The introversion is strong in us and I feel everything you said.
I personally deal with the overwhelming feeling by turning off all email notifications except for private messages, so I only deal with DW in DW's space. Theoretically, it means I can decide to mark all as read without adding to my mental load but it might only be effective when your activity is as low as mine (2-3 days without your reading page moving or anything in your inbox).
The other thing I do is choosing to only see top-level comments if a post has a shitton of comments. They're usually the more relevant ones that comment directly on the post itself and you can expand them as you like. I have avoided expanding threads that looked either too long or if they had users whose opinions I know will give me a headache.
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I personally deal with the overwhelming feeling by turning off all email notifications except for private messages, so I only deal with DW in DW's space. Theoretically, it means I can decide to mark all as read without adding to my mental load but it might only be effective when your activity is as low as mine (2-3 days without your reading page moving or anything in your inbox).
The other thing I do is choosing to only see top-level comments if a post has a shitton of comments. They're usually the more relevant ones that comment directly on the post itself and you can expand them as you like. I have avoided expanding threads that looked either too long or if they had users whose opinions I know will give me a headache.