Rob Danzman
MS, NCC, LCMHC
Counselor/Therapist
Bloomington, USA
Answers questions in Addictions · Adolescent Issues · Adult ADD / ADHD
About Rob Danzman
Rob Danzman is owner of Motivate Counseling which specializes in Counseling, Parent Consulting and Therapeutic Placement Consulting.
Motivate Counseling understands the unique obstacles of complicated family systems. When a higher level of care is needed, we organize and facilitate team meetings, provide therapeutic transport to and from placement, recommendations for residential treatment, complete applications and forms and develop comprehensive aftercare planning.
Rob Danzman has over 15 years of mental, behavioral and substance abuse experience working in inpatient, outpatient and community-based settings.
What I do
I am the author of Insider's Guide to Parenting: How to Solve Messy Problems and Build a Great Family. I specialize in working with Indiana University students struggling with depression, anxiety, organization skills and motivation issues. Parents are stressed-out and feel unprepared in dealing with these challenges. I provide Individual and Family Counseling with a focus on treating the underlying causes of depression, anxiety and substance abuse to get your son or daughter back on track. Office, on-campus, in-home and phone sessions are available when your busy schedules don't permit traditional support. Call today for a complimentary consultation.
My story
Rob Danzman is owner of Motivate Counseling which specializes in Counseling, Parent Consulting and Therapeutic Placement Consulting.
Motivate Counseling understands the unique obstacles of complicated family systems. When a higher level of care is needed, we organize and facilitate team meetings, provide therapeutic transport to and from placement, recommendations for residential treatment, complete applications and forms and develop comprehensive aftercare planning.
Rob Danzman has over 15 years of mental, behavioral and substance abuse experience working in inpatient, outpatient and community-based settings.
Treatment Offered
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Therapy approaches
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Answered Questions(31)
Heading Towards the Cliff
We are elderly parents of mentally ill alcoholic 30 yr old son. We are the social security disability payee and pay his rent, bills, etc. He has been in many, many treatment programs to no avail. He is constantly picked up by police drunk in street, parking lots, woods, and brought to hospitals. He has now accumulated $5,000 worth of fines, etc. He gets money for drinking by lying to me, needs money for food, etc. If i refuse he begs for money...No friends or relatives will have anything to do with him. We are getting too old to run around to police stations and hospitals, however, being the payee representative, i feel responsible for paying his bills. I realize there is a great need for me to change things around so that he becomes responsible for his choices, not me. After so many years of this i am overwhelmed with payments, bills, court dates, etc. Being on first name basis with crisis staff at local hospital is not fun. How do I become not responsible for him? Its very very hard to love someone like this and not enable him. Just today he called needs cigarettes, In hospital 40 miles from here. I am getting resentful. Do not want to drive there and drop off cigarettes. But i hold the money. I feel myself losing it mentally and physically.
Read answer →Guilt About Bulimia
Is it weird to feel very guilty about bulimia. When my mom gives me dieting advice I feel so horrible and guilty I want to scream but I don’t say anything.
Read answer →Ex-Wife's Alcoholic Friend
Hello, My ex has allowed a childhood friend who is an active alcoholic to move in to her house with my 15 yr old daughter. the story is that she has sold her house and needs a "temporary" place to live while looking for a new one. My ex has good intentions but I know there is no time frame on her stay or "rules" to living in the house. My past experience in attending Al Anon meeting has made me aware of the potential issues with this arrangement. There has already been one 911 call when it was thought that the alcoholic may have taken too many sleeping pills. My girl experience the whole scene with the ambulance and police attending the call. Fortunately she recovered and was fine. Yesterday I went to the house to get a tool from the garage, the alcoholic meet me at the door completely intoxicated. I asked her if she was attending any meetings or talking with a counselor to which she said 'no". I am deeply concerned for the alcoholic but even more so for my daughter. I am looking for a set of recommended "rules" for the alcoholic to adhere too for my ex that addresses the time she can stay at the house as well as working, attending meetings , etc. But more importantly information as to 'why" for my ex to understand. Thanks in advance, Mike
Read answer →Enabled
I don't know how to get my parents from enabling my younger sister. She is 50 and finally relocated to my parents hometown. She has been unemployed for about 5 years now and is an alcoholic who still drinks because she thinks she can.She has been through rehab 3x but it hasn't worked because she doesn't think she has a problem with alcohol. My parents paid for her move, got her an apartment and helped furnish it; bought her a car and are paying her rent, insurance, etc. until she gets a job. I found out recently that they are allowing her to have alcoholic drinks when they meet for lunch on Sundays. She has also been seen drinking before driving her car. I don't know how to approach my parents without alienating them. They were active in her family rehab outpatient sessions but they are in their 80's and afraid to "let her go homeless or without money." Non of this is helping her and she is just leaching off of them. What is the best way to talk to my parents without alienating them? thanks for any advice!!!
