Climate anxiety, eco-grief and climate depression are terms used by the emerging mental health and climate change field to define the psychological impacts of the climate crisis. Community-based tools based in cutting-edge science of emotions can support practitioners to sustain longterm engagement and adaptive innovation.

Sustainability takes a whole-systems approach to addressing world issues and developing economies. To meet the emerging needs of 21st century students, education for sustainable development needs to take a whole-systems approach to developing future leaders by integrating the emotional, psychological and spiritual dimensions of world change with subject matter and technical skills.

When facing wicked problems, challenging emotions like anxiety, overwhelm, and grief are increasingly common companions to education about sustainable development. Tools are needed that help people process challenging emotions and psychologically integrate them to support long term engagement, effective social action and well-being.

To navigate and steer the uncertainty of our changing world, change agents need tools that help them transform the world outside of themselves, which includes tools to transform their personal worlds within. Including self-awareness competencies in education for sustainable development helps people be effective, lifelong change agents that can lead to true structural transformation.

What does it mean to include the spiritual dimensions of world change into education for sustainable development? I use the term “spiritual” to refer to the way that people create meaning around world change, which has implications for the way they approach and sustain social action. As change agents face wicked problems, how do they personally make sense of the existence of these problems?