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If you're worried about getting all the exercise you need because you're not jogging, swimming, or playing tennis, worry no more.
A study released by the U.S. Foreign Service Medical Bulletin show that managers do indeed burn up calories despite the sedentary nature of their jobs. The following charts tells how many calories we can burn per hour:
| Beating around the bush | 75 | |
| Jumping to conclusions | 100 | |
| Climbing the walls | 150 | |
| Swallowing your pride | 50 | |
| Passing the buck | 25 | |
| Throwing your weight around (depending on your weight) | 50 to 300 | |
| Dragging your heels | 100 | |
| Pushing your luck | 250 | |
| Making mountains out of molehills | 500 | |
| Adding fuel to the fire | 150 | |
| Hitting the nail on the head | 50 | |
| Wading through paperwork | 300 | |
| Bending over backwards | 75 | |
| Jumping on the bandwagon | 200 | |
| Running around in circles | 350 | |
| Eating crow | 225 | |
| Tooting your own horn | 25 | |
| Climbing the ladder of success... | 750 | |
| Pulling out all the stops | 75 | |
| Wrapping it up at day's end | 12 |
Contributed by Virginia Reeves
Chatter Box- Resident Newsletter Iliff Care Center
Living With a Rare Disorder:
Feelings I Keep to Myself
by Mark Flapan, Ph.D.
When family members or friends ask, "How are you?", they usually want to know if you are in any particular pain or discomfort, or if you are worse or better off physically than before. Seldom do they have in mind your emotional state. Yet at times your emotional reactions to your illness are more stressful than the physical effects.
While you and your family are doing everything you can to treat and cope with your physical ailments, there may be more you and they can do to relieve your emotional distress. You can learn to better understand and accept your feelings-to understand without shame, self-blame, guilt or recrimination.
To promote this understanding, I will describe the commonly experienced emotions of persons with chronic illness, recognizing of course that not everyone experiences all the reactions I will describe. In describing these emotional reactions I may be giving voice to thoughts and feelings you have never expressed or possibly even acknowledged. This may upset those of you who are able to maintain a positive attitude by putting aside disturbing thoughts and feelings. This article is for those of you who need the emotional relief of a shared understanding.
Distressing Emotions
Anger: You are angry for having an illness, but who should you be angry at-God, fate, the whole world? You are angry at doctors because they have no cure for your disease. You thought doctors knew so much, but you now realize they don't. What's more, they don't seem particularly interested in you, except as a "case." When you go for a visit, they are either rushed and don't explain enough, or say things that upset or frighten you.
You are also angry at family members and friends who at times are unavailable when you need them, and who expect more from you than you can do. You wish they could live in your body for a day or even an hour so they could understand what life is like for you. Then maybe they wouldn't say or do things that hurt your
feelings. You are also upset by the thoughts that they might resent all they have to do for you-and you feel hurt and resentful in return.
Self-Blame: You may blame yourself for your illness. Maybe you brought on your condition by not taking proper care of yourself. Or maybe God's punishing you for something you did wrong-but you don't know what. You just feel it's your fault.
Shame: If you take your illness as a sign of weakness or a reflection of a flawed character, you are ashamed to be ill. If you take pride in yourself in being independent, or on doing things for others, you are especially ashamed if you need others to do things for you. Moreover, if you have a visible disfigurement or deformity, you may be painfully self-conscious and ashamed.
Frustration: If you have a disability that requires you to rely on others for your daily needs, you are constantly frustrated. You are frustrated because you can't do these things for yourself and you are frustrated because others can't do them promptly enough or exactly as you would like. Also frustrating and depressing as well is to be unable to engage in activities you once enjoyed, or to use abilities in which you once took pride.
Self-Evaluation: If you are unable to do what you used to, you not only feel frustrated, but inadequate, too! And if in addition you are a perfectionist with expectations you no longer can meet, you may feel discouraged and even hate yourself.
Self-Pity: You feel sorry for yourself that you can't lead a normal life like everyone else. You feel cheated and unfairly treated if you are unable to finish your education, get married, have or take care of children, earn a living or pursue a career. And you can't help envying and resenting others who can do all these things.
Guilt: You feel guilty if you can't fulfill your responsibilities as a wife or husband. Guilt may be unbearable if you are a mother unable to do all you should for your children. Guilt is intensified if you feel you are a burden to others-especially if you need help in your personal care and hygiene. And should you sense a resentment on the part of family members on whom you depend, you not only feel guilty but hurt as well.
Fear: If your disorder is potentially progressive, you live in dread of the future and are alarmed by any actual or imagined change in your condition. If your condition is life-threatening, a cloud hangs over your head. You are also plagued with fears related to your family. If you have young children, you worry-what will happen to them if something happens to you? If you are dependent on your parents or marital partner for personal care, you worry-what will happen to you if anything happens to them? Al-though you know it is unlikely, the thought has occurred to you-what if your partner gets tired of taking care of you and leaves? What would you do then?
Emotional Relief
Even though your emotional reactions may be commonplace, if you criticize yourself for your feelings you may be suffering more than you need to be. If that is the case, you gain both understanding and self-acceptance by sharing your feelings with a sympathetic family member or friend who is sensitive to your feelings and knows how to listen. You can even use this article as a basis for talking about your feelings.
You can also lighten your emotional burden by sharing your feelings in a support group or with others individually. If these sources are not sufficiently helpful, you can benefit from professional counseling. Counseling may not only relieve the pains of guilt, apprehension, anxiety, self-disparagement and depression, but may provide new perspectives for living and coping with your disorder.
It is important to keep in mind-while you are not responsible for your physical disorder, you are responsible for what you do or don't do to help yourself in living with it. I hope you are a good helper.
AMPS:NORD, P.O. Box 8923, New Fairfield, CT 06812