Translated from The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan:

Dear Troubleshooter:

I'm a housewife in my 40s. I'm busy doing household chores and taking care of my primary school child every day, but I still have time to enjoy my hobbies. I'm living a happy life, just like everybody does, but I cannot stop thinking about death after I turn off the light and get into bed. It happens every night. Although there are advances in medicine, we all die sooner or later. I'm terrified by the idea of dying someday. I cannot stop myself from imagining becoming seriously ill or being murdered. I start to breathe heavily when thinking about these things and even hyperventilate at times. I'm a positive person during the daytime, living with dreams and goals. I will see a doctor if my problem becomes bad enough to affect my daytime living. Since I become horrified by the idea of death for only 15 minutes a night, I don't take it seriously since I fall asleep after that. Still, I feel the fear of death every night. It is hard. Whom should I consult with? Can you give me some advice?

N, Kanagawa Prefecture

Dear Ms. N:

Although you always feel scared of doing something for the first time, you usually think it is nothing once you have experienced it. You also tend to fear something when you have no information about it. It is natural that you are afraid of death since you have not experienced it and have no information about it. It is like going to a place to where no one has been without a guidebook, and you cannot come back from there once you have gone. As you wrote, it would be pathological if you had problems going about your daily life because of this fear. But it seems to me that feeling scared by death for 15 minutes a day only proves that you are a human being.

Try looking at it this way: You can forget the fear for 23 hours and 45 minutes a day, and only the remaining 15 minutes are the time when you are connected to the shadowy world. It may be necessary for us to calm down and take time to keenly feel the reality of death in our life. It would help to do this in a relaxing environment enhanced by pleasant aromas and perhaps a CD playing the sounds of murmuring surf on a beach. To keep the time down to 15 minutes, you need to work hard, have a good time and stay physically active during the day so that you can sleep well at night.

Junko Umihara, psychiatrist

The Yomiuri Shimbun/ Asia News Network