School mental health & emotional wellness
Practical anxiety relief and emotional regulation programs for students, teachers, staff, and families.
With Dan Candell, BCH, CHt & Andre Costa, LMHC
85+
Schools across New England
Dan and Andre have each spoken to schools across the region, separately for years and now together.
20+
Years teaching anxiety relief
Two decades of helping people shift patterns connected to stress, fear, and performance.
2
Professional perspectives
A licensed clinician and a Board-Certified Hypnotist in the same conversation.
4
Ways to start with your school
Students, staff, families, or one signature hour with any audience.
Dan and Andre have spoken separately to more than 85 schools across New England — and now bring both perspectives into the same room.
Why this matters
Students are overwhelmed. Teachers are carrying more than ever. Parents want to help, but aren’t always sure how. Anxiety can look like shutdown, anger, avoidance, perfectionism, or simply a student who cannot focus.
These challenges touch the whole school community. When everyone speaks a different emotional language, even well-intentioned support can feel frustrating.
We help turn understanding into practical action—without another lecture full of statistics.
What people take with them
Understand what is happening inside them and have tools to steady themselves.
Feel more confident responding to distress and helping students return to learning.
Know how to support children without reinforcing anxiety or avoidance.
Share a simple language for stress, regulation, and emotional support.
The goal isn’t a school where no one experiences anxiety. It’s a school where more people know how to respond when stress and difficult emotions show up.
Programs for your school
Each program can be adapted to the age, needs, and goals of your school community.
Download program one-sheet
Interactive workshop or assembly · 60–120 minutes
An age-appropriate, engaging experience that helps students understand anxiety and stress—and find their way back to a sense of control.
What we cover
Professional development · Half-day or full-day
Practical training for the adults holding so much of a school day, with tools to respond to distress without becoming a student’s therapist.
What we cover
Parent & caregiver workshop
A grounded conversation about helping children through anxiety, avoidance, and big emotions—without feeling like you have to fix every feeling.
What we cover
Signature presentation · 60 minutes
An hour of deep strategies and anxiety relief techniques, so participants can be the calm even in the eye of the storm.
What we cover
A deeper partnership
For schools ready to go beyond a one-day event, we create a semester or yearlong emotional wellness initiative. Student workshops, staff development, parent programs, follow-up sessions, and resources work together to build a shared approach across your school.
Explore a partnershipBuilt around your community
Part of every program
Real questions. Practical answers.
A live conversation gives students, educators, and families space to ask about anxiety, behavior, parenting, pressure, motivation, communication, and more. Questions can also be submitted anonymously in advance.
More ways to support your school
Staying calm and mentally flexible in high-pressure moments.
Tools for racing thoughts, perfectionism, and self-doubt.
Navigating pressure, mistakes, and emotional recovery.
A focused workshop on stress, burnout, and boundaries.
Making sense of how anxiety can appear in adolescents.
Responding to setbacks, uncertainty, and social pressure.
A relatable, practical presentation for students.
Calm is a skill.
We teach it.
Not another lecture people forget on the walk back to class — small practices they can use the same afternoon.
Sponsors & booking partners
Many presentations are funded by a group already active in the school community. If one of these is part of your school, it may be the fastest path to getting everyone in the same room.
For school leaders & administrators
You may already be seeing it.
And emotional challenges are showing up in ways that affect learning, behavior, attendance, relationships, and the overall school environment.
The problem is not that schools don’t care. Most schools care deeply.
The problem is that everyone is already stretched thin.
And staff spending more and more time managing emotional situations instead of doing what they were originally hired to do.
An emotionally overwhelmed student does not simply leave that emotion at the classroom door. Stress follows them into:
One struggling student can also affect the emotional climate of an entire classroom. And when educators constantly have to respond to emotional crises without enough tools or support, their own stress rises too.
The cycle
01
Stressed students create stressed classrooms.
02
Stressed classrooms create stressed educators.
03
Stressed educators have less emotional bandwidth to help dysregulated students.
Everyone is trying harder. But everyone is getting more exhausted.
