Mimi, the word you used to describe yourself - so fragile - is really nice. It does not pathologize, but just depicts the state of affairs the way it is. Can I borrow it?

I have been able to remove a lot of stress from my life by adopting a uniform approach to passwords. Yes, I know, there are apps for password generators, but I have not been able to learn how to use them.

So I have a Master password. I change it once a quarter (which may be excessive precaution). I have a reminder in my Google calendar to switch the Master password.

On each site, I prepend the Master password by a meaningful word or acronym that relates to the site.

So on FB, it is FB<MasterPassword>, on LinkedIn it is LI<MasterPassword>, and on this site it is PSYCH<MasterPassword>. Because the words or acronyms I use to prepend the Master password are not random but have a meaning tied to the site itself, I no longer have a problem recalling them. And the MasterPassword, by being typed up so very often, is very easy to remember. Still, just in case, I have a spreadsheet that lists the words I use to prepend the MasterPassword - Facebook-FB, American Express - AMEX, etc.

The MasterPassword has CAPS, lowercase, and numbers.

This works for almost every site, and when I sign up for a new site, I usually get "STRONG" or GREEN LIGHT when I choose my password.

In some rare cases, sites require special characters (_-* etc.) and then I use them to prepend the MasterPassword and note that in my spreadsheet.

I live alone at the moment so I am only working towards not losing passwords - I do not have the concern of having to hide which sites I visit from family members. If you have that concern, I suggest that you simply memorize PSYCH (it is easy), committing it to memory without writing it down anywhere.

Forgetting passwords and having to recover them used to cause me tremendous stress, especially when I needed to do something fast and could not because I did not remember the password.

Changing the passwords every quarter does take time, but then I know that I have done due diligence.

Now I wish I could use the same strategy to find my cell phone at home .