Published: Irish Examiner
Author: Dr. Malie Coyne

“Since the coronavirus pandemic started, my eight-year-old daughter has been very anxious about catching the virus and is nervous about people coming near her or touching anything at all outside. 

How can I stop her being so anxious, as it’s really having a negative effect on her life?

Clinical psychologist Dr Malie Coyne, a lecturer at the National University of Ireland Galway and author of Love In Love Out – A Compassionate Approach to Parenting Your Anxious Child , says: “This health crisis has been challenging for many, especially those prone to anxiety.

“My experience as an anxious child, as a parent and as a clinical psychologist, has taught me that parents play a crucial role in containing their child’s anxiety, and in finding the tricky balance between helping them to feel safe and empowering them to test their fears.”

Published: The Irish Times
Author: Sheila Wayman
Interviewee: Dr. Malie Coyne

“Anxiety is both professional and personal for Dr Malie Coyne, a clinical psychologist and self-confessed “little worrier” as a child.

From around the age of eight, she knew there were tensions within the family unit that trailed around the world after her father, a Dutch diplomat, and later ambassador, married to an Irish woman.

“It was just the five of us travelling to all these countries, because you don’t have your cousins, aunties and uncles, and then you are getting to know people all over again.”

She reckons she attended at least nine schools, having started in French education, moving on to the British system and then finishing off her second-level education by doing the International Baccalaureate in South Korea. But it was while she was still of primary-school age that she became aware “all was not okay” at home.”

Published: Irish Independent
Author: Liadan Hynes
Interviewee: Dr. Malie Coyne

“Two minutes into speaking to clinical psychologist Dr Malie Coyne, I’m asking her for advice about my own child. I recount how my six-year-old daughter said to me out of the blue recently, “Mommy, I know the virus kills people,” and describe my panicked attempt to come up with a reassuring answer. “I know it does,” my daughter had replied with a stern look, adding: “You’re going to lie to me.”

Malie’s new book, Love in, Love Out: A Compassionate Approach to Parenting Your Anxious Child, is perfectly timed, given the norms we now live in. In the past few months can anyone claim not to have undergone, at some point, heightened levels of anxiety? Malie’s approach is about supporting your child, while also managing your own emotions.

“I’ve poured everything I have in terms of my own experiences of being an anxious child into it, so it was really emotionally driven. And then working with people every day, and being a parent myself… all of those voices are in there,” she reflects.”