Bea's story

Ever since I was younger, I’ve always suffered with anxiety and really, really low moods. My way of dealing with it was I’d try and do it, and if I couldn’t do it, I’d get angry at myself that I couldn’t do it. Then it’d build onto something else, something else, something else: ​‘Well, you’re no good at knowing that.’ Then the negativeness would come in, which was really, really hard.

My name’s Bernice. Everybody calls me Bea for short. I’m married to my husband, Keith. Last June, I was really in a poorly state. I was doing a job, but there wasn’t enough money coming in. My husband was struggling himself with arthritis, but my mental health deteriorated, and then being told we’re being made redundant. So I was scared of being on the streets. I was scared of thinking I’m gonna lose our home. My husband was like, ​‘Oh my gosh, what we gonna do? What we gonna do?’ And I’m like, ​‘Keith, I can’t think.’ My anxiety would be through the roof. My head would be banging. I’d feel sick. I’d be… and I’m gonna cry now. I’m so sorry, um, because it was such… sorry. It was so hard.

And then me and Keith were at each other. And I said, ​‘We shouldn’t have got together. We shouldn’t have got married and wouldn’t have had all this.’ And I’m so sorry. I’m going to cry. I don’t know why I’m crying, I’m so sorry. It just broke me down. And poor Keith, I’ve never seen him so low. And that was just because of money. And we tried to figure out if we were entitled to anything, if we could get anything. And nobody could give us any information. Nobody would tell us anything. So we’re in the dark because we’ve always been workers. We’ve never had to ask for money. We’ve always worked, but I just couldn’t, couldn’t figure it out.

And I remember my mental health nurses saying to me, ​‘Why do you punish yourself thinking you can’t do that?’ But that’s how my anxiety and my depression works. I seem to kick myself when I’m down. I went back on, started on medication for antidepressants, and had a good chat with my doctor. I just cried all day. She was brilliant.

As I was coming out, my doctors is just over the road from the church, and normally I walk around the pathway. But today, on that day, I walked through the churchyard, just about to walk away. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but something made me turn back and go, ​‘No, come on, Bea, look at it again.’ And I looked at it and I went, ​‘It says Hope.’ And I just had this realisation that I’d lost all my hope, and that’s what I needed.

I remember Barney just saying, ​‘Hello, welcome to Hope.’ And I just burst into tears. I couldn’t stop crying. And I thought, Oh, I’m so… I remember saying, ​‘I’m so sorry, I’m…’ and they were like, ​‘Just cry. It’s okay. You’ve come to a safe place. You’ve come to somewhere where you can just relax.’ You know, when it’s been a rainy day and the sun comes out? That’s how it felt, like we’d come out the dark into the light.

So Barney came round and explained what CAP do, and he explained about all the paperwork. We were told that we could get a Debt Relief Order because we were in that much debt, and we were on benefits and getting Universal Credit. And also we were told a calculation of how much extra we could get. CAP sorted it all out. They were ringing us in between, saying they were in the middle of it, and they were constantly in touch with us, amazing people, you know, just, just, oh, I can’t, I can’t thank them enough.

And then we got the Debt Relief Order, and it meant that we were clear of debt. And it was just such an amazing, amazing thing. It’s just like this amazing feeling of, of relief and like a lift, you know?
I’ve just become a Befriender with CAP, which I’m excited about. I’ve done other courses as well with CAP as well. I did the life skills one, which was another good one. I’ve learned to be able to grow again. I’ve learned to say, ​“You know what, Bea, you are alright, girl. You know, you’re fine. People are happy with you, your family love you. All this love you’ve got around you, which you didn’t think you had.”

We went through all that hardship, and then suddenly that hardship is gone, and it meant we could go forward, you know, but in a better place together.