Gaussian blur greatly slows down the program

I don't remember having this issue in the past, but most of the time whenever I try to apply a Gaussian blur effect to a shape or outline, it takes at least a minute to load the effect and often leads to the "Not Responding" message in the title of the window, which makes matters worse. It could be on a very simple shape with no other effects and it lags like crazy. I've tried adjusting the Document Raster Effect settings which sometimes helps, but more often than not, it causes the effect to not even work at all and slows up the program even more. I've had to force quit Illustrator in some situations where it got stuck on "Not Responding" and wouldn't finish loading, causing me to have to restart some of my work. Illustrator has released two or three updates since I've been having this problem and it hasn't been addressed. This seems to be a common issue with other users as well. I heard Adobe is terrible with addressing complaints so I doubt they'll even see this message, but I figured it's worth a shot to get my complaint out there.