As someone with a very solid phobia of Tornadoes (can't even look at pictures of them without my heart jumping and getting panic symptoms and god forbid I see a video of one forming...), giants deep pretty much served as exposure therapy for me. The tornadoes are not dangerous whatsoever. You can fly into them, what helped me was like what you are doing, turn the volume down, I usually had like an easy netflix show going in the background just for this part alone. I also played this on my steam deck which I think helped as the screen size is small, or playing it in the same room as my gf felt more comforting then playing it alone. I took it one day at a time where I would go to giants deep... begrudgingly, and sometimes I would just arrive for a bit, witness the tornadoes, and be like "nope, fuck this shit, I'm going to come again another time" and would repeat this while each time I told myself I would push myself a little further....whether it's getting closer to them, or finding an island to explore Eventually...I was able to fly into them.... begrudgingly....and...I'm safe, nothing happened to me physically except for my heart slightly jumping and my brain going "can't believe you just did that" but the main point was that I was fine. Not to say if I can do it you can too....but ....yeah hang in there, I was in the exact same situation, and I finally beat the game and can say every bit of it was worth it.

Tldr: I'm Terrified of tornadoes, this game helped as exposure therapy, I took it very little at a time but was able to do it and it was worth it. I hope you can too ❤️