I have autism, and from a happy circumstance the summer I turned 11, I learned that there were things which could make my quality of life a lot better, and others which could make it a lot worse. My life since then has been shaped around discovering what hurts the symptoms of autism, what helps the symptoms of autism, and why, what is the science which makes sense of this.

I have the hope that if I explain why autistics do the different types of behaviours which make non-autistics feel so alienated or upset, that empathy and support will be a more likely reaction.  If I can make it easier for you to explain autism behaviours to extended family, colleagues, educators, friends, or anyone who might be working with or supporting someone with an autistic spectrum condition, you may be able to improve the social quality of life for the autistics you care about, immediately.

So, why do autistics drone and bang their heads? First I’ll explain what droning is (it’s quite different from tuning). Droning is humming or singing a single note for long periods of time, taking breaths, and keeping going. It sounds something like “Mmmm”, “Nnnnn”, or  “Ahhhh”.

I used to do this as a child when I had to vacuum, to drown out the dissonance of the vacuum motor’s discordant tri-tonal whines.  Autistics drone as a form of white noise, to shut out less pleasant or more distracting sounds and other sensory input (earplugs can also be a real boon).  It’s a coping mechanism, and it works quite well.

If you went on an airplane, you might use (or see) noise canceling headphones that will create a waveform opposite to the one of the airplane’s noise, to cover over the noise of the airplane so that you can focus on what you want to focus on, or so you can sleep, if you want to sleep. This is a little different from droning.

Droning is one way of creating your own white noise, or your own background noise to drown out other things so that you can focus on what you want to focus on. And droning really helps as an aide to paying attention, by shutting out or drowning out distraction.

You might not think that banging your head has much in common with that, but it has the same goal of drowning things out, except that it’s for covering a much louder signal.  The signal head-banging is usually drowning out is either emotional pain or physical pain, with either external causes, or internal ones.

When I’m banging your head, I’m using pain that I control to drown out pain that I cannot control. Why would it be better to bang my head than to just deal with the pain that I’m feeling? Research from after the Holocaust spent a lot of effort on discovering why, when, and how people could do horrible things to each other.

One of the things that they discovered is that when someone else is in control of how much pain you’re feeling, and how long that pain lasts, you have a lot less tolerance for pain than when you have control over how much pain you’re experiencing, and how long it lasts. It’s quite a startling difference between the levels and lengths of pain which can be endured.

When we’re banging our heads, we are drowning out pain that we have no control over with pain that we do have control over. Believe it or not, from the inside, head-banging feels very empowering and protective.

Rather than trying to forcibly stop an autistic from droning or head-banging, it would be better to investigate dietary, hormonal, detox, and other interventions to decrease pain and inflammation in the brain and body. And it would be worthwhile noting whether the head-banging is resulting from emotional stress, and discovering whether that stress could also be reduced.

If you or someone you love could use more information on how to Thrive With Autism, please join us for one of our upcoming webinars;

Thrive With Autism Essentials gives you the keys to help the autistics you care about at home, school, and work.

The Five Root Causes of Autism helps you find the unique blend at the root of your particular autistic challenges.

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