Visualizing pointers - LinkedList in Swift - swift

Question

I'm having some trouble and my brain hurts by reading those "pointers" - how do you efficiently read the pointers and visualizing the pointers?
Here is a simple example below yet daunting task in my brain to read/track of those pointers (previous and next). How do we approach this with less cognitive effort?
How do I see/visualize the removing of node in the linked list is thinking the linked list like a line of people and people pointing (hellish rebuke in dnd 5e) each other if they are previous and next to the person... That helps but not efficiently.
public func remove(node : Node<Element>) -> Element {
let prev = node.previous
let next = node.next
if let prev = prev {
prev.next = next
}
else {
head = next
}
if let next = next {
next.previous = prev
}
else {
tail = prev
}
node.previous = nil
node.next = nil
return node.value
}

Answer 1

Draw each node as a box.
In each box, provide a section "pointer". Draw an arrow from the pointer section to another box.
Think of pointers as mailing addresses. Each box (node) has the (mailing) address of the previous and next nodes.
If you remove one node, you have to update the mailing addresses stored in the neighboring nodes so they no longer try top point to the now-missing node.
It is not a big jump from mailing address to memory address, which is what pointers actually store.