PORT TOWNSEND — Running helped. Exercise, the two teenagers said, helped them focus.
In the darkest days of 2020, both Sorina Johnston and Finn O’Donnell were stuck; there were no activities in which their senior class could partake, no Homecoming celebration, no gatherings of any kind.
“I had this incredible sense of isolation,” said Johnston, now 18.
The shutdown of the Port Townsend High School campus blocked her from doing the things she loves: theater, soccer, basketball, mock trial, student government.
O’Donnell, meanwhile, had just started dating someone new at the start of the pandemic.
“Perfect timing,” the teenager said ruefully.
For the first four months of the relationship, they wore masks when they saw each other.
Johnston and O’Donnell are among the Jefferson County students who speak their minds in a video on The Benji Project (TBP) website, thebenjiproject.org.
The nonprofit organization, founded five years ago in response to the suicide of 15-year-old Benji Kenworthy of Port Townsend, strives to teach mindfulness and self-compassion to teenagers in Jefferson County.
In March and April of this year, TBP conducted a survey of teen mental health in Port Townsend and Chimacum, finding 75 percent of respondents had experienced anxiety and worries they didn’t feel they could control.
Fifty-five percent struggled with depression symptoms that interfered with their activities of the past year.
The survey, separate from the video, had a small pool of respondents — just 53 10th-graders — yet it provided useful insights, said Dr. Lexa Murphy, a psychologist and board member with TBP.
Twenty-two percent of the respondents reported seriously considering suicide, Murphy noted, while 18 percent said they had made a plan to take their own lives.
“I took it hard. I am a very social person, so everything I was used to doing was taken from me,” one respondent wrote.
“I had many anxiety attacks and just wanted things to go back to normal. I really lost myself … I need to be around other people and interact.”
While 12 percent of the teens said they have an adult to talk with when they feel sad or hopeless, 21 percent said they had no one to talk to, Murphy added.
“Everybody acts like they’re cool and fine,” Johnston said.
Teenagers tend to pretend, at least around people they don’t know well, she said. That doesn’t work for her.
Johnston was talking with a friend “about everything; the stuff we were going through. I was hurting,” she recalled.
Her friend came up with a phrase she’s since adopted.
“Grit grants growth,” her friend said.
Johnston printed that on the sign she holds up in the TBP video.
O’Donnell, for his part, said his running shoes provided a kind of medicine: Exercise gave him something to do when so many activities were verboten.
“Going for hikes, before we all got vaccinated, also helped,” and then he and his peers started getting immunized against COVID-19 in late March.
Port Townsend High’s then-dean of students, Patrick Gaffney, stands out in O’Donnell’s mind as someone who asked teens what they needed.
“Throughout the whole year, he made a really big effort,” O’Donnell said, “and he made me and a lot of other students feel heard.”
The students wanted an in-person prom and an in-person graduation. Gaffney first listened, then asked: How can the school staff help make it happen? Thanks to rapid COVID testing and vaccination, the senior class celebrated at both prom in May and commencement in June.
“We need to be checking in on the teens in our life,” Murphy said.
“We can start by normalizing that there are lots of different ways to feel right now. Some are feeling better; some are vaccinated. Some are really struggling.
“We can start by asking: ‘How has it been for you?’
“There’s lots of research showing that it is not harmful to ask teens directly about suicidality. Often it comes as a relief,” Murphy said.
“Have you had thoughts about not wanting to be alive anymore?” is a possible question as part of a conversation about how a teenager is feeling.
“If they say yes … get as much information as you can about what that means for them,” she said, adding it’s useful to connect the person with resources and then sit with him or her as they call a hotline or counselor.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 800-273-8254, while the 24-hour crisis textline can be reached by texting HOME to 741741.
“It’s easy to think you’re the only one experiencing things,” said Johnston.
She’s learned that many of her peers are having the same lousy feelings.
“My friends and I leaned on each other,” she said.
“You don’t have to pretend you’re OK. You can make a big difference by being vulnerable … lean into the scary things, and you can work through them.”
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Jefferson County senior reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3509 or durbanidelapaz@peninsuladailynews.com.
Psychologist Lexa Murphy worked with The Benji Project on a teen mental health survey this spring. (Photo courtesy Alexandra Murphy)
