Realizing harm to one’s followers can trigger a leader’s deconversion.

Evidence

Canadian Jessica Schab was not a follower of a religious cult – she was the cult. … “For me, that was everything. It was my whole life! It was my livelihood! The amount of loss you have to endure in order to question is scary.” … The trigger for her transformation, which she calls “unbrainwashing,” eventually became confronting her own responsibility for her followers. During a conference in Spain, she was so irritated by the adoration she was receiving that she suddenly burped loudly as a spontaneous provocation. It was so inconceivable to bystanders that the crystal child could behave so rudely in public that they blamed her interpreter instead. … Only later in the course of her transformation over the coming years, critical conversations were able to help her find an identity for her to exist at all, independent of her faith. … Critical conversations contributed to this only at relatively late stages, after it had already become clear to her that change was inevitable. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 208

Categorization

• SEED: A profile/story angle: the moment the adoring audience refused to tolerate the guru’s humanity (a burp) as the crack in the self-cult narrative.