@David Novo
As far as the stress, I wonder if narcosis and CO2 had something to do with it. You mentioned you were stressed out only on the ascent and worrying about your gas would certainly do that. It's possible that the initial anxiety started in the 25-30m range while breathing air/EAN32 and seeing your SPG reading falling made it worse on the way up. Once you start breathing heavily (combination of stress and CO2) it's not the easiest thing to get back under control even once you start getting shallow and the narcosis reduces. I found this to be true especially early on in my dive career. Just hypothesizing on this as everyone experiences narcosis differently and I don't know what kind of conditions you dive in.
If you want to get a cert to 40m/130' for insurance reasons only as you have stated, Rec 3 is not what I would recommend. Fundies is not going to help either as it doesn't increase your depth rating in itself. Right now, go with whichever course is offered by an instructor that you like - seems like PADI Deep is that course in your case. After you dive some more and get more comfortable, you can re-visit whether you want to do Fundies or not or you may even decide you want to do tech/deco. Trust me, there's a strong chance it will change. Ask me how I know
If you're interested at all in the GUE route, read on. If not, the main takeaway I would like you to get is to fulfill whatever legal or insurance requirements you have now, get some more diving experience and then evaluate where you are in your diving skills and where you want to be before you sign up for any expensive classes.
============= GUE and "deep" diving specific stuff below =============
Fundies is the practical prerequisite to everything meaningful in the GUE ladder so obviously you start there.
I did Rec 3 and would agree with the points
@PfcAJ made about R3 vs T1 and R3 not being the best option for divers who actually want to dive to the stated depths using trimix and performing mandatory deco. T1 is for sure the way to go for that.
The value of R3 for me was in improving my ascents and mid-water skills in doubles+drysuit and also learning how to use a stage bottle (not just for deco/ascent but as a bottom stage with a DPV and everything that entails). The divers in my GUE community used to hire our local instructor to go over whichever of the above they were most interested in working on. I guess it got to the point that enough divers were requesting the same combination of skills to be covered and spending the same amount of days as R3 that he recommends it now instead of the separate 1-2 day clinics, depending on what you say your goals are.
You could also learn all the skills needed to do all of the above by diving with experienced buddies and getting mentored after Fundies but how effective that is depends on how quickly you learn and what your baseline is. I found I stagnated that way and was getting super frustrated so decided to go with hiring the instructor who recommended R3 instead of separate clinics. In contrast, my buddy who I will be doing Cave 1 with in November went straight from Fundies to successfully completing T1 less than 9 months later with no additional coaching in between. So, obviously, that's possible too and lots of divers go that route.
I'm repeating myself here but the main thing is to honestly judge your own skills and decide from there how much refinement you want or need. At the most, you may have to hire an instructor for a day to get an objective viewpoint but it's well worth it compared to paying for an expensive multi-day course and ending up disappointed.