Episode 42: Trauma Bonds

What if the relationship that has hurt you the most is also the one you keep returning to — and what if that is not weakness, but something far more complex that finally deserves a name?

Welcome to Week 3 of the Detox Series. We spent last week cleaning up our digital lives. This week we go somewhere deeper. The Relationship Detox begins here — with one of the most misunderstood, most painful, and most common patterns in human connection.

In Episode 42 of Cut2TheChaseAt8, Madison Samone Chase opens the Relationship Detox week with a conversation that many people have needed for a long time. This episode is for anyone who has ever stayed in a relationship longer than they should have and could not explain why. Anyone who has ever felt more attached after conflict than before it. Anyone who has ever confused intensity with love - in a romantic partnership, a family system, a friendship, a workplace, or a faith community.

One truth anchors the heart of this episode:

“Trauma bonds are not a sign that you loved wrong. They are a sign that you survived the only way you knew how.” Madison S. Chase

Through three intentional keys and one reflective question, this episode offers a framework for understanding what trauma bonds actually are, why intelligent and self-aware people can’t simply think their way out of them, and where the real healing begins. The conversation holds space for every relationship context — romantic, family, friendship, faith, and workplace — because this pattern does not discriminate. And it approaches the science of how these bonds form with enough depth to validate your experience without losing you in clinical language.

This is not an episode that tells you what to do. It is an episode that gives you language for something you may have been living inside for years without a name for it. And sometimes the name is the beginning of everything.

Three keys. One question. Fifteen minutes. Come ready to be honest with yourself.

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Micro-Learning for Macro-Living

New SEASONS Launch the 15ht of EVERY MONTH

Each episode delivers 3 Keys and 1 Reflective Question to help you:

1. Approach life,

2. Micro - learning,

3. And decisions with wellness, clarity and intention.

🔗 Episodes, video, and transcripts:

https://linktr.ee/madisonchasefitness

Episode 41: Algorithm Addiction

What if you are not actually addicted to your phone - but to the feeling it was perfectly engineered to produce in you?

In this closing episode of Digital Detox week, Cut2TheChaseAt8 goes to the root of everything we have been unpacking all week — not the apps, not the screen time, not the content itself, but the intelligence underneath all of it: the algorithm. Madison Samone Chase brings the same honest, root-cause lens she has applied all season to name what most digital wellness conversations never quite reach - that the scroll is not the addiction, and that until you identify the specific emotional state the feed has been hired to manage for you, no amount of restriction will make the craving stop.

This episode speaks directly to two people who will hear themselves immediately. The high-performing woman who opens her feed and finds herself involuntarily measuring her life, her work, and her worth against someone else’s highlight reel — not because she is insecure, but because the algorithm identified comparison as her specific vulnerability and has been serving it to her on a loop ever since. And the people-pleaser whose feed has quietly become a substitute for their own inner voice — full of other people’s certainty, other people’s opinions, and other people’s definitions of who they should be — because the algorithm learned that prescriptive content keeps them coming back. Both of them have been shaped by a system that knows their psychological landscape better than most people in their lives do. And both of them deserve to know that.

One truth anchors the heart of this episode:

“The algorithm was built to exploit what it knows about you, not to serve your growth. Deciding to know yourself better than it does — that is the detox.”

This episode explores:

• Why algorithm addiction is never really about the content — it is about the emotional state the content produces — and why the variable reward schedule built into every major platform is the same psychological mechanism that makes gambling so difficult to stop

• How the algorithm has been studying your specific vulnerabilities — what makes you pause, react, linger, and come back — and what it means to decide that you are going to know yourself better than a system designed to monetize your weaknesses

• Why the most powerful digital detox strategy is not restriction but replacement — and how to identify the one real-life investment this week that meets the same emotional need the algorithm has been meeting, but actually builds you instead of borrowing from you

• A direct bridge into Week 3 of the Detox Series - the Relationship Detox - and why the clarity you built this week is the foundation for everything that comes next

As always, Cut2TheChaseAt8 delivers three intentional keys and one reflective question - designed to help you pause, reset, and carry the lesson with you long after listening. This is the closing episode of Digital Detox week. Come back tonight at 8PM CST for the first episode of the Relationship Detox.

New episodes drop twice daily at 8AM & 8PM CST -

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Cut2theChaseat8 | The 15 Minute Podcast | 2X Daily 8am & 8pm CST

Micro-Learning for Macro-Living

New SEASONS Launch the 15ht of EVERY MONTH

Each episode delivers 3 Keys and 1 Reflective Question to help you:

1. Approach life,

2. Micro - learning,

3. And decisions with wellness, clarity and intention.

🔗 Episodes, video, and transcripts:

https://linktr.ee/madisonchasefitness

Episode 40: The Apps That Are Costing You More Than You Know

What if the apps on your phone aren’t just stealing your time — they’re managing emotions you haven’t stopped to name?

We are in the final stretch of Digital Detox week, and Episode 40 of Cut2TheChaseAt8 goes somewhere most digital wellness conversations never reach - underneath the screen time numbers and into the real reason we keep reaching for our phones. This episode is not just for the social media user or the entrepreneur refreshing their analytics at midnight. It speaks to every person who has ever picked up their phone to avoid a feeling they couldn’t quite name - which, if we are being honest, is all of us.

Madison brings the same trauma-informed, root-cause lens she developed through eleven years of plant-based living and a background in pharmaceutical sales to a question that most wellness content skips over entirely: the apps we keep are not really about the apps. They are about the emotional states those apps were quietly hired to manage. The news app that feeds anxiety instead of resolving it. The mobile game that numbs restlessness instead of addressing it. The shopping app that creates a brief feeling of abundance in the middle of real financial pressure. The work app that a high-performing executive or retiree cannot stop checking because the nervous system never learned how to stop performing. Every app is a symptom. The detox starts when you get honest about what it is a symptom of.

One truth anchors the heart of this episode:

“Your phone doesn’t lie. What lives on it is a reflection of what has actually been winning the competition for your attention — and attention is where your life goes.”

This episode explores:

• Why every app you keep is actually a feeling you have been trying to manage — and why deleting apps without naming that feeling means the urge will simply migrate somewhere else

• How your phone’s screen time data functions as a spiritual inventory — an unedited, completely honest record of where your attention, emotional energy, and time have actually been going versus where you say your values are

• A simple three-question framework for becoming the intentional curator of your own digital life: does this app add to your life or extract from it, does it align with who you are genuinely becoming, and are you in control of the app or is the app in control of you

• Three specific, immediately actionable moves — one for today, one for this week, one for the season — that turn the digital detox from a restriction exercise into a values-driven curation practice

As always, Cut2TheChaseAt8 delivers three intentional keys and one reflective question designed to help you pause, reset, and carry the lesson with you long after listening. Fifteen minutes, twice a day, for macro living.

New episodes drop at 8AM & 8PM CST — a daily 15-minute micro-learning moment for macro living.

🤍 Join the Cut2TheChasers Circle (C3’s)

If this episode resonates and you feel called to grow with intention, accountability, and grace, consider becoming a Cut2The

Send a text

Support the show

Cut2theChaseat8 | The 15 Minute Podcast | 2X Daily 8am & 8pm CST

Micro-Learning for Macro-Living

New SEASONS Launch the 15ht of EVERY MONTH

Each episode delivers 3 Keys and 1 Reflective Question to help you:

1. Approach life,

2. Micro - learning,

3. And decisions with wellness, clarity and intention.

🔗 Episodes, video, and transcripts:

https://linktr.ee/madisonchasefitness