Not Feeling Like Yourself? Anxiety and Overwhelm Explained

written by Geneve Hendry, Holistic Counsellor | ACCPH | FHT No. 222568

You might not feel like yourself lately.

You may feel anxious, or overwhelmed, or just a bit unsettled, without fully understanding why. And often, when you try to explain it, it doesn’t quite come out clearly — just a sense that something isn’t quite right.

For many people, this experience is difficult to put into words, but it is more common than you might think.

Introducing the Compassion-First Framework for Understanding Anxiety and Emotional Overwhelm

The Compassion-First Framework is not presented as a formal clinical model, but as the structured way I bring together counselling-informed reflection, grounding, learning, awareness, and compassion in my work.

Where it all began

In my years working with children and adults, and through my own lived experience, I often found myself coming back to the same question: why do some people, despite trauma, seem to find a way through, while others feel completely overwhelmed by it?

South Africa, where I was born, is a beautiful place with the most incredible people and landscapes — and at the same time, there is often a lot of trauma woven into everyday life. And I think that’s where some of these questions began for me. How is it that, even within this, people are still able to find moments of joy, connection, and meaning? It wasn’t that life was easier. There just seemed to be something else happening beneath the surface.

And then my own lived experiences — of people I have loved and lost, who struggled deeply at times — brought that question even closer. What is it that helps someone keep going when things become incredibly heavy, while someone else can feel completely stuck in it?

What I observed in people

In my counselling work, and just in meeting people over time, I began to notice patterns — not in a fixed or formulaic way, but in the way people related to themselves when things were difficult. It wasn’t that their situations were easier. Often they weren’t. But there seemed to be a difference in how they responded internally.

There was an ability, at times, to recognise limits, to adapt, to accept that not everything works out in the way we hope. And when things became overwhelming, there was often a pause — not giving up, but almost like a quiet recalibration, like a piece of machinery adjusting itself to find balance again after being pushed out of alignment. It wasn’t dramatic. It was subtle, but it made a difference.

And then I began to notice something else. When these same people were with others who were struggling, they didn’t rush in with advice or solutions. They didn’t try to fix things straight away. They tended to begin by simply acknowledging what was being felt. And that stayed with me.

Because what also became clearer over time is that, while many of us are taught how to do this for others, we are not always shown how to do this for ourselves. We learn to say “that makes sense” outwardly — but when it comes to our own experience, it can feel much harder to say it inwardly. And yet, this is often where something begins to shift.

There also seems to be something about lived experience here. When someone has experienced pain, and had space to process it, it can support a deeper understanding of others. What might once have felt overwhelming may become something that can be recognised, rather than avoided.

And this is often how it shows up — as anxiety, as emotional overwhelm, or simply as that sense of not quite feeling like yourself.

Rethinking resilience

This led me to think differently about resilience.

We often hear resilience described as pushing through, keeping going, getting on with things no matter what. But what I was seeing didn’t quite look like that. It felt quieter than that.

More like the ability to pause, to notice what is happening, to adjust, and to accept what cannot be changed — rather than forcing things forward. Not ignoring difficulty, but finding a different way of relating to it. And that, for me, felt like a more sustainable way of understanding resilience.

Building the framework

Alongside my counselling work, I have also spent many years teaching, and I think that shaped how I began to understand this as well. Because we learn through repetition, through practice, through gradually building something over time. And if we can learn a skill in that way, it made me wonder whether we can also learn new ways of responding to our thoughts and emotions.

But learning doesn’t happen when we are overwhelmed.

In education, this is often described through Vygotsky’s idea of the Zone of Proximal Development — that space where someone feels supported enough to engage, but not so overwhelmed that they shut down. And I began to see how relevant that is beyond the classroom. Because if someone feels flooded, or unsafe, or completely overwhelmed, it is very difficult for anything new to settle or make sense.

And this is where the body becomes important. Some body-aware and trauma-informed approaches suggest that emotional overwhelm is not only experienced in thoughts, but also in the body. This is why gentle grounding, breath awareness, sensory cues, and compassionate reflection can be useful for some people.

In the Compassion-First Framework, these tools are not used to force calm or “fix” feelings. They are used to support enough steadiness for reflection, choice, and self-understanding to become more possible.

Many people experiencing anxiety or emotional overwhelm describe that sense of disconnection — as though they are there, but not quite fully themselves.

So techniques like grounding, breathing, or visualisation are not just about relaxation. They are ways of supporting the body to settle, even slightly, so that the mind may begin to follow.

And then, from there, something else may become possible. The way we speak to ourselves. Because when that begins to shift — even in small, believable ways — it may change how we experience things over time. Not through forcing positive thinking, but through something that feels a bit more real, and a bit more compassionate.