Read answer →Teens Know Everything
My son is a regular user of marijuana. He is a junior in high school and duel enrolled into our community college and doing very well. He has a part time job, is active in our churches youth group, and in boy scouts. He doesn't see anything wrong with smoking marijuana and has even said he does well to prove all "stereotypes wrong". He will not see a expert. I don't know what to do. DO you have any advice?
Read answer →Career V. Kids Safety?
My children are 10 and 12 and neither has ever gotten into any trouble. I am a geologist and I am considering a career relocation that would put us into an area which has a major drug situation with meth and with oxycontin and other prescription drugs. This is a rural area so there is only one high school to attend and there is no way to minimize their exposure to this. I know that there have been numerous cases of high school students overdosing and getting in trouble with the law. This is what I have been able to find out just by searching the local newspaper so I bet it is worse on the ground. I am dragging my feet on accepting this offer because I am worried that we would be putting our kids in harms way. I remember being a teenage and going along with the crowd. If everybody else is doing drugs won’t my kids get sucked into that too?
Read answer →Early Entrepreneur?
My 15 year old son has way too much money and I can’t figure out where he is getting it from. He always has a story about how his ‘friends bought him this or that or how his friend gave him an old ipad mini or how he bought a scratch off and won $100. He won’t admit that he is doing something wrong and I am worried he is doing something illegal to get this money. I feel powerless because I worry he is going to get in a lot of trouble but I don’t know how to stop him what should I do?
Read answer →Anorexia and a Best Friend
If my friend always thinks she is fat and needs to lose weight when she is very skinny already does this mean that she had anorexia? How long does it take to get anorexia after you start dieting? This is my best friend and she has been dieting since she was about 13 and now she is 15.
Read answer →Disclosure Dilemna
I am visiting my grandson next week and when I see him (he is 5) he will ask w here is my daddy? Daddy is on 2nd gambling binge. His first binge ended in a suicide attempt and he spent 2 weeks in mental ward. He came home and 3 days later he took off again. The mom (ex-wife) has only told him his daddy is on a business trip. I am opting to tell my grandson the truth. As a recovering sex and love addict I think he will read through all the lies and lose trust for adults.
Read answer →Manipulative Mother (...In-Law)
My mother in law is a recovering alcoholic. I think she and my husband have a very dysfunctional relationship. Whenever she wants him to do anything she uses her recovery as a way to get him to do what she wants. He is so used to being the caregiver in that relationship and she is so narcissitic and she manipulates him to get what she wants without thinking about anyone else. She does not drive so we go up and spend Saturday night with her every week so we can help her do her groceries and errands. We wanted to go away for a weekend of couple time and then she was all week on the phone talking about how she was about to relapse and calling at all hours and laying on the guilt so thick that my husband just said we had better go see her and we all went to her just like she wanted. This is just one small example of what she does everyday. My husband agrees that she does this but he says he lived with her when she was drinking and he knows she will go back to it to spite him if he doesn’t do what she wants so he says he feels responsible for her. He says she is child like but he needs to protect her from herself. How can I get her to give us some space? I dragged him to an alanon meeting but he thought they were callous.
Read answer →Love vs. Enabling
My daughter has been to treatment programs, NA groups, jail programs, psych holds for meth psychosis, rehabs, halfway houses and everything you can think of probably more than 20 times. She is a stimulant user of meth and crack. I am the only person that she can still count on in her life because she has lied, betrayed, threatened and verbally abused everyone including me so many times that no one in the family will see her again. Last year I got a restraining order against her after she came over and I caught her stealing items to sell and she got violent when I stopped her. That was really hard to do to my only child. After 20 times of trying am I still enabling her when I help her get into programs to quit? She will still call me every few months and ask for help again and again and it always ends with her getting kicked out of programs for using or just running away. I do not know if I stop helping her? Everyone says I should. Is this a part of letting her hit rock bottom but then what is the point of her hitting rock bottom if she can’t get any help? She is only 27.
