The Distress Center Calgary and the Death of Dialogue
- Dick Gariepy
- 4 days ago
- 12 min read
I. Reasonable, Rational, and Still In Distress
I am a logical and reasonable person. And I am in distress.
This is supposed to be a contradiction. That’s the rule, isn’t it? The reasonable don’t suffer, not like that. The reasonable are measured, composed, self-governing. The reasonable are the people others listen to.
I have been told, time and again, that if I want to be heard—truly heard—I must remain calm. I must not shout. I must not accuse. I must not despair too vividly. I must present my pain in the language of policy, argument, and footnotes. I must render my suffering legible to the systems that are designed to ignore it.
So I did.
I composed myself. I brought facts. I brought legal precedent. I brought theory. I used words like epistemic injustice and deliberative exchange and moral obligation. I did not weep or plead. I did not ask to be rescued. I asked to be reasoned with.
And still—silence.
That’s the part no one prepares you for. You expect that if you follow the rules of engagement—if you’re rational, coherent, disciplined—someone will meet you there. That is the contract you are taught to believe in. That is the faith of the reasonable person: that truth, when clearly stated, will matter.
But the truth is not magnetic. The truth is not persuasive on its own. Not if the listener has already decided that they cannot, or will not, be moved. Not if the institution has rusted its ears shut with liability disclaimers and call scripts.
So here is the paradox I live in: I followed the rules. And I was still dismissed. Which means the rules are not what I was told they were.
And so I must ask:
If being reasonable is supposed to be the standard for being taken seriously—what does it mean when reason itself is refused?
II. What It Means to Be Reasonable
Being reasonable, contrary to popular assumption, is not the same as being compliant. It does not mean agreeable, or soft-spoken, or endlessly patient. It is not the art of swallowing your rage in a socially acceptable format.
No—reasonableness is a commitment. A discipline. A moral orientation toward truth, not convenience.
A reasonable person listens.
A reasonable person considers.
A reasonable person, when confronted with a better argument—coherent, evidence-based, logically sound—changes.
Not because they were pressured. Not because it’s trendy. But because truth, when it reveals itself, carries utility. It allows us to navigate the world more effectively. It brings our maps closer to the actual terrain. It helps us survive.
To be reasonable is to want to be right more than you want to win.
It is to welcome the feeling of being wrong—not because it’s pleasant, but because it means you have found a more accurate place to stand. And if that means undoing something you once believed, so be it.
The reasonable person is not afraid of revision.
But here’s the quiet violence: this posture, this good faith, this willingness to be persuaded—it only functions inside a reciprocal relationship. It only lives when there’s another person on the other end who is willing to play by the same rules.
And when there isn’t? When reason meets a wall instead of a mind? Then it becomes a weapon turned inward.
Because now I am not just suffering—I am suffering reasonably.
I am suffering coherently.
I am watching myself build articulate arguments in a vacuum and call it dialogue.
That’s what institutions do. They train you to believe in the value of being reasonable, then punish you for it by refusing to respond. And in doing so, they invert the rules: reason becomes not a path to recognition, but a trap. A performance of civility they can nod at while they look past you.
And I ask again: What happens to the reasonable person when reason is no longer part of the equation?
They are not met with engagement.
They are not met with contradiction.
They are met with the soundproof silence of institutional self-preservation.
It is not reason that determines what happens next.
It is power.
III. The Encounter With Distress Center Calgary: Reason Meets the Wall
I did not arrive in a whirlwind of panic.
I did not scream into the void.
I arrived composed, prepared, lucid.
I said: I am in distress. I am considering whether making my life shorter might be the most rational way to reduce my suffering.
I did not expect salvation.
I expected engagement.
What I received was script.
Lines written in advance.
Rehearsed.
Sanitized.
“Thank you for reaching out.”
“That must be hard.”
“Have you tried 211?”
Each response wrapped in the sterile gauze of pseudo-care. Language engineered to absorb liability but reflect no meaning.
I told them their words did not comfort me.
I told them why.
I explained how circular referrals and passive empathy deepened my sense of isolation—that being handed off, again and again, was not safety but abandonment by bureaucracy.
They thanked me for my insight.
I told them I was requesting an accommodation under the Alberta Human Rights Act—a recognized legal framework.
I said I needed deliberative engagement as a functional necessity for my PTSD.
I said their failure to respond to my reasoning was not merely ineffective, but harmful.
They asked if I wanted to talk about coping skills.
This was not a conversation. This was not care. This was a performance of helpfulness, designed to mimic concern while avoiding responsibility.
They could have said, “We hear you, and here is why we do what we do.”
They could have said, “You’re right—our model has limits, and here’s how we’re working on them.”
They could have said anything real.
Instead, they offered admiration for my articulation—as if eloquence were a substitute for action. As if naming the system’s failures were impressive rather than inconvenient.
