Temporarily pausing screen updates

When Krita performs heavy processing multiple times, it causes delays. So I thought: why not pause the canvas display temporarily, then update the display once the operation is complete?

Using activeDocument.lock() and unlock() can stop the display.
However, if I added layers or manipulated layer styles while locked, Krita froze in a processing wait state. This is not very useful.
I thought blockSignals() might also work, but I couldn’t figure out which widget to apply it to.
Is there a way to temporarily stop canvas screen updates in Python?