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Not really sure how to explain it but the basic idea is that the reaction is harder, let’s say for example there’s an explosion or other loud and sudden sound, if you are distracted you simply get a big stimulus from nowhere and it can probably be dangerous so your fight or flee mechanisms kick in, your pupils dilate, your muscles tense, your heart beats faster, essentially all your senses are enhanced and that makes it feel more intense while when you are expecting it there’s no adrenaline rush so it feels “normal”

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I'm going to echo what others have said. Fight-or-flight (and to a lesser extent the preparing for the cold example is you tensing your muscles subtly, hunching your shoulders to protect your inner core, etc.)... These are semi-autonomic responses, like breathing or blinking.

When you prepare for something, you start digging into caloric reserves, your adrenaline production kicks in which lessens your need for oxygen, which distorts your breathing pattern. Your brain manifests some thought of what is coming and so these processes begin, albeit to a lesser extent. Your body is on a 'yellow alert', so moving to 'red alert' becomes less jarring than a flood of adrenaline or muscles tensing up all at once.

There's probably a LOT more going on than that. The human physiology is really a miracle, a complex dance of thousands of variables all working together in a divinely inspired choreograph.

I think a simple answer is that our senses measure change (or rather our brain experiences/notices change), and an expected change will naturally seem smaller.

Think of the classic scenario of throwing a frog into boiling water (it jumps out) vs dropping one into cold water and then slowly raising the temperature to a boil. The second frog is eventually boiled alive because the change in sensory input is gradual enough that the frog never notices.

I was not aware that "epinephrine lowers the body's requirement for oxygen." Do you have a source on that?

I realized I wrote that poorly. Let me clarify... Your body still needs oxygen, in fact it uses more. But your blood pressure goes up, muscles get more oxygenated blood, really a host of things happen to make your body way more efficient at transporting oxygen to the parts that are going to "protect you". That's why you'll see somebody who is typically a sloth bust into an Olympic run when a gun goes off near him or a loud noise scares him good. All that adrenaline maximized oxygen flow and glucose processing and turned that Twinkie eater into a track star for a few moments.

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Not to take away from the overall point but fyi the frog thing is a myth, that experiment was done on lobotomised frogs

Lobotomized frogs are frogs too! :D

Thanks for letting me know. It’s funny – as I was writing that, I thought to myself, “I learned about this when I was quite young, not entirely sure it’s even accurate…”

haha yeah it's crazy thinking back and realising how many things we unquestionably believed, especially when younger, just because we were told.

Once had an injury on my left index finger and had to get stitches. I anticipated the pain by focusing my senses on it. Was then congratulated for being very stoic.