Read answer →Fleeting Eating
What do I do with a girl who is 17 and in her last year of high school who is taking diet pills and who won’t stop. I can make her promise to stop but I cannot make her actually do it. I am starting to feel like the police man in the house. Whenever she pours a big glass of water I am wondering if she is drinking to avoid eating and I bite my tongue to ask her but I often can’t resist and that does not help when I am badgering her about what she is doing especially when I cannot prove one way or the other what is going on in her head. I am so frustrated with her. She has taken diet pills in the past and I caught her and we had a big talk and she promised she would not do it again. She knows the risks. Then she lost a ton of weight this last month and I got suspicious again and I started asking her if she was taking anything. Of course she denied everything but then my youngest daughter found the pills in her bag and she still denies that she is taking them she says she is just selling them at school (she says they are not ilegal). What am I supposed to do? I can’t make her do anything and being thin seems more important to her than her future health.
Read answer →Boozing Brother
My 58 year old brother is an alcoholic. In the last 5 years he has gone through a messy divorce and declared bankruptcy, closing the business he inherited from our dad. Unemployed, he moved in with my mom and spent his days drinking and watching tv. He plays the victim card all the time, complaining how no one has helped him in his life and how everyone in our family are losers. Last November he was arrested for a DUI and released on bond. Two months later he was arrested for an open container ( he was drinking in a mini market parking lot) and his bond was revoked as he had violated its terms. He hired a public defender and has since been through several public defenders and has many continuances. He remains in jail and continously calls our mom claiming his innocence. He has made her think that it is her job to get him out of jail - call the attorney general, call the judge, he is innocent and his rights have been violated. She and I both feel very guilty and I am extremely angry with him for his treatment of her. I live several hundred miles away so I cannot see him in person but I would like to write him a letter getting everything off my chest. My mom is against this as she feels I am kicking him while he is down and I am not being supportive. He is the kind of "you're with me or against me" person so I realize this will be like divorcing my brother. He has no friends and no one has come looking for him or called him the entire time he has been in jail. I have started attending Al-Anon meetings - my mom won't go as she says it won't help him any - and have scheduled a meeting with a therapist. This has really torn our family up - my mother has called me more times than I can count sobbing as to what she can do. Do you think I should write this letter or just continue to try to help myself and heal?
Read answer →Purging for Two
What effect will getting pregnant have for a bulimic? Do you think that this person is more likely going to be able to control themselves now? Is purging dangerous to the unborn baby? Is it any worse than having morning sickness if a person is not currently having morning sickness? Is it necessary that a obstetrician know about the eating disorder or is this not something she needs to be made aware of?
Read answer →The Walking Dread
My sister has anorexia. She is pretty skinny but she is not a walking skeleton. If you did not know her you would just think she was a really thin person. She has seen many therapists over the years. I am 10 years older than her so we are not all that close. My parents say she won’t listen to them and they don’t know what to do. They offered her a deal where she could live with me and they would pay her rent so long as I got to control her meals and she went for it. They didn’t ask me first but now they are asking me to try and help. She says she really wants to try and a change of environment is what she needs. From what I know about anorexia this is not a sensible plan. Do you think I have any chance of being able to control what she eats? She can be pretty manipulative to get what she wants. I want to help her but I do not see this working. On the other hand, I guess we don’t have too much to lose by at least trying. She has never lived with anyone but our parents. She is 24 and unemployed. Do you have any thoughts, one way or the other?
Read answer →Using Caffeine for ADHD: Could Starbucks Be Therapeutic?
Since all ADHD treatments are basically psychostimulants will all psychostimulants basically work as ADHD medications? Specifically, would caffeine in moderately high doses help to control ADHD symptoms, assuming the side effects were tolerable?...red bulls…ephedrine?