That is exactly the cycle our programs are designed to interrupt.
Teachers care deeply about their students. But caring about a student does not mean knowing exactly what to do when that student is panicking, shutting down, refusing to participate, becoming angry, or emotionally overwhelmed. And it certainly does not mean teachers should be expected to provide therapy.
Our programs help educators better understand what they are seeing and give them simple, practical tools they can use within the classroom. That means teachers can feel more confident asking:
The goal is not to add another responsibility to teachers. It is to make the responsibilities they already have easier to navigate.
School counselors, psychologists, social workers, and mental health professionals are incredibly important. They are also limited by time. A counselor may help an individual student. But what happens when hundreds of students need basic emotional regulation skills?
That is where schoolwide education becomes powerful. Instead of waiting until students are already overwhelmed, we can help give the broader school community foundational tools before a situation becomes a crisis.
That allows school mental health professionals to stay focused on students who need more individualized support, while helping the larger population develop practical coping and regulation skills.
A student may learn a regulation technique at school. Then they go home. If the adults around them do not understand what they are experiencing, progress can become much harder. That is why the most effective school mental health initiatives involve more than students.
Students
so they understand themselves.
Educators
so they know how to respond.
Parents
so they can reinforce healthy skills at home.
School leadership
so everyone is working from a similar framework.
When the adults around a student understand regulation, communication, and emotional distress, the student no longer has to navigate everything alone.
What your school gets
The goal is to give your school community practical tools that can continue being used long after the presentation is over. Your school can walk away with:
Students learn how to recognize stress, anxiety, and emotional overload earlier and what they can do when those feelings begin.
Educators have practical ways to respond to anxious or dysregulated students without feeling like they have to fix everything.
Teachers and students learn strategies for reducing escalation and returning attention to learning.
Parents receive a clearer roadmap for responding to anxiety, avoidance, stress, and emotional challenges at home.
Students, staff, and families begin using the same concepts around regulation, support, and emotional wellness.
Participants leave with techniques they can actually use when stress happens.
When someone needs more support than a workshop can provide, they can be directed toward appropriate school or professional resources.
Most mental health presentations focus on information. We focus on application. That makes the material easier to remember and easier to use.
Your school receives two complementary perspectives.
Andre Costa, LMHC
Licensed clinical expertise in anxiety, depression, trauma, child and family therapy, relationships, and emotional health.
Dan Candell, BCH, CHt
More than two decades of experience teaching anxiety relief, subconscious change, emotional regulation, communication, and practical strategies for changing patterns quickly.
Clinical expertise
with practical, experiential tools.
And because both are experienced speakers, the material is designed to be engaging, relatable, and accessible instead of feeling like another mandatory lecture.
You do not need to overhaul your entire mental health program overnight. You can start small. From there, your school can decide what level of ongoing support makes sense.
We can customize a program around the challenges you are currently seeing in your students, staff, or families. The first step is a simple conversation. Tell us what is happening in your school, and we will help you identify the program that makes the most sense.
Meet your presenters
Together, Andre and Dan bring two perspectives to the same goal: helping people move from “What is wrong?” to “What can we do?”
Family & emotional wellness expert
A Licensed Mental Health Counselor in Massachusetts with a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology and advanced training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Child & Family Therapy. Andre brings a clinical and family-systems perspective to understanding what may be happening beneath behavior.
He speaks professionally to school and community audiences around the country, and works with individual clients in his private clinic as well as with groups.
The Anxiety Relief Guy
A featured TEDx speaker, Board-Certified Hypnotist, instructor, author, and anxiety relief specialist. For more than two decades, Dan has helped people shift patterns connected to anxiety, stress, fear, and performance. He makes complicated emotional concepts simple, memorable, and usable.
He speaks professionally to school and community audiences around the country, and works with individual clients in his private clinic as well as with groups.
Bring us to your school
Give students tools. Give teachers confidence. Give parents direction. Let’s create a program that fits your community.
85+ schools across New EnglandFeatured TEDx speakerClinical + practical tools
