About Dr. Janine O’Brien
The why behind the work.
I specialize in therapy for women in midlife — the late 30s and 40s — who are ready to stop just getting through it and start actually living it.
If you’re in your late 30s or 40s and something feels…off, I want you to know that what you’re experiencing is real. This stage of life asks a lot of women. It asks us to keep showing up, keep performing, keep holding it all together, often while internally renegotiating almost everything.
In recent years, my practice has focused on the midlife stage of life because I know it from the inside.
I’ve navigated divorce. I’ve dated in my late 30s — which is its own particular experience nobody prepares you for. I remarried recently and have lived the complexity of what partnership looks like when you’re doing it with so much more self-awareness and lived experience than the first time around. I’ve sat with the isolation, grief, and empowerment that can come with making major life decisions that don’t fit neatly into the stories we’re told about what a woman’s life should look like. I’ve felt the shift in friendships, the career questioning, the sense that the version of yourself you worked so hard to build might no longer be who you are.
I’m not on the other side of all of it. I’m in it too — which means when we sit together, you’re not talking to someone who has it all figured out. You’re talking to someone who gets it, is doing the work, and has spent years helping women through it with more clarity, authenticity, and agency.
You’ve spent years showing up for everyone else. Midlife is asking you to show up for yourself.
my approach &
philosophy.
I’m warm and I’m direct. I’ll validate what’s hard and I’ll also be honest with you — about patterns I see, about what the work actually requires of you, and about what’s possible on the other side of it.
My work is relational, attachment-based, and trauma-and culturally-informed. I often draw from psychodynamic and CBT approaches — meaning we look at where these patterns came from and we build practical tools for actually changing them. I believe insight alone isn’t enough. Understanding yourself is the beginning, not the finish line.
I also hold space for the real barriers: cultural expectations, systemic inequities, family obligations. The parts of our experience that don’t just disappear because you’ve decided to grow. The work we do together accounts for the reality of your life, not an idealized version of it.
I work best with clients who are self-aware and ready for change. They’re not looking for someone to just tell them what to do or expecting therapy to be a magic bullet. They are willing and motivated to continue the work outside of our sessions. Ultimately, they want to actually understand themselves more deeply and do something different with that understanding.
A little about me outside the office
When I’m not working, I’m usually strength training or in a Pilates class, reading, traveling somewhere new, or hunting down a good decaf Americano in a coffee shop I’ve never been to before. I love spending time with the people I love and I believe deeply that a full life outside the therapy room makes me a better therapist inside it
Ready to take the next step?
I started this work because I believe midlife deserves more than just survival mode. You deserve more than that too. If any of this resonates, I’d love to connect.
Education & Training
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Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Pace University Counseling Center
PsyD in Clinical Psychology, University of Hartford
Pre-Doctoral Internship, American University Counseling Center
MA in Clinical Practices, University of Hartford
MA in General Psychology, Derner Institute at Adelphi University
BA in Psychology, Hofstra University
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Dr. Janine O’Brien, Therapy & Consultation
St. John’s Counseling and Psychological Services
Pace University Counseling Center
American University Counseling Center
Sagamore Children’s Psychiatric Center
St. Joseph’s Counseling Center
Hartford Job Corps.
Eastern Connecticut State University Center Counseling Center