We recently connected with Rachel Smith and have shared our conversation below.
Rachel, appreciate you joining us today. We’re complete cheeseballs and so we love asking folks to share the most heartwarming moment from their career – do you have a touching moment you can share with us?
My career has been filled with heartwarming stories. It has been a blessing to help my clients on their journey toward self-fulfillment and relationships gratification. One story that resonates deeply is one that actually extends through my career. As a registered intern in the mental health field, jobs are very limited, where most of us end up in agency work as a default. Working in agencies are often very demanding, mentally, emotionally and physically – working long hours with high case loads and high expectations for performance and execution. Like many in my cohort, I ended up working in substance abuse treatment – a field that is not only run by insurance companies, but also entails supporting a population that is not always ready for positive change. The drug epidemic in this country is a very serious problem many do not understand, while working with people struggling with addiction can be overwhelmingly discouraging with the extreme high rate of relapse and death. In this field, it was imperative to find a silver lining. I had to convince myself that helping to save just ONE life was enough to instill meaningful change, knowing that this one life can continue to provide a positive ripple effect into the lives around them. Although there were clients that did not make it, there are also clients that are still clean and sober to this day. One of these incredible souls continued to keep in contact with me throughout the years, and it is her story that warms my heart every time I see her.
When I met her, she was in her early twenties and had been struggling with substance abuse for several years. She was very intelligent but was unable to pursue an education due to her drug use. Her parents were very loving, but she was unable to receive their love with the self-defeating thoughts her life experiences had produced. In response to limiting beliefs that had overtaken her, she also sought validation from sexual relationships. At the time, our work together entailed identifying destructive patterns and developing a positive sense of self-worth, where she learned to trust herself and her own voice instead of the voices of others. Although I left the agency as she was approaching her first year clean, she had attained a secure job and entered into a relationship with someone who she was able to maintain healthy dynamics with.
After a couple years of no contact, this client reached out to me sharing her progress: she was engaged to the same person she had met early in her recovery, she was a sponsor to several women in recovery, she rebuilt her relationship with her family, AND she had completed her degree at a local university. Her life had truly taken a positive turn and she thanked me for helping her build her foundation for a better future. Now 7 years clean and sober, she returned to me for some guidance and support after losing 200 pounds, needing help navigating her new body. In our most recent work together, she was able to make even more life-changing realizations about herself that has led to complete shifts in the way she thinks about her body, sex, and her intimate relationship with her partner, ultimately strengthening their bond. She is continuing to grow in her career and is set to be married in the coming months, and looks forward to growing their family in the future.
It has been an incredible honor to witness this growth and change.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Hi there! I am Rachel Smith, a Sex Therapist with a license in Marriage and Family Therapy.
There are a lot of assumptions around my work, so let’s just clear the air – Sex Therapy is in fact “talk therapy.” With a foundation in Marriage and Family Therapy, helping to improve and enhance relationships is the core of my work. We live our lives in relationships, and these relationships often shape the people we are. However, the most important relationship is the relationship we have with ourselves. With additional training in Sex Therapy, I help my clients develop a deeper connection with both themselves and their partners.
I pursued a specialty in Sex Therapy for several reasons, but the real driving force was the fact that so many people have such a difficult time talking about sex, which has led to misinformation and a lack of education around our sexual self. I just could not wrap my mind around the fact that sex was everywhere, yet when I started asking questions, I was shushed or given an answer that didn’t seem to make much sense. It seemed that the more sex was displayed in front of us, though movies, music and media, the more people were uncomfortable talking about it because our reality just does not “measure up” to the fantasy world that is presented to us. Then, the more we shy away from conversations around sex, the more insecure we tend to feel about our sexual self. It’s these stigmas that I aim to disrupt through my work, helping to provide education and support to help you connect with the essence of your sexual self and feeling embowered through the process, instead of getting caught in the lies that have been fed to us over the decades.
As an undergrad, I volunteered at a clinic for sexually abused children and later as a Master’s level student intern, I worked at an agency that supported the LGBTQ+ community. Through these experiences, I recognized the importance of giving voice to silenced populations and fervently helped them to rewrite their stories. This work solidified my pursuit of further education and certification in sex and sexuality, where I was able to learn how nuanced our sexual self truly is. Working in substance abuse treatment as a registered intern, I created my first program – Sexual Health Education and Exploration in Recovery (SHEER) – to help lift the vail of elusiveness that tends to take place within sexual relationships, which is still being facilitated at a few treatment centers in South Florida today.
