack of interest in someone going through your journal.

But if you do something to hide your journal and then someone reads it, you have more of an argument on your hands about keeping it private. It is not something that you are keeping out on a coffee table for everyone to read. These are your internal thoughts.

Another idea is to have the first several pages of your journal be information that has nothing to do with your journal. They could be math problems, grocery lists, inspirational quotes. Whatever you think would be appropriate for you to be writing down in a notebook. This way if someone finds your journal and they leaf through several pages, they will see the first few pages and then stop.

One journaling book I read had a suggestion that you make a note at the front of your journal that "This is my journal. It is private. Please do not read it." Now I can understand the author's intention by making that note. But for someone who is not going to respect your privacy, seeing that note is going to make them ten times as curious about actually reading your journal. I mention this author's idea so if you think it would be a deterrent, then by all means use it. But in my opinion, it is just dry wood for the potential fire.

Remember that people who do not respect your privacy often have not had their own privacy respected as well. So they are simply doing what they have learned and some of them do not completely understand what they do is wrong. Usually they feel insecure and they don't feel good about themselves.

Happy Journaling!