6 Phrases By Walter Riso

There are authors who take us to a world of reflection in which we can find our most intimate aspects. One of them is Walter Riso. Thanks to your contributions we can discover ourselves in the plane of our emotions, thoughts and feelings.

Besides being a writer, Walter Riso is a psychologist, born in Naples and lives between Barcelona and Italy. Through his texts he brings us closer to human suffering, but putting another face on it, a more nourishing one. If it is about adding steps to well-being, your contributions are essential. Join us to delve into his sentences.

You have to love being free. I don’t need you, I prefer you, I choose you

With this phrase, Riso invites us to think about nurturing love, one in which we do not blur. It’s about going beyond the need to be with someone. To do this, we need to recognize our importance.

You might ask, how is that possible? It is when we are the priority of our life, and when we are able to understand that we can be close to the other by loving him, without depending on him, that is, without ties.

This applies to any kind of love. Of course, we are talking about needs beyond the physical, not as if a baby, a child or a person with a certain condition could have them. In other words, we focus on what goes beyond survival.

So, it is essential that we know ourselves to know what we want and where we want to go. In addition, it is important that we take care of ourselves by setting limits. Thus, they will not overtake us.

It is also important to take this into account when interacting with others, that is, to see how far we can go with them, to cultivate healthy relationships. Now, if we wanted to go deeper into this topic, we could delve into Walter Riso’s wonderful book: To Love or To Depend.

If you only focus on your mistakes you will not see your achievements according to Walter Riso

It’s about looking broad, that is, seeing all the scenarios, not just the bugs. Because in doing so we stop realizing the positive, for example, of the goals we achieve. In addition, fixating on something negative can cause us harm, why perpetuate it?

In this sense, if we go to an explanation of cognitive psychology, it may be a cognitive distortion called selective abstraction or filtering , which consists of emphasizing our negative aspects, neglecting the positive ones.

I do not believe that love cures anything, those who heal are the people who love when they are sweet and understanding

With this phrase, Walter Riso makes us think about the responsibility that falls on us. In reality, we are the protagonists of our life. Love is not an external entity that makes things better or worse. Much depends on our constructions.

Now, being sweet and understanding are skills that strengthen relationships when applied properly. Remember that excessive kindness can cause us suffering.

On the other hand, we can think from this phrase, to take control of our life and not wait for something to magically heal us, why not do it ourselves or seek the necessary help to find the way? 

Perfect people aren’t real and real people aren’t perfect

With this phrase, we can reflect on how much the ideal of perfection costs us human beings. Sometimes we are doing what is necessary to achieve it without realizing that we will not achieve it, because we could find a mistake on that path.

Perhaps, we can think that there are those who are perfect, but remember that an image does not show us all the content of the person. Human beings have both strengths and weaknesses that make us authentic. Focusing on reaching an ideal can cause us suffering and could even affect our self-esteem.

Every virtue or personal conquest that you dismiss is to deny and disrespect your existence

Conceiving our experience as valuable is equivalent to realizing all that we are. Sometimes we look only at what we should have done, anchoring ourselves to the past; others are left thinking about how to improve to be successful, and we become attached to the future. This can lead us to great anguish, and to fail to see the precious moments and our achievements and abilities.

Respect for ourselves is a form of self-care, it is about considering ourselves seeing what we represent, and what we are. In some moments we focus so much on others or on the negative that we lose sight of ourselves, leaving aside our greatest virtues and achievements.

What is self-criticism according to Walter Riso?

According to this author, it consists of a practice that can be in our favor if it is in tune with our well-being. That is, if it helps us to improve but we do not use it in an exaggerated way, for example, allying it with perfection in each activity we carry out.

When we misuse self-criticism, we hurt ourselves, causing us stress, and negatively affecting our self-concept. It happens because it is a way of attacking us, sometimes more conscious than another. The important thing is to recognize it, to be able to manage it.

These are just some of the unique phrases that Walter Riso gives us. Definitely, on the one hand it teaches us to be attentive to all our aspects, and on the other to relate. Always being in tune with what is healthy.