Read your journal from two years ago. You survived stuff you swore would end you.

Old writing is the only honest witness to how frightened you used to be. Memory edits the fear out once you know the ending, which is why the earlier you seems to have handled things the current you feels unable to face. On the page it is all still there: the same dread, about a situation that resolved. That contrast is evidence, not encouragement.

Read something you wrote a year or two ago, especially from a bad month. Notice what you were certain would finish you. Then keep writing now, because whoever reads this back in two years will need the same proof.