@lillycoyote Yeah, I’ve seen someone in extreme pain and dying. They were delirious (probably drugged) and it was in a clinical setting while looking rudely into a hospital patient’s room while waiting to see my dad, but I guess that half-counts. I’ve also seen people in great pain. I’ve never been in much pain myself, but regardless my point was it isn’t “so bad” because death follows. Pain is only a problem because it makes you sick with trauma. If you’re dead, there’s no trauma.
If I were locked in a room with no way of interacting with other people and I were going to die in ten minutes regardless of what I did, it wouldn’t matter if I spent those ten minutes in hell or in extreme pleasure. I’d still choose pleasure, but I wouldn’t be happy about it. Death is death.
If someone’s with you, your pain might harm them mentally, however. And knowing that someone experienced great pain can cause problems, but people seem usually to get over that quickly enough if the pain didn’t accompany that someone’s death.
I still say this fear of a painful death is based on fear of death and not so much the pain itself.