Read answer →Too Lean in TN
Would a 45 year old man ever get something like anorexia? My brother was overweight his whole life. Last year he had a health scare and he turned his life around. He quit smoking stopped drinking, gave up red meat etc etc etc. I do not know the numbers but I would say he has lost 70 or more pounds. He used to be very overweight but not obscenely fat. Now he is a very thin person. Not quite ghoulishly thin but barely recognizable as the person he was 2 years ago. Now he is hyper focused on healthy eating. He won’t eat processed foods, non whole grain foods, farmed meat or fish and the list goes on. He seems to subsist mostly on organic yogurt, nuts and fruits and salads. I am worried because he has these rigid food rules that he won’t break, ever and because he is getting so thin that you would think there was something wrong with him, like he has AIDS or something. He went from fat guy to losing weight guy to really healthy looking guy to guy that really looks like he needs a cheeseburger. I have talked to him about my concerns but he has brushed them off. My other siblings are also concerned but no one knows what to do. J.B. in Tenn
Read answer →Tiny Dancer
My ex wife clearly favors our daughter at the expense of our son. Our daughter is 13 and our son is 11. My wife was a dancer and my daughter is a talented ballerina. My son is bookish and really creative but introverted. During the week, when my wife has the kids, 80% of the time, attention and money goes to supporting my daughter and her very expensive and time consuming dance practices. My son gets the leftover attention, and he is clearly starting to resent his sister and starting to act out, I think, just to get attention. I try to give him extra attention when I have them 2 weekends a month but I don’t want to neglect my daughter either. My wife does not admit that there is a problem here. I think she is so hyper focused on this dream of her daughter becoming a dancer that she is blind to anything else. What can I do for him? I call them every day already but this is not enough for him. He can feel it that he’s second potato in the family and it breaks my heart.
Read answer →Mother with Eating Disorder
My wife has had a history of anorexia. She is stable now but 5 years ago she was hospitalized for it. We had our first child 18 months ago. My daughter is having a lot of feeding problems and our pediatrician is concerned that she is falling behind on her growth curve. She is too small. She wouldn’t go to solid foods and she is really picky about what she will eat. I am at work and my wife is a stay at home mom. I am worried that my wife’s history of anorexia is causing her to underfeed. I don’t think she does it consciously but she sort of sabotages feeding time because she is basically against weight gain, even by an infant. Like one thing she does is she wipes her mouth after every bite and asks her ‘are you done yet’ starting after like the second or third bite. I have to stress I do not think she is doing this on purpose! My wife doesn’t see the problem. She doesn’t think the lack of weight gain is a big deal and she does not see how she contributes to the problem, and when I suggested getting my mom to come in and help with feeding she got really angry and upset, accusing me of accusing her of being a bad mom. So now I do not know what to do? Can you give me any advice?
Read answer →Researching Drugs
My 15 year old son was looking at a lot of legal high websites. I had put some parental monitoring software on that he didn’t know about. He spent about 90 minutes bouncing around and reading about party powders and a lot of herbal speeds and pills and stuff that honestly scares the bejesus out of me. I confronted him right away and he said he was just worried about a friend who was using some of this stuff and he was looking to it. Yeah right….thinks I. So now what? I have to believe he is probably using this stuff and honestly I’d rather he used regular old pot than this new breed of synthetic lab cooked up stuff coming out of China or wherever. Can I drug test him for this new legal high stuff? Should he see a drug counselor?
Read answer →Blended Family Friction
I am newly married to a woman that has 2 kids. They are 11 and 13. We have been in a relationship for 3 years and I know the kids very well and we used to get along very well. We did not live together prior to our marriage 6 months ago. But ever since a couple of months after the marriage my relationship with the kids has become very strained. They do not seem to respect my right to discipline them, although my wife encourages me to take on that role (on an equal basis). It’s become quite uncomfortable and I have tried talking , as a family about the situation, without getting and improvements. I am at my wits end and I hate it. They used to like me and we had a lot of fun. Now they seem to hate me and I just feel anxious or angry all the time at home. I am not sure what to do?
Read answer →Being a Clinical Lab Rat
My doctor asked me if I wanted to be in a clinical trial on varenecline. He knows I have a problem with drinking and cocaine. I can get treatment for free. It sort of sounds too good to be true. Is there any danger that I am not thinking of or any reason why I shouldn’t be a guinea pig for science?
Read answer →Heading North
I am 11 months sober and I have leaned on my support systems a lot, especially my parents who were the ones who got me into rehab and who let me move back home with them after rehab. Now I have an opportunity to go tree planting that will start in a couple of months and I think it is a pretty low risk job since last time I checked there were not too many coke dealers living in the middle of the forest in northern Canada! How do I know when I am ready to leave home (again). I am 22, by the way and I left home at 18 the first time, but I was already heavy into drinking and drugs by then. I am unemployed now and I would like to make a good chunk of money so I can get a car and my own apartment, so this seems like a good way to do that.
Read answer →Children's Head Trauma
My 8 year old son really wants to join the football team this year. I am concerned about the risk of traumatic head injuries. But on the other hand I am not sure if kids that are 8 and 9 years old can really hit hard enough to do any real damage to risk head injury. Hockey to me seems much more dangerous, just because of the higher speeds and risk of head and ice contact. Do you think a child at 8 years of age has to worry about traumatic brain injury from football, or is this just something that you start seeing as the players get bigger and faster and stronger?
