I think (from personal experience) talking with a good mental health professional would really help with your current state of mind and the pressure you’re feeling.
That's the toxic stuff you get from society, which leads to you hiring mental health professionals that can teach you healthy, effective ways of dealing with stress.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy can help with a wide range of issues. If there are worries that are not productive for you, that you can't get out of your head, a therapist can teach you how to use some basic tools to control that. And you'll probably only need a few visits. You can also read books, but given what you've stated I think you should start with a human.
My son went to a few sessions and completely got his OCD under control. He doesn't have to go anymore. I used similar technique to quit smoking 30 years ago after at least a half-dozen serious tries by other means failed. Still off them. It applies to all kinds of issues though, its also very effective for depression. According to the literature studies I did twenty years ago, it was the only technique that actually showed sustained benefit for depression other than medication.
My depression comes from super severe learned helplessness. I have been extremely stupid with money and career choices and nowadays things got hard, I have several chronic health conditions and the difficulty got up not by 2x, more like 20x. I just can't muster the will to even do one job interview, financial reserves are dwindling fast and, you get the picture.
I have zero faith any therapist can help me. They'll likely start with "but it's for your own good!" and I'll just say "yeah yeah, like 200 other things I have been told and zero of them turned out to be true". That's how I imagine it.
I am not against paying professionals. Obviously. I just don't believe in therapy at all.
What would you do to start with, with a guy like me? (I am aware you are not a therapist yourself.)
I am also not a therapist but I am a former tech founder turned executive coach so I do talk to people who are facing what feels like overwhelming challenges, risk, and uncertainty.
Even in the language you used "severe learned helplessness" and "extremely stupid", you are revealing a state of mind (cynicism, self-flagellation) that is not oriented to improving your condition.
You know you have a strong bias against therapists—given your seeming lack of knowledge about them, where do you think that bias came from? Fundamentally, we are a social species and evolved to live with strong connections to small groups.
Our society is no longer set up like that. So professionals like therapists and coaches provide the essential value of a caring, supportive, and helpful relationship that we lack. Like getting an essential nutrient that your diet lacks.
Do you have health insurance? Many of them cover mental health—the site Headway can help you find one that takes insurance. Try a few and gather some first-party data before writing them off fully. The downside is a few hundred dollars. The upside is a much brighter and materially better future.
You have too much faith in the social system. Clue: I am in Eastern Europe. We have exactly zero protection. Not small. Zero.
TL;DR if my reserves dwindle, I get thrown on the street. No conditions. No if-s. No but-s. No social safety net. I become the next fresh bum on the street.
To more directly respond to your question: medical insurance in my case means I get to schedule a meeting 2 months from now, with an old-school psychologist who is going to look at me annoyed and badly hide the fact how impatient he is for me to leave. I heard stories from acquaintances.
To try to complement what other replies already said...
I think an important result of successful intervention is to awaken (or reawaken) the mind to the idea that thoughts and perceptions are internal and not always accurate representation of an objective, external world. Much psychological stress comes from these internal experiences, and subtle shifts in your mental posture can change this environment.
That's not to say that real stressors and stimuli don't exist. It's just that often times a person can spiral in a way that makes their internal reactions counterproductive and harmful to well being.
Another important result is learning better coping and adaptation strategies, so you can start to shift your mental posture or even change lifestyle and environment to reduce chronic stress.
It's not always easy, not magic, and not perfect. But, it can help...
The worst thing here is, from the beginner perspective it seems like simply reframing bad in a positive way, when bad was almost completely in their mind and didn’t exist that much. After the results you can see how twisted you were. I had my moments when I looked at the scheme of my mind on a whiteboard and had to admit how delusional I am, with zero pressure to do so.
I think its important to understand that CBT is a system, a set of tools for managing your thought patterns. Therapists who specialize in it are largely in the business of educating their clients, not having them lie on a couch and talk to the ceiling about their childhood. I'm not saying you won't have generic "talk-therapy" kind of conversations - those are still necessary for them to understand the specific issues you need to work on - but its not just someone helping you find insights that don't change anything.
If you are completely against meeting with a therapist though, you can start with books. I wish I could recommend one that I've used, but this is an example of one that looks really promising to me, with a practical approach: https://www.amazon.com/Retrain-Your-Brain-Behavioral-Depress...
This is not how therapy works. Although, tbf, it’s not hard to find a pseudotherapist who practices stereotypical bs.
What would you do to start with, with a guy like me
IANAT either, but mine would start with asking how I feel and then why. Then we’d talk about my vision of practical ways to stay afloat, the ways I maybe don’t see due to my focus, what exactly makes it hard to push through, in both known and never-tried situations. There would be some belief, avoidance, anxiety, algorithm, or a set of these. In CBT there’s a clear formalized method for each, which you can pick and work with until the next week or two. Examples are: logging your emotional responses, compiling a list of “musts”, start doing un-usual things, asking what exactly is wrong with something that seems bad.
That is, if my depression was on low. If on high, we’d address that first. Last time I pushed through it by following physical regime, a few supplements and lots of anger against it (depression can’t turn off my anger, ymmw as well as methods).
Trust me, us Europeans are not exempt from the "everyone should see a psychologist" trope blasting social media the last decade. We are not blind to every Hollywood actor having a personal therapist either.
I think the main difference (speaking as a northern European) is that when you Americans speak of therapy you seem to mean the stereotypical "talk therapy" where as basically every therapy here is cognitive behavioral therapy.
Can cognitive behavioral therapy help someone who has a bit of existential dread about his tech job? Maybe. I don't think it's silly on it's face though to say "really?" if the poster's life is in order otherwise.
