I switched to Niagara launcher. Set all notifications to silent so they only appear in the shade and then i can only see the inline notification of the handful of fav apps pinned. It's been so wonderful to just ignore my phone.
You paint a beautiful picture, and I've been meaning to switch off Nova Launcher since they got bought by an analytics company. I'm going to have to try this out, thanks.
Best thing I did for my phone induced stress is get an old Pebble smartwatch, choose the few apps/contacts I want to get notified instantly to vibrate on the watch and set my phone itself on silent permanently.