One thing for me is that I go through a long adjustment period with any new phone screen- even when buying LCD display phones like the 8+ or last year the regular 11, I had symptoms like this that I had with my XS when I first tried it two years ago- it frustrated me, because these phones did not have PWM, but yet I was having eye pain and headaches. After about a month on each of those I was fine, my eyes adjusted.
Not sure why, my eyes are finicky.... now I am feeling this a bit on the 12 mini- and maybe it's the OLED flicker, maybe it's just the fact that it's a new display? I love that phone, and I want to try to make it work, so I will see how it goes, and will try different brightness settings.