Reading the Research: Unconventionally Dulling the Pain

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article might make you wonder how research on pain is relevant to autism.  So let's talk about "aggressive behavior," shall we?  

The study took two types of physical pain: electric shock (they don't call it that) and the freezing water (they also don't call it that).  Even though the types of pain were different, the results were the same: the experienced effect of one type of pain was reduced due to the other.  

Now, this result we can apply immediately to autism.  Autistic people often suffer chronic conditions, such as digestive tract issues.  Think something like a permanent stomach ache or the pain of diarrhea after every meal.  We may not make the connection as to the cause, and neither might our support staff.  Instead, we're merely faced with this horrible, endless suffering.  

Someone who can speak or communicate in a way that's understood might be able to explain that they're in pain.  But assuming they do, is anything done about it immediately?  Usually not.  And sufferers of chronic pain are, in my experience, not the most patient, polite, or eager to learn.  Even if they can verbally express themselves.

So if the horrible pain isn't corrected, or worse, can't be expressed in a way that's understood, the person is stuck with it.  And this article shows you one way people can cope with it: adding additional pain.  Common ones I hear about are punching walls and bashing one's head, but other forms of self-harm are in abundance as well.

It seems counter-intuitive, that causing more pain could lessen the effects of the first pain, but here it is in the publications of a university.  

There's one final missing point here from the autistic perspective, and it's that emotional pain counts in this equation.  

I have been able to dull emotional pain (such as the anxiety and augh factor of being stuck in a dentist or orthodontist chair with gadgets shoved into my mouth) for physical pain (digging my fingernails into my arm or hand).  This is a very very mild form of self-harm.  It doesn't leave permanent marks.  And it allows me to cooperate beyond my limitations.  Also, it never seemed to alarm the dentist, which strongly suggests to me that it was quite normal.  

Many autistic people aren't able to label or quantify emotions.  That hinders our abilities to deal with them constructively, but they can still cause us horrible pain.  I'm not honestly sure where sensory suffering (think nails on chalkboard, but all the time) factors in, but it too, in my experience, can be dulled via another source of pain.  

So the next time you hear about an autistic person bashing their head or doing some other self-harm style behavior, ask yourself: what else might be hurting them?  And then read this valuable article from a doctor on the subject.

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)