What Proton sell you is reduction of anxiety. But that's a lie.

The whole idea of encrypted email is pointless. There's absolutely no guarantee it's encrypted in transit or encrypted at rest on any machines it transits through unless you encapsulate the messages with PGP and then you still leave a trail of envelopes everywhere. Any government who wants your data will come round and beat it out of you or the provider as best as they can. And if you have the pay the provider, as evidenced here, they can point to you and then beat you for it. Beating being metaphorical or otherwise.

Use any old shitty email provider and make sure you can move off it quickly if you need to. Standard IMAP, not weird ass proprietary stuff like proton. Think carefully what you do and say. Use a side channel for anything that actually requires security.