“Which is more of threat to your health: Al Qaeda or the Department of Homeland Security?”  was the provocative lead in question to a recent article entitled Living in Fear and Paying a High Cost in Heart Risk.  The article states that the answer is not as clear cut as you might think.  A study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, which tracked the health of a representative study of more than 2,700 Americans before 9/11, began monitoring people’s fears of terrorism for several years post the attack and found that the most fearful people were found to be 3 to 5 times more likely to receive diagnoses of new cardiovascular ailments.  For specifics about the study read the article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/science/15tier.html?pagewanted=all

During this period Homeland Security devised a color coded scale to alert the nation to the level of threat present.  If you recall the numerous news conferences the Attorney General and the Director of Homeland Security held and the lead story to the nightly news, which all gave special attention to the elevated level of threat. I remember sitting in an airport, late one night waiting for a flight, when a cold metallic voice over the loudspeaker broke into my day’s reflections informing me that the level of threat was elevated to orange and to not leave my bags unattended! My amygdala quickly focused my vision, as I scanned all the other faces in the waiting area and it alerted me to where all the exits where. It was scary. Of note is that the level has never dropped below yellow, third of the five levels, since the inception of the scale. The implications and results of the study indicate that living in constant fear has negative psychological, physical, and emotional consequence to one’s health.

As I was working my way through the article I kept reflecting on how important the work we do with leaders on managing and navigating emotions. One tool we teach is the Reaction Cycle (Our body’s way or reacting to a perceived threat), which shows how you can intervene at three critical phases of the cycle: Preparation, Interpretation, and Escalation, to bring our thoughts, emotions and bodies back to equilibrium.  I also wondered about leaders who use fear as part of their leadership style and the consequences it has on performance but also on the long term health of the people they manage and lead, as well as on their own health.

Alan Deutschman in his book, Chang or Die points out the misconceptions about change; if you give people the facts, create enough fear and then add force that change happens.  In fact the 3 F’s are the saboteurs of change. Joseph LeDoux says, “Emotions are a critical source of information for learning.” EQ tells us that fear is a legitimate and critical emotion; without fear there probably wouldn’t be a human species. However, to remain in fear is unproductive for health and performance and to bring about constructive change.  We need fear to alert us to the dangers of global warming and other serious threats to our well-being but we need to learn to move out of fear and into hope to assist us in creating a sustained effort to overcome our threats.