Does Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) help you with bipolar and/or anxiety?
Sorry for the long post. I would really appreciate stories of hope and success with ACT for anxiety, including for those who found ACT more helpful than CBT. I'm also wondering, is ACT supposed to make anxiety worse before it gets better?
For context, I have bipolar disorder and have been stable for a while. However, I'm so anxious. I have really tried to cope on my own for the last decade, but now I want to try cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for anxiety because challenging and reframing my anxious thoughts helps a bit (more than other strategies I've tried) and might help more if I have the chance to actually do CBT.
When my referral for CBT was accepted, the therapist said she won't do CBT with me because she has more experience with ACT, she personally found ACT more helpful than CBT, CBT won't stop anxious thoughts from returning (which I didn't think was the goal), and if challenging my thoughts was only partly helpful, then that's a clear sign that CBT won't work for me.
I don't really agree with her reasoning, but I'm willing to try ACT even though she scares me, the analogies are so confusing, and I already push through and do things that make me anxious, especially if they are aligned with my values and the life I want to live (which helps prevent anxiety from getting worse but leaves me increasingly exhausted). If I don't do ACT with this therapist, I will have to find a private therapist (which I can't afford) or get back on the public waitlist (which is quite long) and hope the next person will let me do CBT.