Bereavement Leave Facts

Wendy was the mother of four children. Wendy had been feeling quite tense lately and started to “medicate” herself by having a few cocktails each evening after she put her children to bed. After nearly eight weeks of this drinking routine, she at last understood the fact that instead of helping her ”lighten up” and ”manage” her problems, drinking made her feel less restful when she awakened. This, in turn, made her feel even more tense all through the day.

After thinking about her situation for several days, Wendy decided to talk about her problem drinking with her best friend. Indeed, just about twenty minutes into their conversation, Wendy’s friend, Jazlynn, told her that she knew about a very competent and experienced physician at the local alcohol and drug treatment center. After talking to her friend, Wendy immediately got encouraged to call the rehabilitation facility and schedule an appointment.

Seven days later she eventually got to meet the physician her friend had been talking about. After their short introduction, Wendy told the psychiatrist that ever since she and her ex-husband got divorced, she has been struggling spiritually, emotionally, and financially.

At times, she felt that she was totally over the divorce. Recently, however, she has been feeling very depressed about the fact that she and her former husband couldn’t stay married and “make it”. When asked by the physician how long she and her former husband dated before they got married, Wendy told the doctor that her ex-husband and she dated for four years and then lived together for three years before they got married.

As Wendy was talking to the doctor, she underlined the point that she really believed that her ex-husband and she waited long enough to know one another well enough before they got married. After the kids started to arrive, conversely, their lives appeared to get worse. Moreover, both Robert and she began to drink, and their unhealthy and irresponsible drinking adversely affected their relationship, their finances, and their love for one another.

When things became less than pleasant between them, Robert got a lawyer and filed for a divorce. Even though things were visibly not going well and even though she was routinely depressed, Wendy told the physician that she didn’t want their relationship to come to an end. Once she received the divorce papers, however, she knew that their marriage was over.

The psychiatrist told Wendy that the stress, anxiety, and tension that she has been suffering from regarding her hazardous and abusive drinking are some of the normal alcohol abuse effects and that the best solution for this situation is rehabilitation for one’s alcohol abuse. In fact, getting alcohol abuse treatment is essential because repeated drinking can get the drinker into even more serious alcohol and alcoholism problems.

After several treatment sessions with her physician, Wendy was slowly but surely able to comprehend the fact that the real source of her stress and her depression was that she had not worked through her acrimonious feelings she has for her ex-husband who had divorced her two-and-a-half years ago. With these insights and with the drugs her psychiatrist prescribed, she eventually refrained from drinking, she began to feel much less depressed, and she began making time for social activities with her friends and family. A few months after getting counseling from her physician, she even started to date once again.

It was evident that Wendy had come a long way. In truth, just about five months after she terminated her counseling, Wendy had finally laid the negative feelings of Robert, her former husband, to rest and was beginning to feel more self esteem and more spiritually “sound” and emotionally “together” than she had ever felt in her life.

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