Taskbar pulsing, performance decrease, display problems

I have a Dell Inspiron 5565 on Windows 10. My notification section of my taskbar has been pulsing constantly and. I've restarted Windows explorer, rebooted my computer, done a system restore, messed around in settings, asked 3 different tech specialists, made a new user, uninstalled driver after driver, and messed with refresh rates and and I still can't figure out the exact issue nor how to fix it. Here's a link to a gif of my issue, since it's hard to describe. It also, as you can see, shows up in all taskbar orientations.

https://imgur.com/ZLIzuQE

It's affecting my performance; I can no longer run some games and whenever I open Task Manager, my cursor slows down to a crawl (I am assuming this issue is the cause of these problems since they only started happening after the pulsing started). My cursor also, in general, often has the blue loading circle next to it flashing to the beat of the taskbar. I definitely think it has something to do with my display. When I open display settings, I get flashing settings options (the "Resolution" + "Orientation" drop down menus flash). I really need help :(