Changing the Chatter
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About this ebook
Young girls ages 8 to 14 are at a critical point in their lives. Will they go on to a lifetime of healthy self-reliance? Or is their self-esteem foundation crumbling, sending them on a course toward everything from failed relationships to crushing substance abuse or worse?
What if you could tip the scales decisively in their favor? You can!
Help the young girl in your life: your daughter, your niece, granddaughter or a child in your care look beyond the mirror for greater self-esteem. Help her find and keep her inner voice, inner strength, inner power, and, finally, to love the incredibly wonderful, uniquely talented person she is.
Helping young girls to establish a solid foundation for lifelong self-esteem is author Alicia Marcos Birong's mission, and the subject of her groundbreaking first book, "Changing the Chatter: Help Your Daughter Look Beyond the Mirror for Greater Self-Esteem".
Birong has a master's degree in counseling and is a certified hypnotherapist with pediatric hypnosis expertise. She's also a certified life coach and served for many years in a variety of Catholic youth ministries. Her breakthrough work with children facing challenges from ADD and ADHD to self-mutilation has garnered her both instructional and speaking roles in school districts and at conferences across the country.
Importantly, Birong is the creator and founder of Changing the Chatter: Celebrating ChatterGirls. This five session program provides girls ages 8 to 14 with the tool set they need to cherish the reflection in the mirror, to see and reach beyond the mask, to analyze the chatter playing in their minds, and, as necessary, to change that message.
Birong knows that enrolling a girl in Changing the Chatter: Celebrating ChatterGirls is potentially life-altering and world-changing. It is her deepest wish that through sharing the overview of her innovative program and its extraordinary outcomes to date -- and her own deeply personal and compelling reasons for developing it -- Changing the Chatter will become an international movement.
Read the book; spread the spark!
Alicia Marcos Birong
Alicia is the founder and owner of "Changing the Chatter: Celebrating ChatterGirls" and "Guided Choices".With a passion for improving and empowering the lives of individuals of all ages, she has worked with children and adults for over 30 years as a life coach, therapist and hypnotherapist. Alicia holds a master’s degree in counseling from Loyola University in Chicago.Throughout her career, Alicia has worked in the nonprofit arena, the business community, and the Catholic Church. She also teaches pediatric hypnotherapy at conferences and to therapists in the Chicago area, has published various articles, and has presented the topic to both national and international audiences.Alicia started "Changing the Chatter: Celebrating ChatterGirls" in 2013 to help young girls between the ages of 8 and 14 deal with social pressures and self-esteem issues. The goal today is to spread the message across the nation so young girls will have the tools they need to be stronger, more confident young women. In acknowledgement of "Changing the Chatter: Celebrating ChatterGirls", Shaw Media awarded Alicia with a Hometown Heroes Award, given to residents who have made a marked contribution to their community.Alicia resides in the Chicago area with her husband, Bill. She is the mother of two successful, grown children, and also is a proud grandmother.
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Book preview
Changing the Chatter - Alicia Marcos Birong
Foreword
Congratulations. You have made an enlightened decision to acquire a book about the ChatterGirls experience. It makes me glad to write these few words to you about it.
About thirty years ago, three things began to come together in my professional and personal life that have helped me appreciate this text.
First, I was introduced, in some depth, to the theory and approach of cognitive psychotherapy. Simply put, this inner talk counseling model (which can also be utilized in some cases as a self-help technique) is a means of helping persons – of various ages – appropriate and adopt the power to think about and deal with the things of life, especially developmental complications and problems, in practical and constructive ways. Ultimately, it can be a powerful self-esteem building engine.
Second, I began in the mid-1980s to eagerly read the works of Erik Erikson, Lawrence Kohlberg, David Elkind, and Carol Gilligan – to name a few specialists who centered on the psycho-social and moral development of boys and girls. This long literary inquiry eventually led me to the insights of Sheila Green and, more recently (as the new grandfather of a little girl), to the ‘girl talk’ and ‘tweenage makeover’ concepts of Haley Kilpatrick and Michelle Icard.
The third factor was that I met Alicia Marcos Birong around 1983 while we each had helping profession jobs in the New Orleans area. It became obvious to me, very quickly, that she had a deep affection and emotional resonance for all youth – especially the early adolescent stage often labeled these days as ‘tweens’ (which is sometimes used as a derogatory term), pre-teens, and the youngest Millennials. It was also apparent that Alicia’s growing concern for the travails of modern young people – coupled with her own experience of the tween, teen, and young adult years -- might morph into a career/life commitment dedicated to understanding and helping kids. Over time, her deep interest in the healthy development of young females came particularly to the fore. It has been most interesting to watch these changing seasons of Alicia’s vocation, over 30+ years, come to be and blossom naturally, like the dynamic seasons of a human being’s developmental journey.
You will find all three of these themes integrated well into this book and into the overall ChatterGirls program. The careful attempt to educate and empower young women as to how to think about themselves and engage the world; the culled wisdom of thinkers and writers layered through the sections; and the practical insights of a writer and facilitator who carries decades of experience with a therapist’s skill and a minister’s heart – yes, they are all in here, as you will easily recognize.
So, you are probably holding a book about ChatterGirls mostly because you wish to help some young girl(s) cope with the social and inner pressures that go with growing up, and to appropriate some life skills that will lead them toward responsible young womanhood.
Make the most of that valorous mission. This resource will assist you.
Reynolds R. Ekstrom
Louisville, Kentucky
~ Today, I look at my challenges, and I remember that each positive step I take carries me toward the life of my dreams. ~
Introduction
When you look in the mirror, who looks back?
Is she smiling, confident, eager to face the day? Is she certain of her value, secure in the knowledge of her worth? Or does she frown, fixated on flaws, listening to an inner voice that says Why bother,
You don’t measure up,
or even You are one ugly failure?
Does she consistently make mindful choices, walking a path that extends respect, compassion and love to others—as well as to herself?
Everyone falters, that’s for sure. We all learn as we go. But some seem far more destined to repeat mistakes that seriously wound, and may even kill. The question is why?
I’m Alicia Marcos Birong, and I’ve made it my life’s work to key in on this question, particularly as it relates to girls and young women. I’ve studied the answer, and I’ve developed the most effective response: prevention.
We need to prevent those common adolescent and pre-adolescent feelings of inadequacy from taking root, and replace them with budding self-assurance, self-reliance and self-confidence, as well as empathy for others. Through a five-step program I’ve developed called Changing the Chatter: Celebrating ChatterGirls, today’s young girls can learn not only to be secure in their knowledge of self-worth, but also to be champions for their peers, consistently building one another up throughout the precarious path of the teen and pre-teen years.
My focus on youth began in the youth ministry of the Catholic Church back in my Texas hometown. I went on to become a certified youth minister, and today, my background includes a master’s degree in counseling, life coaching and hypnotherapy certifications, pediatric hypnotherapy expertise, instructional experience and nationwide speaking exposure.
More importantly, though, I’m a fiercely strong woman who sees in the mirror a person of great value.
But that wasn’t always the case. In fact, for decades, it was far from it. I spent my younger adult years mired in the very sort of muck I’m now determined to help young girls to avoid.
In my practice, I work with both children and adults. And I’ve discovered far too many women in their 30s, 40s and even 50s who’ve traveled a self-destructive road borne of the same foundation or, more accurately, the lack thereof.
Psychologists have found that a woman’s self esteem takes root between the ages of 8 and 14. Plant the right seeds during that time span, and the benefits are both immediate and lifelong. Fail, and the fallout is equally enduring.
Sadly, for some, the defeating effects of