behaviors and communication

I work in a specialized school for autistic students with more intensive behaviors. I have one student who is aggressive and also self-injurious. She is very strong and very capable of hurting others and herself. I’ve been pinned to a wall by this student while getting my hair pulled and bit and head butted all at once. She will also routinely hurt herself to the point of making herself bleed and leave large bruises on her body.

A lot of these behaviors have impeded abilities to safely get through sessions so I had to make the decision to reduce, which wasn’t met with a lot of support from certain staff and parents, but was supported by my supervisors. While I don’t regret this decision, I’ve been feeling pressure due to the fact I’m being told escalations are occurring when aggressive behaviors and I’m being told that these behaviors stem from not being able to communicate/frustration with not being understood. I

Child has an AAC device, but refuses it, preferring verbals. Any attempts to model on it gets me beat up. Attempts to even touch it gets me beat up. I’ve been trying some new visuals and they’ve been 50/50 with success, so I want to keep trying. I do work on general requesting, using some functional phrases, and artic to shape sounds when she’s unintelligible, but I have a hard time modeling these when she’s actively in behaviors and I haven’t seen them carried over in behaviors either. Perhaps this population isn’t for me, or I’m burnt out, but I just feel at a loss for what to do for this student. I feel so badly that communication is such a barrier, but with the plateauing progress and increase in behaviors, I feel like I’m failing her and her parents sometimes. Are there any things you’ve done successful with these types of students?