Silenced Notifications

Hi Pam317,

Welcome to the Apple Community,

Apple support have articles online (links below) that may help.

Re: "Can anyone help turn this off".

Use notifications on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch 

Learn how to view and manage your notifications to minimize interruptions

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iph62faab6a4/ios

Change notification settings on iPhone:

Most notification settings can be customized for each app.

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iph7c3d96bab/ios

Change message notifications on iPhone

You can set up and manage message notifications for the Messages app

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iph62faab6a4/ios

Re: same contacts now only send/receive as text not iMessage

Send and receive text messages on iPhone

Use the Messages app  to send and receive texts, photos, videos, and audio messages. 

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iph82fb73ba3/ios

About iMessage and SMS/MMS on iPhone:

Find out more about the difference between the message types.

Eg: To turn iMessage on or off, go to Settings > Messages.

If you're not using iMessage, you can use SMS/MMS. 

(If Wi-Fi is unavailable, iMessages will be sent over cellular data. Cellular data rates may apply.)

Complete article: https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT207006

Add and use contact information on iPhone

Eg: Scroll to: "Quickly reach a contact"

Says:

To start a message, make a phone call or a FaceTime call, compose an email, or send money with Apple Pay,

tap a button below the contact’s name.

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iph3e0ca2db/ios

Trusting there is something useful to you here, in taking control.

All the best :-)

Seems that when you set up a Focus,

you can turn on Share Focus Status

so that apps display to people who message you that you have notifications silenced. 

Seems this Focus Status setting may still be causing your difficulty, even though Focus was disabled.

You may need to enable Focus to turn the status setting off ?

Apple support's article "Use Focus on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch: has more info. on Focus Status:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212608

_____________________________________

Seems others have had a similar experience to yours:

Wondering if it is a difficulty many are finding, in learning to use Focus correctly,

or whether it is something Apple may need to change / correct in a future update.

Links to discussion threads on similar topic:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253527289

NB: In this thread below:

pfmusician says:

"I signed out of iCloud on my iPhone and 12.9 iPad

and, EUREKA, I didn't get that "has notifications silenced anymore"

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253412681

If needed:

There is a "Get Support" link to Apple at top right on this discussion page:

or

See a list of Apple phone numbers around the world.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201232 

Also

There's a webpage for sending feedback to Apple, if you wish:

http://www.apple.com/feedback

None of those options work to rectify the problem. All of my contacts are telling me that they receive the message that I have "notifications silenced" on every text, all day long. My do not disturb is not on and i have "focus" disabled in an effort to prevent this issue. Yet the message persists! Attached please find a picture of the message my friend received on sending me a text, a copy of my draw-down screen, a pic of my do not disturb settings and a copy of my notification sendings. I've restarted my phone a number of times - nothing has fixed this!