Ro Mitchell is no stranger to negative self-talk. In her book, How to talk to yourself, Mitchell relays the wisdom she has gained over the long trial and error process that is mental health recovery. Her advocacy focuses on the humanity and empathy that is sometimes lost in discussions about mental health, as we laser focus on solutions and labels. I recently sat down to interview Mitchell, to learn more about her career and mission for compassionate change.

“I think for a lot of us, especially for me, it’s a survival thing,” she says of her tendency to self-denigration, adding: “I would pre-empt things that other people could use against me or could criticise me for.” For Mitchell, picking herself apart was an ingrained defence mechanism. However, this type of self-criticism can quickly turn toxic.

“If you have an audience that you know are vulnerable, you can’t be triggering to people”

Mitchell’s career in advocacy began as a teenager, where she shared her recovery from anorexia nervosa via YouTube. Her YouTube videos, laced with compassion and understanding, are what sparked my interest in her work. She acknowledges the importance of balancing authenticity and responsibility. “If you have an audience that you know are vulnerable, you can’t be triggering to people,” she tells me.

As her content has developed – moving from a focus on eating disorder recovery towards more general mental health advocacy, fashion, and lifestyle content – Mitchell has come to realise that she isn’t responsible for her follower’s mental health. “As I did in my own recovery, you do have to take responsibility for your own triggers,” she tells me, translating her lived experience into useful insight for others. “It’s about finding that line” between sensitivity and tackling tough topics to maximise the impact of her advocacy.

Often, taking responsibility can be difficult. “So many of us live with an inner critic that is constant and wears us down,” Mitchell elucidates. This voice, hissing hatred into our internal monologues, is often “at the base of a lot of […] struggles with mental health”. Mitchell believes compassion is an antidote to criticism that is not emphasised enough in mental health conversations. “It’s not just about being kind to yourself,” instead she claims: “It’s about actually just having grace with yourself and accepting that you are in the place you’re in, that it’s not your fault, and just talking kindly to yourself .”

“So many of us live with an inner critic that is constant and wears us down”

Grace and growth are not mutually exclusive. Mitchell is careful not to conflate negative self-talk with constructive self-awareness. “I like the fact that I’m a very self-aware person,” she muses, commenting on how self-criticism is often a genuine desire to better oneself – taken to the extreme. Mitchell proposes prioritisation and working to separate what needs improving, and what is just a human imperfection. “If you don’t pick your battles, you end up completely exhausted because you’re trying to do perfectly at absolutely everything in life.”

Our internal standards are often arbitrary, self-imposed and invisible to our peers. “As a perfectionist, I hold myself to a standard that nobody else would ever hold me to.” In her book, Mitchell inverts the old advice ‘treat others the way you want to be treated’, urging us to show the same compassion towards yourself that you would towards others.

After years of unlearning her habit of self-criticism, Mitchell chose to thank herself in the book’s dedication. She considers herself “a real advocate for actually saying that you are proud of yourself.” This inspired reflection on how frequently we may achieve a goal – be it getting an offer to study at university, securing an internship or overcoming a personal obstacle – and neglect acknowledging the work it took us to get there. This misguided humility often comes from not wanting to appear arrogant, causing us to hide our hard work and talk down our achievements. Ro Mitchell seeks to change this narrative – after all, “there’s no shame in liking yourself.”