About Parke Sterling, LPC

Therapy That Doesn’t Feel Like Therapy

I’m a therapist in Richmond, VA who works with men who feel anxious, stressed, or burned out. Over the years, I’ve helped a lot of guys who look like they have it together on the outside but feel like they’re falling apart on the inside. It usually takes a lot for them to pick up the phone and call me. I’ve always had genuine admiration for the courage it takes to make that first call. I remember how hard it was for me.

I took a bit of a unique path into this field. In high school and college, I partied too hard. After graduation, I landed in corporate sales and quickly realized I hated selling people things they didn’t need. Around that time, I started facing my own struggles with anxiety, stress, and depression. Looking for answers, I turned to psychology, philosophy, exercise, and meditation to start making sense of it all.

I’m oddly grateful for the challenges from that earlier part of my life. They’ve allowed me to bring a unique perspective to working with men who are struggling because I’ve been there myself. I still am sometimes. Over time, I’ve built a personal playbook for navigating these struggles, and that’s exactly what I help clients do in therapy.

My Approach to Therapy

If you’ve struggled with anxiety or burnout, you already know you can’t outthink it or outwork it. You can’t exercise it away or meditate it away. Those things help, but they’re not the whole answer. What’s needed is a shift: learning to relate to your thoughts and emotions differently so they don’t control your actions.

I use an approach called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). It’s practical and action-oriented, helping you accept what can’t be changed, take action where you can, and live in line with what truly matters. My goal is to give you tools that last long after therapy ends.

Clients often describe my approach as laid-back, authentic, and invested. When I work with someone, it feels like we’re in it together. The thing I love about working with men specifically is that I’m much more like my clients than I am different from them. Aspects of our lives are often eerily similar. In another setting, we’d probably be neighborhood friends having a beer in the backyard at a cookout.

That sense of connection and kinship with my clients, along with seeing them truly change their lives for the better makes me grateful every day for this work.