The Darkest Times Always Hold the Brightest Gold—You Just Have to Know Where to Look

You never really go back to square one. You might make the same mistake over and over again and end up with a similar outcome… but hold on—you actually can’t make the exact same mistake again, nor can you create the exact same outcome. It may feel the same, but it’s only similar. Why?

Because you have changed. You are always changing. Even though it might feel like you’re repeating the past, it never truly is the same. That, in itself, is a promise that life gives you: no matter how many times you fall, there is always some change for you to notice. You just have to look for it.

In one of my more recent “make the same mistake and fall into the same old hole” moments, I was devastated at first. But with each day I spent drowning in self-pity, my desire to investigate and understand what happened grew stronger.

Back then, when that doctor (thank God I found her) told me my anxiety issues weren’t really just in my mind, but more in my body, I couldn’t believe it. She diagnosed me with an autoimmune disease called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), which makes my body react very sensitively to stress—whether psychological or biochemical.

We started to detox and heal my gut, change my diet, add supplements, and over the course of a few weeks, the worst symptoms went away. After a while of feeling good, I let my diet slip, started drinking alcohol again, and stopped taking the supplements.

When I relapsed, I had completely forgotten about MCAS and the histamine connection to anxiety and panic attacks. But this time around, AI was here. Back then, there was no AI. I started digging up my old lab results and gave ChatGPT a deep search request to find the connection between PTSD symptoms like flashbacks, anxiety, panic attacks, and MCAS…

The result was mind-blowing. ChatGPT showed emerging evidence of MCAS—and specifically histamine—playing a major role in psychiatric conditions. It’s not widely known, but histamine is a neuromodulator. It’s released throughout the brain during wakefulness and affects neural circuits by modulating neuronal excitability and synaptic transmission.

I shared the findings with a friend who’s a medical doctor and also interested in the mind-body connection. He was so impressed that he said we should publish this as a paper.

Now, the moral of this story isn’t about me or this unexpected discovery (though it did feel like uncovering gold). It’s about the power of perseverance and patience in the face of seemingly unending adversity.

I know I’ve talked a lot about this topic in my newsletters, but it’s so essential to the human condition that I can’t stop talking about it. When life hits you, you have to prime yourself to always ask, “What does life want to tell me with this?” instead of just sticking your head in the sand.

It almost always feels unfair or completely random, but that doesn’t change the fact that you can learn from any situation—and make sure you extract every piece of gold you can, to make your future (and hopefully the future of others) even better.

If you know people who are suffering from anxiety, panic attacks, PTSD, depression, or just lots of automatic negative thoughts or sensitivities to light, sound, or touch, share the results that ChatGPT gave me. I posted them for you on Medium here:

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