Eline Potoski LCSW

08/20/2025

The Four Basic Goals of IFS
1. Liberate parts from the roles they’ve been forced into, so they can be who they’re designed to be.
2. Restore trust in the Self and Self-Leadership.
3. Reharmonize the inner system.
4. Become more Self-led in our interactions with the world.

Learn more: https://hubs.ly/Q03DKN-r0
Purchase Books: https://hubs.ly/Q03DKKf90

07/17/2025

What does the nervous system need from us:

1. To be seen, heard and understood in both its intelligence and adaptation. Our nervous system has not been designed to spend so much time in a state of constant survival mode. This is unnatural. That's why so much suffering and difficulty in coming out of survival states.

Make your nervous system feel truly seen in both its intelligence and pain. Do this every day. It takes you max.10 seconds.

2. To be empowered to return to its "job".

Regulation isn’t a job for your mind; it’s the natural rhythm of your body. When the body feels safe, it knows how to regulate. It knows how to come back to balance, how to complete stress cycles or integrate.

But if we try to over-control our way into regulation, we disconnect from this organic wisdom. Your nervous system doesn’t need to be managed. It needs to be met.

Yes, at first we might need to put in effort to learn new practices, shift habits, and build inner safety. But ultimately, regulation belongs to the body. It is what the body wants to do.

So, empower your body. Give it the right conditions and it will do what it knows to do.

3. To know that repair comes after misattunement and rupture in the present moment.

No one is perfectly attuned to their nervous system all the time. Life is unpredictable. Sometimes what’s happening is more than our system can hold. That’s not failure; that’s reality.

What matters is that we don’t leave our system alone in the rupture. Rupture is inevitable. But rupture without repair becomes survival. Rupture with repair rebuilds trust.

4. That we don't put another burden or pressure on it, like healing trauma.

The nervous system supports the process of trauma healing, but it doesn't "do it".

If you feel like your nervous system has been misattuned for a long time, The Self-Attunement Audio Toolkit gives it the one thing it’s been longing for: a felt experience of being met, moment by moment.

Simple, gentle, easy-to-follow guided audio explorations that shift your perception in a new way.

Access the toolkit here https://www.self-attunement.com/products/audio/

Love,
Ally.

06/24/2025

Repair is important in any relationship. Such a crucial but underused skill.

06/23/2025

I’ve seen a lot on the internet in the past couple of years about how to regulate your nervous system, and while I’m glad we’re shifting our focus to the body, a lot of these messages are lacking the nuance they need so that people can really understand what is happening for them internally.

We don’t arrive at a state of all the way healed. We won’t wake up one day and never experience activation again. We won’t suddenly feel regulated all of the time.

When we talk about nervous system healing, we’re talking about the importance of learning your cues and listening to your body. We’re talking about slowing down as opposed to being quick to responsiveness. We’re talking about being with yourself rather than judging yourself.

Healing happens in all of the moments where we can notice our activation or trigger, get in contact with ourselves, and gently guide ourselves back to a regulated baseline.

It’s all about returning home, again and again.

To those of you learning to treat your body with love and care, I see you.

(IC: Healing doesn’t mean you never get triggered- it means you respond differently when you do)

06/20/2025

“One of the hardest things about being chronically ill is that most people find what you’re going through incomprehensible—if they believe you *are* going through it,” Meghan O’Rourke writes. Read her Personal History, from 2013, about living with an autoimmune disease, and her struggle to find the right diagnosis and care plan: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/2NUOXI

06/13/2025

06/10/2025

05/30/2025

Short answer: Yes. And it’s more common than most people realize.

You might feel anxious, shut down, constantly on edge - or like you’re always waiting for something bad to happen…but have no “big” trauma you can point to. That doesn’t mean nothing happened. It might mean your nervous system inherited a survival pattern.

You get 50% of your genes from each parent - which means that you can have PTSD symptoms even if you never lived through trauma yourself.

So how does trauma get passed down?

1️⃣ Through your biology
When a parent or grandparent lives through something overwhelming—like war, abuse, or traumatic loss—their body adapts to survive. Those adaptations can be passed on by changing how certain genes “turn on” or “turn off”—a process called gene expression. In simple terms, trauma can leave a chemical imprint that tells the body: “Stay alert. It’s not safe.”

▶︎ In one of the most well-known studies, Dr. Rachel Yehuda found that children of Holocaust survivors showed altered stress hormone level - mirroring their parents’ trauma, even though they didn’t live through it themselves.

▶︎ Similar findings were seen in babies whose mothers were pregnant during 9/11 - they showed biological signs of trauma exposure.

2️⃣ Through emotional environments
This is the emotional tone of the home you grew up in. It’s not always about what was said—but what was felt.
▪️ Was the air filled with tension?
▪️ Did you walk on eggshells?
▪️ Were emotions welcome or ignored?
Even if no one talked about trauma, your body picked up the signal: “This isn’t safe.”

3️⃣ Through relationship dynamics
These are the roles, rules, and unspoken agreements you learned by watching how people interacted.
▪️ Did you have to be the “peacemaker” or “caretaker”?
▪️ Was love earned through performance?
▪️ Did you learn to shrink, explode, or stay silent to keep the peace?

Your nervous system is shaped not just by your experiences - but by your lineage, your culture, your environment.

And here’s the hopeful part: Just like trauma can be passed down, so can healing.

When we become aware of what we’ve inherited, we can start choosing what we pass on next.

05/19/2025

Elibepotoskilcsw.com

05/15/2025

04/20/2025

If we are doing our partner's emotional work for them, our inner child is still trying to fix a broken parent. This pattern can stem from childhood trauma or unmet emotional needs, where we learned to prioritize others' feelings over our own to avoid rejection or abandonment.

As adults, this can manifest in relationships where we constantly try to manage our partner's emotions, feeling responsible for their happiness and well-being. We might sacrifice our own needs and desires, putting others' feelings first. Over time, this can lead to feelings of burnout, resentment, and frustration.

The problem is that we can't fix our partner's emotional issues or make them whole. Each person needs to take ownership of their own emotions and work. When we try to do it for them, we can enable their avoidance or dependence.

To break this pattern, it's essential to recognize the signs and take steps to address it. This might involve:

- Seeking therapy or counseling to address childhood wounds
- Practicing self-care and prioritizing our own emotional needs
- Setting clear boundaries and communicating our needs
- Encouraging our partner to seek help or therapy
- Letting go of the need to control or fix our partner's emotions

By doing so, we can create a healthier dynamic in our relationship, where both partners take responsibility for their own emotions and work. This can lead to a more balanced, fulfilling, and sustainable partnership.

Ultimately, recognizing this pattern allows us to focus on our own healing journey. We can work on developing emotional intelligence, building self-awareness, and cultivating healthier relationships. By breaking free from the cycle of people-pleasing and codependency, we can find more joy, freedom, and fulfillment in our lives.