Cox forum notifications.

I have a very annoying issue with the forums. Occasionally I come here to find solutions to issues I'm having but my problem is with the home page of the forums. I have this little lightning bolt in the top right that is supposed to be my notifications. I used to only get a notification if someone responds to a thread I'm following or one I've commented on. However, It says I have 244 notifications, and there's only a handful of ones for threads I've commented on or started. It's notifying me of EVERYTHING which means I can't find the ones I actually care about . It used to not do this, what's worse, is when I try to delete the notifications, they don't delete, I  delete and delete and hit confirm and then they go right back on. I never get emails that someone has replied (I used to get those as well), so unless I go directly to the forums and search everywhere wasting a ton of time, I don't even know if I get a response. How can I get rid of all these excess notifications I never subscribed to and how can I get email notifications I actually want?