can't free up space on iPhone x, I think my phone is keeping my deleted pictures ???

hi, I was going through my photos and deleting some photos and videos so I could free up some storage (I had 255.7 gb of 256 gb used). This isn't the first time I've had to do this since I usually take a bunch of photos and videos.

But something different happened today. Before going through my photos, my photos app had taken up 233 gb of storage. After going through my photos, my photos app took up 226 gb of storage. You'd assume that 7 gb of storage were freed up right? Me too, but what I saw I my settings was that 255.3 gb of my 256 gb were used up, I was confused. That didn't seem right and so I scrolled down and saw that my "other" storage was taking up 17 gb. This was alarming since it usually only took up 8 gb, and I don't really know if that's normal either. But anyways, I decided to do some googling and I was told to delete my Safari cache, website data and my browsing history, and so I followed through.

Despite my efforts, my "other" storage stayed the same. And so I decided that if my "other" storage wouldn't go down, I'd at least try and clear up some more storage by deleting more photos and videos.

As of right now, I've deleted 16 gb of my photos app but my "other" storage has only gone up. It's currently sitting at a whopping 24 gb while my photos app is only at 216 gb.

I have a feeling that my phone is keeping my deleted photos (and when I mean deleted I mean, I went into my deleted album and cleared everything in there) since my "other" storage increases the more I delete my photos. Has anyone ever encountered this sort of problem? Did you find a way to fix it? Does anyone have any tips because this feels like an endless cycle.