A little bit of personal context: I'm 30, originally from France, currently living in the U.S. with my wife, and working for an international non-profit.

I've always been relatively shy, but I never really felt (or wanted to acknowledge) that I had any specific psychological issues. My father passed away when I was young, and it's always been a topic that has been avoided in my family. To this day, I don't really talk about it with anyone, and just thinking about it (and typing this) is bring tears to my eyes. I didn't have trouble make friends when I was a kid, but it's become a real struggle now, which makes me feel bad about myself. I've also often tended to let myself be "influenced" for some decisions in my life: I changed topics of studies when I was younger after a friend convinced me to do it (it was most likely a very good idea though), I changed career plans to follow my wife (although we never discussed it and I never acknowledged that to her; and it was also a good thing to go away from what I was going for, but maybe not such a good one to go for what I do now).

I was promoted at work over a year ago and started assuming new responsibilities, which have made me become more stressed about it. This led me to start reading about mental and psychological issues, and I think I might have anxiety disorder. I haven't gone to a therapist yet, but it is in my plans, and hopefully I will soon manage to summon the courage (although I'm a little afraid it will be very expensive...). I might have other issues as well (maybe some type of OCD).

Apart from the anxiety that originates from work, I have some tendency to overthink, to obsess over things, and to make myself even more miserable that way.

For instance, I've wanted to visit Japan for a while, and every time I see something about someone visiting there or living there, it makes me wish it was me, and I start imagining how much better life would be there, all the stuff I would be doing there and, it makes me think that my life is boring and worthless. Or when a friend is telling me about something they've done recently that sounds interesting, I'm thinking why I'm not doing the same thing, how their life is better than mine, etc.

I always dig really deep into these fantasies and it makes me feel terrible about myself. My mind starts spiraling out of control, and it takes me a lot of effort to manage to stop myself from going deeper and deeper. Sometimes I almost want to "give up" (whatever I mean by that, stop caring about anything, stop interacting with people when I don't have to,...) so that I wouldn't have these thoughts anymore.

Is therapy the only option at this point? Is there anything else I can do to make me feel less anxious and prevent me from going crazy when this type of thoughts appear?