Mood Stabilizers: Why Steady the «Wave» — the VitaModo View

To understand why mood needs stabilizing at all, Dr. Saulitis's method begins not with a drug but with the principle of balance. Every living system tends to return to equilibrium — and so does the psyche. When that return keeps failing, we see what needs stabilizing.

Homeostasis: everything tends toward balance

The basic principle is simple: all systems in nature return to equilibrium. Blood sugar may swing one way, then the other — but it comes back. That is how a system goes on living.

«The principle of homeostasis, its very foundation, is when all systems return to balance.»

If balance drifts away and is not restored, the system breaks down. The doctor stresses that homeostasis can fail at different levels — the cell, the tissue, the organ, and the whole person. At the level of the person, indicators that can no longer restore themselves produce disorders.

The irritant: who knocks us out of balance

An irritant is any force — physical, chemical, psychic — that acts on different levels and disturbs homeostasis. The sources differ: biological processes inside the body, including genetically determined ones, and toxic influences — plus the environment: pollution, work, psychic factors.

The doctor deliberately steps away from the «chicken or egg» argument:

«Those arguments lead nowhere; the truth is always somewhere in the middle, they interact.»

In each individual case and each life period, one of these factors takes the upper hand — and then the symptom, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment change. This is the frame in which the method views unstable mood.

Why mood moves in a «wave»

Here the method uses the image of a mirror. The neocortex makes the picture — a calm, clear picture of life. But when the limbic system switches on, «there's a wave right away». Consciousness needs the brain to show a clear picture of what is happening; instead an emotional surge arrives.

This is how the swing arises between steady perception and overwhelming emotion. It is a neurophysiological reality, not «weakness of character»: hormones and substances prepare the body for reactions, and the prognosis depends on how those reactions run.

Little «sparks» in the limbic system

The doctor describes a phenomenon everyone has felt: a song you heard keeps spinning in your head. In the same way, resentment, anger, jealousy, envy, the wish for revenge and reproaches spin around.

«These little sparks, these fixed points — they stay in the limbic system.»

The «pest» no longer «sits only in the limbic system, but has settled into the cortex and throws out cognitive software» — meaning a thought, a justification, a replay joins the emotional wave. It is exactly this coupling that rocks the mood and keeps it from returning to balance.

Why stabilizing then

From this logic comes the meaning of mood stabilization: to help the system return to balance when limbic «waves» and «sparks» keep breaking loose. The doctor admits that real work also includes drug combinations and caring that «the vessels work properly». But the method's foothold is to track the wave before it has settled into the cortex and become «the truth about yourself».

Practice: track the wave (checklist)

1. Notice the «spark» — the moment resentment, anger, jealousy or envy flares: «I catch that second fixed point».
2. Name the emotion aloud or silently, as the doctor runs through them: resentment — anger — jealousy — envy — guilt.
3. Separate the wave from the picture: ask what «clear picture of life» the emotion is now overwriting.
4. Notice how the thought has «settled into the cortex» and begins to justify the wave («my genes are just like that») — that's a cue to track, not to believe.
5. Let the emotion drain off: «like air leaving a cylinder» — and check whether calm holds.