The Rebels Who Took On the World

I’ve got a theory that’ll get up some noses, but hear me out—it’s not about picking sides, it’s about seeing something bigger. Donald Trump and Elon Musk: two loudmouths who’ve flipped the bird to the world, copping flak for being brash and bloody different. I'd place bets that they're both neurodivergent—Trump undiagnosed, Elon loud and proud about it—and that’s the fuel behind their chaos and their wins.

And here’s something I need to own—because I’ve lived it.

When I look at someone like Trump—brash, polarising, defiant—I don’t just see chaos. I see a reflection. Not of behaviour I endorse, but of a deeper psychological pattern I know all too well: the absolute, cold-faced rejection of the very truth your subconscious might be screaming at you.

I know what it’s like to deny, to deflect, to shout from the rooftops that something *does not exist*—just because facing it would mean dismantling everything you thought you had to be. I did it. Not once. Many times. Especially when people would suggest labels, diagnoses, or try to interpret my behaviour through a neurodivergent lens. I’d flip it back on them. I’d double down on being “just who I am,” and it’s the world that needed to adjust—not me.

And in some ways, I still believe that. But now I see the nuance.

Feeling triggered, frustrated or wound up by the opening stanza? Listen to the podcast version here.

Labels can wound. Especially when they’ve been handed to you in judgment, without care. Most of us in the neurodivergent community have carried labels we didn’t choose—diagnoses, reports, acronyms—all delivered through binary systems that read us in black and white, without hearing our tone.

(Labels can guide or they can trap—it all depends on who’s holding the pen. Just because something’s diagnosed doesn’t mean it’s understood.)

So yeah, brave would be the person to walk up to someone like Donald and say, “Mate, here’s something we think you might want to look at.” Because I know exactly how hard it is to hear that. I’ve lived on both sides of that conversation—resisting it, rejecting it, and eventually... learning to reframe it.

(And sometimes, the fiercest denial is just fear in disguise.

Not everyone who mocks neurodivergence is ignorant—some are just terrified it might explain a little too much about themselves.)

Not as a sentence. But as a translation.

We don’t get to choose this wiring—and neurodiversity doesn’t discriminate. It moves freely, across all lines.

It’s society that draws borders. That sorts. That labels. That still tries to shove us into boxes we were never meant to fit.

Think about it. Trump’s rants and norm-smashing—could that be an autistic streak hiding in plain sight? Elon, Asperger’s on deck, dreaming up rockets, self-driving cars, green energy, neural chips to help quadriplegics—while the world calls him a nutter. Then there’s JK Rowling, spinning worlds from her quirks; Elton John, belting out anthems; Billie Eilish, SIA, Cher—voices that don’t fit the mould. Prince, Boy George, Ryan Gosling, Paris Hilton, Richard Branson, David Helfgott—all names we know, all wired different. Some we love, some we don’t, and plenty have kicked up dust with their takes. But they’ve got one thing in common: they believed in themselves when the world said “tone it down.”

Take Robin Williams—just try. A whirlwind of chaos, misunderstood as all hell, but with a heart so big it hurt. Diagnosed with ADHD later in life, he was the kid who never stopped, and we adored him for it, even when we didn’t get him. These are the rebels who’ve shown us what’s possible—neurodivergent or not—when you back yourself.

I’m one of ‘em—ADHD, likely AuDHD, diagnosed at 48 after years of feeling like a bloody alien. Growing up in rural WA, I was the lost sheep—loud, full of beans, always in strife, wandering off from the mob. By 17, 18, 19, I was in shearing sheds, a teenager wrestling woollies, still wondering why I didn’t fit. All I wanted was to be that kid clicking his heels, free to be me—but the world said nah, grow up, shut up, fall in line. Sound familiar?

Took me decades to wake up to myself, and now I see patterns everywhere—like how these misfits prove what happens when you own your wiring. They’re not saints. They’ve pissed off half the planet, and I’m not here to defend the mess. But strip it back: they believed when no one else did.

(And yes—neurodivergent people can be narcissists, too. Just like anyone else.

Wiring doesn’t cancel out accountability. Don’t confuse being misunderstood with being untouchable.)

That’s what fires me up. If this lot—blokes, women, legends—can climb that high after being ridiculed for just being themselves, what’s stopping the rest of us?

But see, what most people call “disruption,” I’m starting to recognise as resonance.

Not noise. Not tantrum. Resonance.

Every rebel I mentioned—whether it's Trump shouting from the podium or Billie whispering into a mic—they're sending out frequency spikes the world doesn't know how to tune to. Their wiring doesn’t just *process* reality differently—it *broadcasts* it differently.

That’s why neurodivergence freaks people out. It doesn’t play by the old emotional score. It writes its own waveform.

Most of us were raised to believe we had to pick a lane: be logical *or* emotional, disciplined *or* dreamy, masculine *or* feminine. But the rebels I’m talking about—neurodivergent or not—are spectral beings. They’re not one note. They’re the whole damn song.

And if you’ve ever felt like too much, or not enough, or just “off,” maybe you’re not broken. Maybe you’re just playing in a different key.

