DRAFT - Finding Your “Thing” — And Why You Turned It Into Work

By Keeley Matthews, Relational Psychodynamic Counsellor - 5 minute read

Relational psychodynamic counselling for high-achieving women in Epping, Essex, with in-person sessions in Loughton and online across the UK.

Meta Title: Finding Your Thing — And Why You Turned It Into Work Meta Description: Do you make every hobby feel like a job? You might be missing the thing that's been yours all along. A personal reflection on rest, identity, and joy.Focus Keyword: finding your thing Suggested URL Slug: /finding-your-thing

I was listening to a podcast this week when something stopped me mid-listen.

It mentioned the competition between orchestra members — that quiet, persistent pressure to be the best, even in something that's supposed to be about the music.

It took me straight back to being eleven years old, learning the cello at school.

I wasn't learning it because I loved it. I was learning it because I was looking for something to identify with. Something that would feel like mine. I never got very far — my entire repertoire was Puff the Magic Dragon and Noel, both played badly. And then one day I leaned the cello against something, it fell, and it smashed.

I was devastated — not because I'd lost the cello, but because of the panic that followed. The catastrophic thoughts. The certainty that I'd be in serious trouble at school. I wasn't, as it turned out. But those feelings were enough to make me never want to go near it again.

That was the end of my cello career. And the beginning of a very long search for my thing.

The List That Goes On Longer Than I'd Like to Admit

Over the years I've tried a lot. The gym. Horse riding. Tennis. Cooking. Spanish. Running. Cycling. A motorbike at one point. And plenty more I've half-forgotten.

When I look at that list honestly, I did the same thing in almost every single one.

I made it feel like work.

I had to achieve something. Improve. Learn as much as possible, as fast as possible. Buy the right kit, because if I was going to do something, I was going to do it properly.

Running is the one that really shows it up. I wanted to get faster, so I joined a running club. Proper commitment. Very on-brand. What I hadn't accounted for was quite how unfit I was. The training sessions involved laps on a track — and by the time I finished, the rest of the club had already packed up and gone home.

Just me, the track, and a fairly brutal reality check.

That was the moment I saw it clearly. I'd taken something I liked well enough and turned it into a performance I couldn't live up to. The joy had gone out of it the second I made it something I had to get right.

When Hobbies Become Another Job

I don't think this is just a quirk of my personality.

It's something I see in the women I work with — capable, driven, quietly hard on themselves — who find that enjoyment without a goal feels almost uncomfortable. If you're someone who's spent years being useful and high-functioning, leisure can start to feel like wasted time unless you're producing something from it.

So you make the hobby a project. The walk a training session. The creative interest a potential side hustle.

Without even meaning to, you've turned your downtime into another area where you're measuring yourself.

It doesn't feel like pressure. It feels like motivation, or having standards. But underneath it, there's often a quieter question — am I allowed to just enjoy something, without being good at it or getting anything from it?

For a lot of women, the honest answer — at least at first — is not really.

[INTERNAL LINK: why high-achieving women struggle to rest]

The Thing That Was There All Along

Here's what got me when I was listening to that podcast.

While I'd been busy working my way through hobbies and turning each one into a quiet performance review — I actually had my thing the whole time.

I love reading. I've had a book on the go, usually two, since I first learned to read. It is so completely woven into who I am that I had genuinely forgotten it counted. It never felt like an achievement. It never came with targets or progress or the right equipment to buy. I just did it, because I loved it — because it asks nothing of me except to show up and lose myself in it.

That's what a real thing feels like. It gives back more than it takes. You don't need to be good at it or improving at it. You're not doing it for anyone else.

You just do it. And somehow, that's enough.

Which is exactly why it's so easy to overlook — especially when you've spent years valuing what you can produce over what you simply enjoy.

[INTERNAL LINK: the relationship between identity and rest]

So — What's Yours?

Not what you're good at. Not what you're trying to improve at. Not what looks like a productive use of your time.

What's the thing you do where the doing is enough?

If something came to mind straight away — hold onto that. Give it more room than you probably have been.

But if you had to think hard, or if the honest answer is that you're not sure — it might not be that you don't have a thing. It might be that life has got busy enough that you've lost sight of it. Or that you have it already, and you've stopped counting it as anything special because it doesn't feel like an achievement.

Reading didn't feel like mine because it was just always there. Easy. Quiet. No kit required.

Sometimes the thing that's most yours is the one you stopped noticing.

If any of this resonated, you might want to read:

→ The Hidden Cost of Being the Capable One → Why You Can't Switch Off — Even When You Finally Have Time → Why High-Achieving Women Struggle to Ask for Help

If something here felt close to home and you're curious about what that could look like to explore further, you're welcome to find out more about how I work — or to book a free 15-minute consultation. It's just a conversation, with no pressure to commit to anything.

I offer in-person sessions in Loughton and online therapy across the UK.

If this feels familiar, you're not alone in it.

Keeley Matthews The RelationSHIFT Counsellor

Keeley Matthews is a relational psychodynamic counsellor holding a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling and is a member of the BACP. She works with high-achieving women in Loughton and online across the UK — and has lived experience of the patterns she writes about.

