Recently I've begun to remember how I've felt when I've been extremely ill, how "out of it" I've been and how quickly things can go (or how days just kind of fold into one another so they can't be told apart) and realize that what the person watching feels and thinks (with all their faculties) and what the person experiencing the event experiences, are very different things?

I think it is a little bit like when people over-humanize their pet's experiences with life, death, and pain. As animals, our bodies are gifted with pain and mind dullers and bad experiences are not necessarily as horrific as the person watching "imagines". That is what helps me, realizing that my imagination is giving me a harder time often then someone else's suffering. I cringe when I watch nature shows where one animal attacks another but I know the one being attacked does not feel or experience it like I do. So for other people's hard deaths or experiences, I try to think of it like lions and gazelles and remember my own actual experiences instead of letting myself get my imagination, own wishes, and feelings into there.