It's prevented me from keeping one at all. Years ago, my mother broke into my then 12-year-old sister's diary for no better reason than to find out what was going on when she wasn't home, which was often. I later wrote some really shitty teen-angst poetry and buried it under a stack of books and papers in a corner of my bedroom closet, and she found that. Decades later, I still feel like I can't write something emotionally honest because it will be exposed and used against me somehow.