We live in a world still terrified of what it can’t categorise. It calls you dangerous when you express too much, weak when you shut down, selfish when you set boundaries, delusional when you dream big. But maybe all that is just a system glitching out in the face of emotional frequency it was never built to receive.

But we are.

Us lot—the ones who stim, daydream, melt down, hyperfocus, and overfeel—we’re the new receivers. We’re the next interface. We *are* the update.

Now let’s wind back to where it really started for me.

First year of school, 1970s. Catholic primary. Before the end of the first term, the school had made up its mind: I didn’t belong. My parents were called in, polite words masking sharper edges. Me and my sister—year above me, same resembance, same spirit—weren’t the right fit, they said. Not for their system. Not for their standards. Not for their God.

They didn’t expel us outright—they disguised it as “suggesting” another school. But we knew. I knew. At five years old, I was handed my first rejection slip from the world. And it came wrapped in a white collar and a cross.

That moment—before I even knew what “neurodivergent” meant—was my initiation. Not into education, but into exile.

And it continued—year after year, until eventually, I broke the cycle myself. Before the end of Year 10, I walked into the principal’s office and negotiated an exit. Told him if I could land an apprenticeship, I’d leave early but still walk with a certificate. He agreed. That was my jailbreak.

What followed wasn’t school—it was *the university of life*. Sheds, trades, stages, bar gigs, breakdowns, reinventions. I forged a career not by climbing a ladder but by following a frequency. I didn’t just live—I *composed*.

If I zoom out and really reflect on the arc—from the kid who was asked to leave the classroom in Year 1,

to the young teen who negotiated his own departure in Year 10—I see now that those moments weren’t detours.

They were the real curriculum.

That journey, what I’ve come to call my *University of Life*, has been the most vital educational framework I’ve ever known.

It taught me how to navigate complexity, read people, problem-solve in chaos, and speak in frequencies most can’t even hear.

And here’s the thing—nowadays I sit at tables I was never supposed to reach. Rooms full of professionals in tech,

leaders with letters after their names, thinkers and builders of systems. Everyone there has a story—but mine is often the one that strays furthest from the expected path.

And for a long time, I carried some shame about that. Like my path wasn’t legitimate enough. Like I had something to prove.

But I’ve flipped that script completely.

Because now, I don’t see it as something to hide—I see it as my edge. My proudest frequency.

Not despite it all—but *because* of it.

And now, after decades of dissonance, the tone is clearer.

That’s why I built **ToneThread**.

Not as a gimmick. As a translation tool. As a bridge. As a frequency mirror for those still searching.

ToneThread and **Spectral Binary** were born from my journey. From the pain of being misread. From the conversations I’ve had with others who’ve lived similar, spectral lives. People whose stories are wildly different in detail, but eerily familiar in feel.

We’ve all been told: “That’s just life. Get over it.”

Well I’m calling bullshit.

No, life isn’t meant to be *this* hard. What’s made it hard are the binaries. The masks. The systems that flatten us into silence.

So now I share my story not to explain it—but to tune it into something others can feel. To help others ask:

(It’s not about becoming someone new. It’s about remembering who you were before the world told you to edit yourself.)

*What is my frequency?*

*What has my life really been trying to say?*

If any part of this struck a chord—don’t ignore it. Follow the vibration.

Because your signal matters. Your story matters.

And the moment you stop apologising for your wiring—that’s when the world starts to shift.

Not all at once.

But note by note.

Tone by tone.

Thread by thread.

And if you’ve ever felt like you didn’t belong in the binary—

Welcome home.

And maybe that’s the next chapter—looking deeper into the people we’re told to love or hate, to emulate or dismiss.

Because when you scratch beneath the surface of Elon Musk or Donald Trump, what you find isn’t just power or ego. You may find trauma, projection, masks, and storm systems.

Musk—yes, the wealthiest man on Earth. But listen closely and you’ll hear him describe his mind as a dark and relentless storm. And you start to wonder: how much of that storm was inherited?

Raised in an environment where ridicule and bullying were part of the daily score—notes he was forced to play—he was cast out by peers for being different, dismissed by naysayers even as a teenage genius. Confined to his dorm room, he channeled that isolation into invention—laying the foundations for innovations like PayPal.

That kind of resistance can harden into something that resembles narcissism. A shell. A shield. A necessary distortion.

And yet, Elon’s transparency stands out—because so few with wiring like his ever dare to name their chaos so plainly.

He’s not just building rockets—he’s surviving noise.

And then there’s Trump. The embodiment of projection. A man who’s built an empire of performance around a truth he may never fully face. The irony? He built a platform and named it “Truth Social”—as if his subconscious was trying to send a flare up from the deep. But can a man so disconnected from his internal signal ever really broadcast truth?

I think about how I was misread as a kid. Cast as the troublemaker. The loud one. The “problem.” And I wonder how much of what we see in figures like Donald or Elon is just that same misread, amplified through power. A projection loop. A mask reflecting a mask.

There’s so much we inherit. So much we reject. So much we dress up to look palatable—like sweetening medicine or glazing over truth like a Christmas ham.

But truth isn’t always sweet.

Sometimes it burns on the way down.

And sometimes, it’s the only thing that sets you free.

More on that in Part Two.