Tony Vallance is an award-winning therapist, teacher, keynote speaker, and co-owner of Building Better Brains. Named Australian Education Awards Teacher of the Year 2019 and a Victorian Excellence in Education Awards Finalist 2018, Tony specialises in supporting neurodivergent children, teens, and adults, particularly those with ADHD and autism.
Living with ADHD himself, Tony combines professional expertise with lived experience, delivering presentations that are profoundly humorous, deeply vulnerable, and unforgettable. He weaves together neuroscience, music, storytelling, and practical tools to create connection and transformation for his audiences. Whether on stage or in therapy, Tony is known for leaving people laughing, crying, and most importantly, with real takeaways to further their impact on others.
Talk Title:
ADHD Unplugged: From Ruthless Self-Destruction to Rewriting Self-Dialogue
For many ADHDers, Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD) isn’t just a passing thought – it’s a full-volume inner critic that keeps us living small. The voice of RSD is often more brutal than anything the outside world ever threw at us growing up. It whispers, shouts, and sometimes screams the worst things that keep us living small in its shadow.
In this powerful and raw 40-minute keynote, Tony Vallance brings his guitar, humour, heart, and lived experience to explore how RSD talk fuels self-bullying and hinders our courage to step into our potential. With a mix of music, storytelling, and science, Tony shares his journey and real techniques to help ADHDers to lean in, resource and rewrite their self dialogue.