#sound processing

YES!  This is a very common autistic symptom.  Sensory overload is one of the most common symptoms for autistics.  Each of us has a different level of tolerance for the 5 senses, and some autisitcs can handle one better than another, but high sensitivity to sound is probably the most common.

Not being able to pick one sound out of a bunch of them is probably Auditory Processing Disorder (but not necessarily, you may just be overwhelmed by Too Much Input, which simply shuts your brain down from being able to process any input).  

Here’s a good blurb I found on understood.org:

There are four auditory processing skills that people with APD may struggle with:

Auditory discrimination: noticing, comparing, and distinguishing between separate sounds

Auditory figure-ground discrimination: focusing on the important sounds in a noisy setting

Auditory memory: recalling what you’ve heard, either immediately or in the future

Auditory sequencing: understanding and recalling the order of sounds and words

But even if you DON’T have APD, you can still get Sensory Overload from Too Many Noises or Too Loud Noises or Bad Noises (a Bad Noise is one that makes you feel horrible when you hear it, even if it doesn’t ‘hurt’.  The famous one is “nails on a chalkboard”, even allistics understand that one.  For me though, the Bad Noises are chewing sounds, plastic bags rustling and potato chip bags crinkling, if I hear that I will cover my ears and rub them really hard to try to “erase” the sound and possibly cry).

This is extremely common in autism and I completely understand you.  As for your mom telling you not to mute the TV, I’m not sure why she’s saying that, but if she is the sort of person who is able to listen to you, you can try explaining to her about sensory overload because of sound, and how horrible it is for you, and that muting the TV gives you mental peace.

And, uh, fuck that laziness of "speaks Spanish(or whatever language)" being accepted as subtitles. At least give me the words they're speaking and I'll pause and look it up if I wanna know that bad.

Screwing with sound can help you better understand it; sound becomes meaning even as it whooshes though the damp, hairy chutes of our earholes. There is no such thing as a neutral recording or an objective listening (unless, of course, you’re Harley Byrne).

This is very much a thing that happens with sensory processing disorder in autism and sensory integration disorder.

It is also a thing that happens with second languages - the DSM even warns that a lot of the things that apply only apply to first languages. I am not multilingual, so I don’t really know what things to watch out for to differentiate the two. Hopefully, some followers can offer you more advice!