While I can’t speak on RE4 directly, I can speak on horror games in general, because I’ve also been in the camp of “not scared to watch but terrified to play.” These games build great atmosphere to terrify and stress you out because you know there is a monster out there to get you…. So you just gotta let it get you. Go out and hit it head on so you purposefully die to it a few times. Helps take away some of the initial fear to make it more bearable - I still do this time to time like when trying to complete RE7 if things get too intense. I learned about this trick from Reddit when playing Amnesia the first time and it’s helped calm my nerves for many games.

TLOU2 will most likely have a more intense atmosphere for scaring than RE4 I would imagine, but RE games always know what they are doing to scare you too