I escalated. I wrote. I cited law, moral theory, case precedent. I built a structure of reason so clear it could be walked through room by room. I did not shout. I did not threaten. I reasoned.
They replied with silence, then another vague thank-you. They passed the letter to a “leadership team,” like a bad thought to be forgotten.
And that was the moment it became clear:
They had decided, long before the conversation began, not to change their minds.
They had chosen to remain unpersuadable.
The outcome was predetermined.
I was not a participant—I was an object to be acknowledged, then set aside.
I had entered the space of “support,” and found only the void that hums behind a locked door.
IV. The Epistemic Violence of Passive Empathy
There is a particular kind of cruelty that wears the mask of kindness.
It does not strike.
It does not shout.
It simply refuses to listen—while insisting that it has.
This is not a failure of tone or attitude.
This is a structural failure of recognition.
When someone speaks with clarity, reason, and intent—and the listener responds with a pre-written phrase, a gentle nod, a non-committal deflection—what has occurred is not empathy.
It is invalidation camouflaged as compassion.
It says: We heard your words, but not your meaning.
It says: Your argument is noted, but not engaged.
It says: We acknowledge your pain, but we will not respond to it in a way that might obligate us to act.
This is epistemic violence.
A term that sounds academic, but feels like erasure.
Because to be a person in distress, and also reasonable—articulate, specific, morally grounded—and then to be met with condescension or silence, is to be told:Your mind does not matter here.Your words are decorative.Your capacity for reason is irrelevant.
And this is what crisis services call “help.”
They validate your feelings. They admire your resilience. They offer you coping tools that presume your suffering is individual, not structural. And when you ask for something real—accountability, dialogue, change—they pivot.
They ask if you’d like to try breathing exercises.
This is not empathy.
It is containment.
Empathy would engage the argument.
Empathy would ask, “What do you mean when you say this service is harmful?”
Empathy would risk discomfort in the pursuit of truth.
But passive empathy—performative, inoffensive, institutionally trained—exists to pacify, not to understand.
Its purpose is not to solve anything. Its purpose is to make the sufferer more manageable.
And when the sufferer refuses to be managed—when they insist on being recognized as a reasoning, knowing, morally demanding subject—they are treated as unreasonable.
So let’s be clear about what’s happened here:
I presented arguments.They responded with scripts.
I cited law. They cited policy scope.
I invoked reason. They invoked tone.
And in doing so, they confirmed the one thing no crisis service should ever admit:
They were never here to listen.
Only to manage.
Only to absorb without consequence.
Only to perform concern while maintaining control.
And that is the violence of polite institutions.
They do not burn you.
They dissolve you—slowly, carefully, with a smile.
V. The Systemic Risk of Institutional Deafness
Distress Center Calgary is supposed to be the last door you knock on.
After the housing application is denied,
after the loan is revoked,
after the psychiatrist says “wait six months,”after the voicemail goes unreturned—you reach for the last rung on the ladder.
The one labeled help is available.
And if even that door doesn’t open?
Then what?
When a crisis line deflects your arguments, when it sidesteps your logic, when it pacifies instead of engages—it sends a message far more devastating than any outright rejection:
There is no one left to help.
Because you’re not just alone in your apartment or in your thoughts or in your suffering.
You’re alone in the space of reason.
You are banished from the sphere where discourse occurs.
Where truth is negotiated, where futures are imagined, where institutions supposedly exist to serve the public good.
And this isn’t just about one person not getting help.
This is about an entire architecture designed to absorb distress without changing itself.
211 refers you to the Distress Centre.
The Distress Centre refers you to 211.
If you ask why this loop exists, they thank you for your insight.
If you ask for accountability, they pass your letter to someone unnamed.
If you press again, they go silent.
This is not a glitch.
It is a design feature.
It allows everyone involved to feel like they’re doing something—while ensuring that no one is responsible for doing anything.
And for people who are marginalized—by disability, by poverty, by displacement, by trauma—this loop is more than just frustrating.
It is fatal.
Because the ability to be heard is not a luxury.
It is the precondition for action.
For dignity.
For survival.
And when institutions pretend to listen but refuse to engage, they do more than neglect those in need.
They teach us that need itself is the problem.
They teach us that asking too many questions, or making too much sense, or persisting too long—makes us the issue, not the system.
So what happens next?
We internalize it.
We say nothing.
We stop reaching out.
We begin to believe the silence was deserved.
This is not care.
It is containment by design.
And if left unchallenged, it will continue.
Because nothing incentivizes change in a system that has perfected the art of ignoring the people it fails.
VI. The Moral Failure of Refusing to Engage
There is no virtue in listening if it leads nowhere.
No moral high ground in acknowledgement that ends in silence.
No legitimacy in an institution that cannot answer a reasoned claim.
When someone says, “I am in distress, and your system made it worse,” a moral obligation is created.