Read answer →Mixed Up in Michigan
My son is a smart kid who never does as well as he is capable of in school since he is so terribly disorganized and sloppy and since he is always starting 10 projects at once and rarely finishing any of them. He in his first year at Michigan State and he is not doing very well. I can see that the things he struggled with in high school are becoming more of a problem for him now that he is expected to take more responsibility for himself. I should stress, it is not laziness that plagues him – if anything he has too much energy and excitement and that’s what gets him into trouble since he is always getting pulled in a thousand opposite directions at once. I am not sure how I can help him from afar. I am contemplating hiring him an older student who can sort of mentor him along, sort of like a life coach but for school. Sort of what I used to do for him when he lived at home. Do you think this is a good idea? Is there anything else or anything better that I could do for him?
Read answer →Stealing
My 12 year old son was caught stealing from his friend’s mother’s purse. He has stolen from us before on 3 occasions and he was punished for this and we believed we had addressed the issue. The first time we let it go after a serious talk and the second time he was grounded from TV and computer games for 2 weeks and the last time he was again grounded for 2 weeks and he lost his allowance for a month. We are shocked and livid that he would do this outside of the family as well. He cannot explain why he did this. There is a pattern of behavior here that is very disturbing, but he does not get in trouble at school or have other behavioral problems other than normal stuff. We don’t know what to do? How do we address this?
Read answer →Shopping Addiction
I am depressed and on medication. I also have massive credit card debt that I can’t possibly pay and I also have closets full of shirts I’ve never worn and book shelves groaning with so many unread books I don’t know when I will ever have time to read them all, especially since I am on Amazon all the time ordering more. I just buy stuff on impulse that I don’t really need, and I can’t seem to stop myself from doing this over and over again even though I recognize that I have a problem. What do I do? I shop as a way to feel better but it’s more complicated than only this. I am really not in control.
Read answer →Mental Health Assistance Dogs
I have PTSD from a rape and violent assault last year (I spent a week in the ICU). Now some days I don’t even want to leave my house and on bad days a trip to the corner store is terrifying. I have also lost my job and my boyfriend because I can’t get my head together. I was reading that some soldiers coming home from Afghanistan are using service dogs to help with PTSD. Are these dogs available for non military people? Would a service dog help someone like me? I am desperate. I am on 150mgs of Zoloft and 5 mgs of Xanax a day but it doesn’t help that much.
Read answer →Are There Medications That Help With Eating Issues?
I think I have compulsive eating disorder. I binge hard 3 or 4 times a week and I am trying to stop. I have not talked to a doctor or anything like this yet. I would like to know if there are any medications that will help me to deal with the urges I feel.
Read answer →Helping a Depressed Neighbor
My neighbor is a good hearted old guy but his wife died from cancer last year and he is sort of unraveling now. He is only in his 60s but he is drinking all day long now and when I talk to him after work he is often very drunk by then. I feel really bad for the guy but he is not interested in talking with me about his drinking. He has a daughter who I have met only twice in the past 12 years and as far as I know no other family. I would like to help him but I do not have a clue what to do. Is there anyone I can call at AA or a group like that who might be able to come out and have a talk with this guy? It seems to me that he is forgotten about by everyone. I know that it is not really my business but it seems wrong to not try to do something.
Read answer →Alcoholic Brother
My brother is an alcoholic. He lives with me. About a year ago I had had enough with his drinking and all the trouble that went along with it and I gave him an ultimatum. He either had to start getting some help and go to AA and try to quit drinking or he would have to leave. He agreed and now he goes to one or two meetings a day and he swears he is trying his hardest to really change his life and turn things around. He does not drink as openly anymore but I can often smell alcohol on him. When I have confronted him on this he admits to having setbacks sometimes but he says it’s just a part of the process of one day at a time. I studied psychology so I know something about addiction and I know that it is sort of a process for life and that relapses are common, so I understand this. But what I am worried about is that he is not even trying, really. I think he is now going to meetings just to get me off his back so he can live with me for free and continue to drink as much as he likes. Actually, it’s better for him now, since now that he is supposedly in recovery and trying his best, everyone treats him with kid gloves all of the time. I want to support him but I don’t want to enable him with a free place to live if he’s not even trying. How can I know if he is trying for real or not? Are there any more measurable standards I could use?
Read answer →