Advice for Overcoming the Fear?

You overcome most irrational fears by putting yourself in the objectively harmless situations that cause the anxiety (and that you perceive as dangerous), and stay in them until the fear subsides.

The idea is that you learn, by exposure, that nothing bad will happen to you. The key and trick is not to run away from the situation before relief kicks in as otherwise you only reinforce the anxiety. The other half of the difficulty is to actually do it, and not spend hours, days, months, years worrying about it and fantasizing about all the bad stuff that could happen ("bad stuff" including especially things like anxiety attacks and the fear itself -- often, fear of X is really fear of the fear).

I don't necessarily agree that this particular issue is something you really need to work on (it's a game, and you can play something else -- it's not an anxiety that limits you in real life, presumably, though I'd wager you probably deal with some fears and phobias there, too), but if you really wanted to, the most efficient approach would be to just play HC. When your character croaks, you make a successor. Eventually, you'll ease into it, after quite a bit of discomfort that you must endure for positive results.

Tip-toeing around the issue, like playing SC, won't do you much good. It's like practicing to swim in 1-foot deep water. It's not the real thing and your brain knows it. But the real question is really: Why do you need to play HC? Do it for the fun. If it isn't fun, don't do it. If you value whether or not perfect strangers think of you as a scrub for playing SC, the deeper issue here is self-esteem or lack there of. If you do think HC will keep the game fresh for you (it likely will, and certainly was what kept me playing D2 for years, though I'm still happy with SC here -- will get those achievements, learn the game, then do HC), then play it. Otherwise, play the mode that you personally enjoy the most. Do what you want to do, not what you think yields the most prestige.

I was thinking of writing something like that Mivo but then I saw your answer. Good job on that mate :) To threadstarter: Yes it is about your brain finding out that a given situation is not a threat as Mivo mentioned. Also know that your value does not lie in what you do or how good you are with this game bro :)

Cheers

The ONLY reason to play HC is if you enjoy the fear and edgyness.

If you don't enjoy it don't do it.

1) Learn to level without dying in Normal.
2) Play a different game
3) Play something ridiculously fun and OP.

Interesting that most replies suggest "just do it and get over it". This is much easier said than done. As the OP said he is well aware of it just being a game and that nothing will actually hurt him.

I do know how unreasonable anxiety in a logically safe environment can cause physiological responses. I had that problem in a different game some yrs ago dealing with my fear of heights. The game required much climbing and acrobatics and if you fell you died. This caused me great stress and I broke out in spots and psoriasis.

Logically one might think playing would have helped to get over this fear. It did not. It was much easier to over come my fear over spiders.

I don't have any good suggestions for fixing your problem but there is a method that many find works well. EFT (emotional freedom techniques). You can find tutorials for it at emofree.com. If all else fails you might look in to it.