Retraining Your Nervous System with Dr. Ute Liersch

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Aug 25, 2025

Dr. Ute Liersch, a Chartered Counselling Psychologist, shares her expertise on retraining the nervous system to tackle anxiety, ADHD, and burnout. She discusses how our sympathetic nervous system can become overstimulated, particularly for individuals with ADHD. Dr. Ute breaks down resilience into actionable steps and highlights the significance of community and self-identity. She also emphasizes the relationship between time, perfectionism, and effective communication, offering practical strategies for improving nervous system health and cultivating resilience.

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INSIGHT

Internalized Threat Keeps You Wired

ADHD brains often internalize criticism and treat everyday tasks as threats, keeping the sympathetic nervous system on high alert.
This chronic arousal makes anxiety and low mood more likely and reduces the parasympathetic system's ability to relax.

ADVICE

Build Attention With Tiny Increments

Start with achievable increments: practice reading one page, then extend to one and a half instead of forcing unrealistic goals.
Train small, repeatable steps to build capacity rather than using evidence of struggle as proof of incapability.

ANECDOTE

Extra Time Didn't Always Help

Ute described getting extra exam time and still struggling to focus despite the accommodation.
She notes extra time doesn't always solve attention challenges and lived experience mattered more than explanations.

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Hey team!

My guest this week is Dr. Ute Liersch, a Chartered Counselling and Coaching Psychologist with over a decade of clinical experience and author of A Minimalist’s Guide to Becoming Resilient. Dr. Ute specializes in helping adults navigate anxiety, ADHD, and burnout.

Her therapeutic approach is integrative, drawing from modalities such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and mindfulness-based therapies. Beyond her clinical practice, Dr. Ute is an associate lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, and holds a Fellowship in Higher Education.

In our conversation, we explore the nervous system beyond the textbook fight-flight-freeze model, including how our nervous system shapes our mood, motivation, and even the way we see the world. Dr. Ute explains why so many of us with ADHD find that our sympathetic nervous system is permanently on edge and how we can work on rewiring that response. We also talk about perfectionism, attention types, and what resilience looks like in real life, breaking it down into actionable steps that fit into our schedules and ADHD brains.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at http://hackingyouradhd.com/240

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Our parasympathetic nervous system can get stuck in a permanent state of “go time.” To help move our PNS back to a relaxed state, Dr. Ute suggests progressive muscle relaxation, where you are tensing and then releasing muscle groups one at a time so you can physically feel the shift from tension to ease.

2. Many of us have internalized the idea that there’s something fundamentally wrong with the way we work, think, or exist. Dr. Ute suggests replacing this assumption of personal defect with curiosity: “If I weren’t wrong, what would I need to feel safe?” This slight shift can open up room to problem-solve and tailor strategies to your actual needs.

3. We often talk about resilience like it’s a fixed trait—you either “have it” or you don’t. But Dr. Ute points out that resilience is about what you do, not what you are. It’s built in small, repeatable actions that teach your nervous system and your mind how to recover from stressors. Resilience isn’t about holding it together forever; it’s about giving yourself enough space and recovery so you can keep going when you need it the most.