Paulette Matkovic

Somatic Experiencing & NARM Practitioner — Specialist in Shock Trauma

Welcome. I am Paulette Matkovic, a certified Somatic Experiencing (SE) and NARM (Neuroaffective Relational Model) practitioner based in Brussels. I see clients in person at Be-Here, rue Dieudonné Lefèvre 4, 1020 Brussels, and online.

I work in English, French, Spanish and Greek.

What brings you here

You have been through a car accident, an assault, a serious fall, surgery, chemotherapy, a natural disaster, or a war situation. Since then, something has shifted. You sleep poorly. You are constantly on edge — or, on the contrary, you feel strangely disconnected from yourself, as if behind glass. Certain places, sounds or situations trigger reactions you don't always understand. You are not quite the same person you were — and you don't know how to find your way back to yourself.

What you are experiencing has a name: shock trauma. And it is not in your head. It is in your body, in your nervous system — which is still doing exactly what it learned to do to protect you, even though the danger has passed.

The good news: recovery is possible.

How I work

I combine two complementary approaches, depending on what emerges through the sessions:

Somatic Experiencing (SE), developed by Peter Levine, is a body-based approach that works directly with the nervous system to release the survival energy that has remained frozen since the shock. It does not require reliving the event or giving a detailed account of it. We work with what your body feels now — sensations, tensions, areas of numbness — to allow the nervous system to complete what was interrupted, gently and at your pace.

NARM (Neuroaffective Relational Model), developed by Dr. Laurence Heller, is a psychobiological approach that addresses the survival strategies and identity-level beliefs that can block full resolution of a trauma. Sometimes, while working on a recent shock, older patterns surface — beliefs such as "I must not feel anger" or "my needs don't matter" — which once served a protective purpose but now stand in the way of healing. NARM helps identify and gradually release these patterns.

Together, these two approaches work with both physiology and meaning — with the body and with identity. Because we are not made of separate compartments: everything is interconnected within one single nervous system.

What you can expect

A typical journey begins with weekly or fortnightly sessions of approximately one hour. The early sessions focus on establishing a sense of safety and identifying your resources. Gradually, we work with what the body and nervous system are still carrying from the shock — without forcing, without rushing.

Benefits my clients report include: better sleep, reduced anxiety and hypervigilance, relief from physical tension and unexplained pain, a renewed sense of self, and greater ease in relationships and daily life.

Most clients notice meaningful shifts within the first few sessions. Deeper integration typically unfolds over several months.

My background

My interest in trauma goes back much further than my professional practice. As a child, I lived through a war situation and was forcibly displaced — I had to flee my country with my family for safety reasons. That experience shaped who I am at a deep level, and it planted, very early on, the seeds of this work.

Later in life, I went through cancer. The surgery under general anaesthesia and the chemotherapy were traumatic in very different ways — the first left me with the sensation of having been absent from myself while my body was being operated on, unable to defend myself or say stop; the second was a slow and repeated assault. It was Somatic Experiencing that helped me find my way back to a body that feels liveable again.

This is why I now support people who have been through what I have been through — because I know, from the inside, what it leaves behind. And I also know that healing is possible.

Practical information

📍 In person: Be-Here, rue Dieudonné Lefèvre 4, 1020 Brussels

💻 Online: sessions available in all languages

🌍 Languages: English, French, Spanish, Greek

⏱ Session duration: approximately 1 hour

I would be glad to accompany you on this journey