Zurie Cheung

I work with adults and couples navigating change and the relationships that shape us. That includes life transitions, anxiety, grief, family patterns that formed long before you had a say in them, and the experience of belonging — to a place, to people, to the person you are still becoming. Much of what we carry lives in the body before it reaches language, and I pay attention to both: what is said, and what is being held while it's said.

My approach is systemic and relational. Rather than treating your struggles as flaws inside you, I look at the larger web you live within — your relationships, your history, and the contexts you've moved through. We go at your pace. I draw on family-systems thinking and, in my work with children and families, developmental and relationship-based models such as Floortime/DIR. In session, that looks less like being handed a verdict and more like being listened to closely, helped to notice patterns you're too near to see, and supported as you make your own sense of them. Some people come to understand something; some to grieve; some to decide; some simply to be met without having to perform being fine.

I came to this work through my own experience of change — of moving between countries, languages, and versions of myself — and through several years alongside families in early-childhood and developmental settings, where I learned how much steadiness matters when the ground is shifting. That background taught me to sit with not-knowing rather than rushing to fix it, and to trust that people carry far more of their own answers than they've been given room to hear.

I currently see clients as a Marriage and Family Therapist Trainee at Life Source Affordable Counseling, under the supervision of Amanda Barnes, LMFT #139812. If any of this resonates, I'd welcome the chance to connect and see whether we're a good fit. Reaching out is often the hardest part — and you've likely done harder things than send one message.