PING! …and My Soul Left My Body

You’re deep in the zone. Focus locked. Brain finally running in a single clean thread. Then PING! your computer squeals like you’ve just triggered a boss fight.

Your shoulders rocket into your ears, your heart jumps into overdrive, and your neatly layered thoughts scatter like dropped LEGO.

Most folks shake it off. But for our neurodivergent brains, that’s a full derailment.

One stray alert doesn’t just pause the game, it uninstalls it mid-match. And the worst part? You don’t just lose your place… you inherit the creeping dread that another ping is coming.

Let’s dive into why our brains treat notifications like horror-movie jump-scares, how they feed sensory overload, and what gentle tricks we can use to make them a bit less scream-y.

My Fight-or-Flight Has a Push Notification Setting

For some people, a ping is just… a ping. For a lot of neurodivergent folks, it’s a plot twist. Our nervous systems are already tuned to pick up on every flicker of movement, change in light, or shift in sound. Add a sudden digital alert and it’s like the doorbell rang during the most intense part of your movie — your whole body reacts before your brain even registers what’s happening.

Scientists call it the “startle reflex,” but that makes it sound cute. This is less “aww, you startled me” and more “my soul briefly evacuated.” For ADHD and autistic brains, sensory processing differences can make these alerts hit harder — sharper sounds, brighter flashes, even subtle vibrations can feel amplified.

The Derailment Tax

Here’s the thing about jump-scare notifications: they don’t just interrupt what you were doing. They erase it. The thought you were holding? Gone. The mental thread you were pulling on? Snapped. The next 15 minutes? Spent trying to reload your brain’s state like an old save file.

And that’s the best-case scenario. Worst case? You get sucked into a chain reaction — check the notification, remember you haven’t replied to another one, see another task, open your email, and suddenly you’re on YouTube watching raccoons wash grapes.

For ND folks, that “context switch penalty” can be brutal. We already have to work harder to get into focus mode, so being pulled out of it feels like starting a climb from the bottom all over again.

Why It’s Not Just “Annoying”

There’s also an emotional layer here. Every unexpected alert carries a what now? undercurrent. Is it urgent? Did I forget something? Am I in trouble? For a brain wired for rejection sensitivity or anxiety, even a harmless “hey” can feel loaded.

And let’s be honest — app designers aren’t helping. That bright red badge on your phone? It’s literally designed to hijack your attention. Those sound effects? They’re tuned to cut through noise on purpose. It’s great for getting clicks. It’s not great for keeping a calm, focused mind.

How to Tame the Jump Scare

The goal isn’t to banish notifications entirely — sometimes we need them. But we can make them gentler, quieter, and more brain-friendly:

• Batch them: Set delivery times so all non-urgent pings arrive together.
• Change the sound: Swap harsh dings for softer tones (or something silly like a cat meow).
• Kill the red dots: Badges are urgency bait. Hide them unless you’re actively checking.
• Use “focus” modes: Let certain people or apps through, block the rest until you’re ready.
• Snooze with intent: Not “remind me in 10 minutes,” but “try again tomorrow at 10 AM.”

It’s not about control for the sake of control. It’s about building a calmer environment where your brain can actually finish a thought without feeling like you’re being hunted by your own phone.

A Little Grace

If you get startled easily, lose your place, or spiral after one rogue ping — you’re not broken. Your brain is doing exactly what it’s built to do: respond to sudden change. It just wasn’t designed for Slack, Outlook, Discord, Gmail, Messages, and random browser notifications all playing tag with your attention at the same time.

So maybe we can’t avoid all the jump scares, but we can script them to be more like polite taps on the shoulder than horror movie violin stabs. And in the meantime, if you catch me flinching at my laptop like it just barked at me… no you didn’t.

So, maybe we can’t make every ping polite, but we can make our space a little less like a haunted house. Turn down the dings, slow the flashes, give your nervous system a break.

And if someone really needs you, they’ll find a way preferably one that doesn’t involve your laptop screaming like it just saw a ghost.

Stay focused, stay un-jumped,
Simen (and Buffer, wearing noise-cancelling headphones and side-eyeing Slack)