Just another flawed human learning to live with and love my human condition. I have been able to help countless clients by walking alongside suffering with warmth and curiosity, asking questions to prompt deeper self understanding, and reflecting back to my clients their unique gifts and strengths.

I’m a psychiatric PA turned coach. My decade of experience as a Physician Assistant has cultivated within me an unwavering belief in the human capacity to grow, change, and thrive with a willingness to venture within and a little support along the way. I now know the most powerful medicine for emotional health is not dulling or avoiding what you feel, but creating an inner landscape of self compassion, and developing curiosity about where our emotions are trying to take us. One of the best ways to develop these skills is to first open up to someone who can help you hold the uncomfortable feeling, memory, or trauma gently and without judgement. Coaching gives me the freedom to help clients move through pain, reconnect with their inner wisdom, and create meaningful change — without the constraints of the medical model.

I am also interested in the intersection of psychology and spirituality. Open to all flavors of faith, I don’t think it matters what you believe, but developing a connection to some kind of meaning beyond ourselves seems to naturally occur as clients make steps towards healing emotional wounds. I have seen this again and again in my work with psychedelics. The medical model doesn’t really have space for the unknowables in our lives and coaching provides me a platform to allow clients to discuss these important parts of our psyches.

I’m still currently practicing as a Psych PA 3 days per week under my legal name Alexandra Presler (Pestana is my mom’s maiden name). My medication management practice is currently full and I am not taking new clients. Part of my work as a PA incudes administering and monitoring patients undergoing esketamine therapy and I have developed a passion for helping individuals integrate psychedelic experiences.