“Pose” actor Billy Porter was thankful the COVID-19 pandemic finally gave him the chance to “slow down and stop” because he doesn’t think he’d ever have taken the time to work on himself in order to move forward with his life.
“I went into trauma therapy during COVID. I had a chance to slow down and stop, which is not something as a workaholic that I ever think about doing,” Porter said while speaking on the “Reign with Josh Smith” podcast.
“If the world hadn’t stopped and we were all forced into this shutdown thing, I don’t know that I ever would’ve had the time, made the time, knew that I needed to make the time to do a different kind of work to heal the trauma in my life so I could really move forward. I had gotten to a place where I had gone as far as I could go emotionally, spiritually, physically, everything, and I needed some more excavation.”
The 54-year-old actor has always been “hard” on himself but the therapy helped him learn to “forgive” his past actions.
“I’m so hard on myself. I had no compassion for myself and my trauma therapist spent the first three months just working on self-compassion. And it’s not second nature to us as humans to have self compassion because that means that you have to forgive yourself,” Porter continued.
“You have to sit in the uncomfortable situation of not having all the answers, not being perfect, feeling bad, and allowing myself to feel bad today. That’s how I feel today. And this too shall pass, just working through one’s humanity. When we can figure out how to breathe and just put one foot in front of the other every day, it will all be OK,” he said.
