TV and Anxiety: Does Anyone Else Feel This Way?

Yes all three +more. It's all about the right balance of sensory stimulation with ADHD. Over or understimulation. That's gonna trigger anything else. TV must be too much stimuli for you. It's not for me, and I use it often to help my focus, sensory comfort, and for all my other problems to be less problematic. So for you, you can set some boundaries about when it's turned on around you. For example, if you're already working on something, she can't come into that room and turn it on without asking and might have to watch on her phone with headphones instead until you're done with what you had/wanted to focus on. If you want relief while it's on, you're gonna need to lessen or balance the visual and auditory sensory input it's giving you. For auditory: Regular earplugs, loop earplugs, low volume, change volume settings, no volume with subtitles. Sometimes it's not overstimulation and is just distracting because so much noise is coming from one specific area, so surround sound could be beneficial. Visual: Lower brightness, color settings, blue light glasses, sunglasses, blocking your view, changing the show to something less chaotic like a nature channel. Balance the room's lighting with the light that's coming from the TV.

I think it's because the TV is distracting. For me, when my mom has the TV on but wants to talk, I ask her to mute it. Otherwise it's too distracting and my focus will keep shifting between it, her, my thoughts, what the dogs are doing, and any new stimuli that pop in. I have to watch shows in bursts, and I spend more time doing things that are less passive. I think there's a little anxiety around sitting and doing the same thing for too long, and also I need breaks to digest what I've watched. I have a partner that likes to binge watch, and I only manage that for 1 in 200.