In 2019, I decided to take a leap of faith and start my own private practice. Infinite Intimacy was founded to give myself more freedom in my work, where I actively empower committed couples, wholehearted women, and earnest men through a journey of love and healing to rekindle passion and satisfaction within their lives and relationships. I have an incredible passion for empowering my clients, helping them to dispel insecurities, anxieties, and other barriers around their sexual experiences. To expand accessibility to vital information around sex and sexuality, I have created comprehensive online intimacy courses and worksheets to help women and moms reconnect with the part of themselves that brings so much life and vibrancy. I also curate immersive experiences and retreats to help couples reinvigorate their relationship.
My goal is to help us reach a level of sexual liberation that has been denied to us through the continued suppression of factual and constructive conversations around sexuality. I believe we all deserve to live a life filled with pleasure and connection, and this is what I’m here to help you achieve.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
There was a point in time where I was ready to give up on my dream of having my own private practice, questioning my ability and willingness to do this work. As I mentioned, I worked in substance abuse treatment for a couple of years as a registered intern before becoming licensed, and this work just about broke me. The people that run these treatment centers do not always have the client’s or the staff’s best interest in mind. There were a few occasions where I was asked to unethically change my documentation in favor of receiving more money from insurance, which I did not have the heart to do. In addition to that, people in early recovery often continue behaviors that were elicited in active addiction, frequently engaging in lying, manipulating and taking as much as they can get. As a new therapist, who also has great empathy for humanity, I had a tough time separating myself from my client’s experiences. Through the stories that I heard, and being so willing and eager to help, I lost a sense of myself to the point where I didn’t even know myself at some points. I was experiencing vicarious trauma and subtly became a shell of the person I once was. There was so much death happening around the field with the rise of fentanyl, and one of those deaths happened to be one of my clients – a beautiful young women in her early twenties budding with potential, not able to see her worth. This was devastating and the straw that broke the camels back. I pushed myself to complete the required hours toward my license and left the field.
Due to the burnout I was experiencing over the course of this work, I didn’t even have the mental or emotional capacity to study for the state exam. Since I bartended my way through school, I figured going back to that would help give me the break I needed to refocus. I told myself I was going to bartend for 6 months to get back on track, but as life would have it, 6 months turned into 2 years and 6 months. This work was so much easier than dealing with mental health and I was having a lot of fun in the process, but after a couple of years, it became unfulfilling.
I began to reconnect with old schoolmates and colleagues to inch my way back into the world of mental health. I hired incredible business coaches to help me get clear on my vision and ideal client. I turned back to the books and research that fueled my passion in the beginning of my training, and I launched my business with courage and confidence knowing that I am now the director of my destiny. I have used my experience of burnout as a guide post, now knowing the signs and tools to ward against it. I learned of the importance of mindset and shifted my energy to a space of abundance to build a thriving private practice in less than a year.
Every time I step into my office I am reminded and feel so grateful for the fact that I am living my dream.
Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?
Mindset is everything! As a Sex Therapist I know how quickly we can pull ourselves into and out of any given moment through the power of our mind. In business, it is the same thing. We have to set our minds to the things that we want, the things that excite us and light us up, not dwell on the things that are going wrong or the things we do not have. I have grown to believe that everything that happens is happening for me, not to me – even the things that are perceived as negative is really an opportunity for growth and change.
Along with this, having a mindset of abundance is essential. There are so many incredible couples counselors and sex therapists in South Florida, but I do not view any of them as “competition”. I believe that there are more than enough clients to go around, especially because I know I may not be a good fit for everybody. One of my mentors helped me to understand, “If you try to serve everyone, you are going to serve no one.” With the clarity of the clients that I can best serve, I am more than happy to refer clients to other therapists who may be a better fit. This is also a helpful tool to prevent burnout.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.infiniteintimacytherapy.com
- Instagram: @InfiniteIntimacyTherapy
- Facebook: @infiniteintimacytherapy
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-smith-infinite-intimacy/
- Other: Course for Women: https://infiniteintimacytherapy.mykajabi.com/sensual-woman Course for Moms: https://infiniteintimacytherapy.mykajabi.com/sensual-mamas-sales-page
Image Credits
Grace Elliot @SayitGracefully