First Steps: Understand the Diagnosis Before You Treat

When someone feels unwell, the first impulse is to immediately "do something": see a psychologist, a coach, work through family problems. But Dr. Saulitis insists on a different order. First you need to understand what is actually happening — what state your neurons, brain, and body are in. Without this acknowledgement of fact, any further action loses its meaning.

First Restore, Then Move Forward

The doctor uses a simple image: prevention and training are fine, but if a leg is broken, you first need a cast. The same applies here: sometimes the brain needs to restore its homeostasis, to take away the "spinning" and intrusive thoughts — and only then can you move forward, work on yourself, seek counselling.

"We need to restore homeostasis; he needs medication to take away the thoughts, the spinning — and only then can we move forward."

The First Step Is to Understand the Diagnosis

To understand at all what is wrong with you and where to go next, you first need a diagnosis. And a diagnosis is made by a medical specialist. The physician's professionalism plays the main role, and today whole teams of specialists often work together. Without understanding the state of your health and your neurons, treating something "blindly" is useless.

"To go further, to consult a specialist, to be treated — first you have to understand the diagnosis. A diagnosis is always made by a medical specialist."

Why You Cannot Skip This Step

A psychologist influences behaviour and thinking, and that affects neurons, synapses, neuroplasticity — how the "hardware" works. But if you cannot see the state the brain is in, you have no idea what you are doing to it: whether it needs "warming or cooling." Outwardly, different states can look identical, while the causes are completely different: fatigue, burnout, attention deficit, age, stress. You must act on the cause — and for that, it must first be identified.

A State That Looks the Same — But Has Different Causes

The doctor gives the example of a depressive-paranoid background: the brain is under stress, exhausted, hit by too many informational stimuli in too short a time, unable to process it all. From the outside the picture may look similar across people, but without diagnosis you cannot tell one cause from another. So acknowledging the fact — what exactly is going on with the brain — is not a formality but the foundation of any meaningful step.

Practice: First Steps

1. Pause before acting. Don't rush to "get treated" or change your life — first acknowledge that you need to understand your state.
2. Acknowledge the fact. Ask yourself honestly: what state are my brain and body in — fatigue, stress, burnout, something else?
3. Go to a medical specialist for a diagnosis. It is the physician who makes the diagnosis; this is the starting point, not the finish.
4. Don't act blindly. Remember: until the cause is known, all theories and approaches remain mere intellectualisation.
5. Build your next steps from understanding the cause — you must act on the cause, not on the outward picture.