In brief: Finding your thing isn't always about discovering something new. For many high-achieving women, it's about recognising what's already there — and giving yourself permission to value it.

This is ready to publish. The two [INTERNAL LINK] placeholders in the body are the only things still to swap out — use whichever existing posts feel most relevant, or let me know if you'd like suggestions from what's already on your blog.

I used to go on holiday and find a computer.

Not because I had to. Not because anyone was chasing me. But because not working — not being available, not staying on top of things — felt worse than working. So I'd find a way back in. A hotel business centre. A borrowed laptop. Whatever it took to feel like I hadn't let anything slip.

At home it was the same. If I wasn't working, I was doing housework. And not just doing it — doing it to a standard, because anything less meant I wasn't keeping up, wasn't holding things together properly, wasn't being good enough at the part of my life that wasn't work. My partner could sit down without guilt. I watched that and felt something I couldn't quite name — something between envy and resentment — and told myself the problem was him, that he didn't notice what needed doing. It took a long time to understand that the problem wasn't him at all. He was fine. I was the one who couldn't stop. And what I was really feeling was something much closer to home than I wanted to admit.

The moment something shifted

It was lockdown that brought it into focus.

I was studying for my postgraduate diploma in psychodynamic counselling, working full time on top of that, and pushing through at the same relentless pace I always had. And I remember looking out at the common behind my house and watching people walk their dogs in the middle of the day — unhurried, just walking — and feeling something crack open slightly. I wanted that. Not the dog necessarily. But the slowness. The sense that life could have a different pace to the one I'd been living at for as long as I could remember.

I didn't have anything in my life that was purely pleasurable. No hobby that took me out of my own head. Nothing that existed just for me. I'd known that for years, quietly, and kept moving anyway.

What was underneath the motion

As my own therapy progressed — slowly, over time — I began to understand what all that movement had been protecting me from.

The fear that things would fall apart.

Not a rational, specific fear. Something older than that. A deep sense that if I stopped holding everything together, something would give. That the structure of my life depended on me staying on top of it, staying useful, staying in motion. Rest wasn't just uncomfortable. It felt, on some level, like a risk.

What I hadn't seen — couldn't see, from inside it — was how much of that fear was my own projection. My partner wasn't judging me for sitting down. He wasn't keeping score. The guilt I felt when I rested was mine. The sense that I hadn't earned it was mine. The belief that everything depended on me never stopping was mine too, and it had been there long before he was.

Understanding that didn't change it overnight. But it was the beginning of something loosening.

What loosening actually felt like

It didn't feel dramatic. It felt like small things, noticed slowly.

The tension in my shoulder that I'd carried for years — and attributed to posture, to stress, to just how I was — quietly disappeared. I noticed it was gone before I understood why. I began to realise I didn't need to respond to every email the moment it arrived. That saying no when I didn't have the capacity wasn't a failure — it was just honest. That my relationships had more space in them than they used to. That I had more space in me.

I'm still working towards some of it. The slow walk on the common on a weekday morning — that particular image of the life I want — isn't quite here yet. But I can lose myself in a book now. I can get absorbed in a TV series without the background hum of what I should be doing instead. I can go to the gym and be fully there, not half-present and half-elsewhere.

That might sound small. It isn't.

What this might be about for you

If you recognise any of this — the inability to stop, the restlessness when you do, the faint sense that rest has to be earned before it's allowed — it's worth asking what the motion has been protecting you from.

Not in a critical way. With curiosity.

Because for most of the women I sit with, the busyness isn't really about the work. It's about what stopping might bring up. The feelings that don't have space to surface when you're always moving. The questions about who you are when you're not being useful to someone. The fear, quiet but persistent, that if you loosen your grip, something will fall.

Those things don't shift through trying harder to relax. They shift through understanding — through finding out what's underneath the busyness, and whether it still needs to be there.

That's what I offer — you can read more about how I work here. Not a way to become less capable, but a way to carry less of the cost.

If this resonates, you might want to read the rest of the series:

→ Why High-Achieving Women Struggle to Ask for Help→ The Hidden Cost of Being the 'Capable One'→ Why You Feel Like an Imposter — Even When You're Not→ The Exhaustion Nobody Sees→ When Your Head Won't Go Quiet

If any of this resonates, you're welcome to find out more about how I work — or to book a free 15-minute consultation. It's just a conversation, with no pressure to commit to anything.

I offer both in-person sessions in Loughton and online-therapy across the UK.

If this feels familiar, you're not alone in it.

Keeley Matthews

The RelationSHIFT Counsellor

Keeley Matthews is a relational psychodynamic counsellor holding a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling and is a member of the BACP. She works with high-achieving women in Loughton and online across the UK — and has lived experience of the patterns she writes about. She knows what it is to build defences that work, and what it takes to understand what they cost you.

In brief: The inability to switch off — even on holiday, even when there's nothing urgent — is rarely about poor discipline. For many high-achieving women it's the mind and body staying in motion because stopping feels, on some level, like a risk. Finding out what the busyness has been protecting you from is usually what allows it, slowly, to loosen.

Relational psychodynamic counselling in Loughton, Essex and online across the UK — or the women who are still finding their way back to a slower pace, and know it's time.