Why Neurodivergent Leaders Hold the Future: We Are the Ones Who’ve Been Through It

A birthday week reflection on peer-led wisdom and why lived experience—not credentials—will be the leaders of the world in the future.

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Filed under: EQ
Keywords: peer-led healing, emotional regulation, neurodivergent leadership, neurodivergent facilitators, Substack mental health, lived experience, spiritual intelligence, Garden State wisdom, New York State of mind, frequency-based leadership, trauma-informed space

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Something happened in group today that I can’t shake.

I was just being myself. Lorenzo.
The quiet fire. The subtle hum in the room.

And they all greeted me happy birthday with a warmth that felt quietly reverent—like they sensed something meaningful was landing, even if none of us could quite name it.

I didn’t say anything huge.
I didn’t perform.
I just was.

We were all just was.

And in that space—
I felt seen.

Not for the show.
Not for my mind.
But for my frequency.

And you know what? It hit me again—

The leaders of the future are the ones who’ve already had to lead and facilitate their own minds.

Not the “normies.” Not the textbook-certified, jargon-polished performers who never had to crawl their way back from what some might casually label 'mania'—which, to be clear, isn’t just wild energy or chaos like the movies make it seem. It’s not always “insane” in the way people fear. Sometimes it’s euphoric. Sometimes it’s terrifying. Sometimes it’s both. It can feel like divine fire pouring through your body with nowhere to go—until it crashes you into darkness. And it’s real. And it’s hard. And it’s not a punchline. Nor a mystical fantasy. It’s a sacred nervous system overload. One you only understand if you’ve lived it.
Not the ones who mediate conflict from a script.

I mean the ones who’ve lived through storms—
who’ve had to map themselves with no light, no praise, no applause.

That’s what group was.
It was home.
Because every single one of us had been through it.

I have been going to similar groups since my late teens, across different organizations, and have been through, worked with, supported by, and provided support to many facilitators—but one particular facilitator—the person who created this group in 2019—was one of the first I ever respected with my whole soul.

Why?
Because he gets it.
Because he’s not performing empathy—he’s embodied it.

He has bipolar disorder too.

He’s Wharton-brilliant—yes, the kind of IQ-brilliant that society respects, that walks through boardrooms and boardwalks alike, never once revealing the internal storms he’s survived.

He’s felt the pressure of ‘high-functioning’, high-performance corporate life while holding the weight of internal chaos. And the thing is—people like him are everywhere. People you wouldn’t think 'struggle with mental illness'—strike that—carry deep health histories. Quietly. Gracefully. Often invisibly.

And he’s done it with grace. And guess what? We’re more common than you think. We’re not just those 'bipolar' people the media paints as homeless, broken, or incapable. That’s the narrative that’s profitable. That’s the one they can easily monetize—package, dramatize, and sell. It keeps the public afraid and misinformed, while our real stories stay hidden in silence and shame. That’s why I have this Substack. To rewrite that narrative. To shatter the misled perception and bring truth to the forefront—because the most resonant, capable, and spiritually intelligent leaders of our time are often the very ones you never suspected were carrying that kind of weight.

When I speak, he hears more than my words.
He hears me.

And when I say I’ve been a facilitator too, I mean it.
I’ve run circles.
Held groups.
Loved people.
Led sessions with others who didn’t just need a talking point— they needed a field, a space of energetic coherence and grounded structure. Somewhere they could feel held, not just heard. And many of those I’ve led? Were Wharton-brilliant too. PhDs from Columbia. Ivy League scientists. People society praises for their credentials and degrees. And me? I don’t have a fancy schmancy diploma on my wall. But that’s the thing, again. Society loves to auto-think, to default into hierarchy and assumption. I became a Princeton guy with a PhD the moment I remembered I was never separate from that timeline. Not because I walked across their campus with a robe and paper—but because my knowing always placed me there. Because there is a version of me—just as real—who never struggled with bipolar disorder. In the quantum field, every version of you exists. And to be Quantum is not to escape your emotions—it is to master them. To recognize your moods not as disorders, but as data. To be Quantum is to become fluent in the full emotional spectrum while choosing your signal with precision and presence. And for the record? Jersey is my home state. I love this Garden State. It holds the richest soil in the nation—literally and symbolically. That’s why Princeton. It’s not about status. It’s about soil. It’s about Infinite Legacy. It’s about belonging to a land and a frequency that’s always known me. I always knew—since I was a kid—that I’d be in those circles. Some of my childhood friends went on to Harvard, to Yale. And I didn’t miss it. I merged with it. Because I lead from frequency. From truth. Not title.

