Wide-O, I have kept all of my written notes and the handouts which I got when I spent a month in a psychiatric hospital, taking the first steps in dealing with my alcohol abuse and clinical depression. I look at them regularly.

I also keep a daily mood diary. It is an encrypted Word file on this laptop - to get access to it another person would need to know a very strong (15 character) password.

This works for me - maybe it is something that you could consider?