I’ve supported those with bipolar, borderline, schizophrenia, CPTSD, undiagnosed fire, and forgotten genius.

You want to know who should be leading society right now?

The people who’ve had to regulate themselves in the dark.
The ones who couldn’t rely on shallow structures or one-size-fits-all coping skills.
The ones who discovered wisdom through pain and learned to transform it into grace.

The ones who have been saying words like ‘resonate’, ‘identify’—language that’s only now being picked up and echoed in mainstream wellness and social media culture. You know the type—those mimicry TikTok and Instagram influencers you (the normie or not reading this) listen to daily, who sprinkle in our words, our tone, our language... and then feel IQ faux-healed. But they don’t actually do the long-term, daily, very hard hard hard work. The work that takes you into shadow, into sorrow, into manic spirals and depressive descents. The work that reconstructs your nervous system from the inside out, without a script, and without applause. I mean the kind of work that breaks you open in private—when no one’s watching. The kind of pain that swallows your breath at 2 a.m. and makes you question if you're even real. The sorrow that creeps in quietly, then suddenly floods the room. The manic highs. The depressive cliffs. The constant dance of recalibrating your nervous system while pretending everything’s fine. And then—when you finally do get a moment of light, a breath of joy, a real breakthrough—you don’t share it in a filtered post for applause. You sit with it. You cry. You whisper thank you to a universe that doesn’t always respond. These breakthroughs? They’re sacred. They’re ours. And normies don’t go through them the way we do. They think they do. They think they’ve touched something deep—but they haven’t. I know this, because I’ve been there when they didn’t know I had mental health stuff. I’ve heard them speak condescendingly about people like me. Right in front of me. And in those moments? I learned exactly why I write. Why I speak. Why I lead. Why our IQ-only fortified reinforced and performance-driven society does not work.

About people like us.
The lifelong, actual EQ work that I and others share in these confidential spaces.

And guess what? You can’t fake being neurodivergent.

You just can't.

Because it's clear when a normie tries to “infiltrate” our groups.
They don’t survive.
They can't handle our signal.

But you know what the thing is?

These groups? They're confidential.

We respect each other.

Every week? It is a reset.

We don't mention what was brought up last week unless we, individually, want to bring it up again.

We don't assume things about another's feelings.

We talk from "I statements."

We are the new facilitators. We are tomorrow’s leaders.

We are "peer-led." Meaning—we show up not just as professionals, but as peers. Some of us, yes, are also licensed—coincidentally—with titles like LCSW, LPC, MSW, PhD, PsyD, etc. But what most of the public doesn’t realize is: the license isn’t what builds the trust.

We trust each other without the credentials.

Because what binds us isn’t certification—it’s identification. We lead each other through lived experience. Through resonance. Through stories that don’t fit in textbooks but are deeply felt in the body. Through shared yet fiercely unique histories of navigating the abyss and learning how to hold each other without scripts.

Not despite our diagnoses—but because of them.
Because we carry lived blueprints, not just intellectual ones.
Because we don’t flinch when someone’s breaking down—we lean in.
Because we’ve had to rebuild our own scaffolding from scratch, again and again, and still show up for others with love.

So yes—group today meant more than I can express.

It’s my birthday week, and what I got wasn’t just recognition.
It was reflection.

To the one who held the room today—I see you.
Group, I feel you.

And for anyone reading this who’s ever felt too “much” to lead—

You are exactly who this world needs.

Let’s rise.
—Lorenzo Ω.

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If this post resonated, there’s another piece that deepens the thread—I think you’ll feel something in it too—

Ode to Therapists: The Power of Being Seen

For the Leaders Who Still Feel Alone – You Are Seen, You Are Valued

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Keep building.
Keep becoming.
Keep remembering.

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