Not because the speaker is special. Not because the harm is dramatic.
But because the claim is reasoned, and therefore it demands a reasoned response.
This is not just etiquette.
This is moral infrastructure.
You can agree. You can disagree. But you cannot pretend nothing was said.
To ignore a rational moral claim is not passive. It is an active refusal of recognition.
It says: You are not a moral equal.
It says: Your reasoning does not count.
It says: We are not bound to justify the impact of what we do.
And that is where the line is crossed.
You are no longer simply unhelpful.
You are complicit.
Because now the harm is known.
Now it has been named.
Now it has been described in detail, supported by precedent, logic, and moral theory.
And still—nothing.
Let’s not pretend that this silence is accidental. It is strategic.
To respond would require engagement.
Engagement might require change.
Change would disrupt the illusion of control.
So the system protects itself—not by force, but by evasion.
But evasion is not neutral.
As Peter Singer wrote:
if you can prevent suffering without sacrificing something of equal moral weight, and you choose not to, you are morally culpable.
The Distress Centre had the capacity to respond.
To engage.
To reflect.
They chose not to.
And by doing so, they exposed the lie beneath their mandate:
That “support” is conditional.
That “help” is bounded by bureaucracy.
That moral responsibility ends where institutional convenience begins.
This is not a failure of resources.
It is a failure of will.
Of courage. Of moral imagination.
Because when you are told that your testimony will be “passed on to leadership,” but never hear another word…
When your arguments are translated into “feelings” and then discarded…
When your evidence is met with boilerplate…
You have not been heard.
You have been managed.
And an institution that manages critique instead of engaging with it has abdicated its right to call itself caring, supportive, or just.
It has become a machine.
A machine that processes distress.
Neutralizes dissent.
And leaves you, the speaker, screaming into the gears.
VII. What Reasonable Institutions Must Do
If an institution claims to serve the public—especially the distressed, the disabled, the dispossessed—then it must be reasonable in the full moral sense of the word.
That does not mean polished.
That does not mean polite.
It means persuadable.
It means responsive to reason.
It means accountable to those it affects.
A reasonable institution listens—but it does more than listen.
It engages.
It reflects.
It revises.
If it is presented with a coherent, logically structured, evidence-based argument that its methods are ineffective—or worse, harmful—it must do one of two things:
Justify itself. Show, with equal clarity and rigour, why its current approach is still ethically defensible.
Change itself. Accept the limits exposed, and begin the process of transformation.
To do neither—to absorb critique with silence or deflection—is not “professionalism.” It is institutional narcissism.
So here is what must be done:
1. Engage Reasoned Testimony as a Moral Obligation
Not as feedback. Not as feelings. As moral speech—claims that assert real duties and demand real responses.
If a person in crisis offers a critique in the language of argument and logic, that is not an inconvenience.
It is a gift.
A chance to improve.
A map to your own blind spots.
Ignore it, and you declare yourself uninterested in growth—only control.
2. Train Staff for Deliberative Engagement, Not Scripted Containment
Volunteers and staff must be equipped not just with empathy, but with intellectual humility and dialogical skill. Support is not a monologue. It is a shared space where even the one in crisis may sometimes speak the truth.
If someone presents a moral contradiction, they must not be redirected. They must be reasoned with.
3. Build Structures That Can Hear, Respond, and Adapt
If you claim your service is for the public, the public must be able to shape it. Not through surveys. Through argument. Through critique. Through confrontation.
That means creating systems of responsive accountability:
Clear policies for how critiques are reviewed.
Transparent mechanisms for follow-up.
A mandate to justify practices, not just defend them.
4. Recognize That Disability Includes Epistemic Needs
It is not enough to offer access to a phone line. You must also offer access to meaning.
Some people, like me, do not process care through vague validation or passive empathy.
We need engagement, coherence, evidence of effort.
To deny that is to deny our right to a form of care that fits the way we think.
That is not accommodation. That is assimilation disguised as support.
5. Understand That Silence Is Not Safety—It Is Complicity
The next time an institution considers whether to respond to a critique, let them remember this:
Doing nothing is not neutral.
It is a choice.
A position.
An act of power.
Reasonable institutions do not fear dissent.
They do not fear being wrong.
They fear continuing to do harm once it’s been shown to them.
Or they should.
VIII. The Violence of Polite Silence
There is a kind of silence that does not soothe.
It doesn’t feel like calm. It doesn’t feel like space to breathe.
It feels like standing in front of someone who has already decided what you are,and will not let anything you say revise that image.
That is the silence I was met with.
Not the silence of listening.
The silence of decision already made.
The silence of a closed file.
I brought arguments.
They brought platitudes.
I brought philosophy, testimony, precedent.
They brought “we’re sorry you feel that way.”
I asked for a conversation.
They gave me a cul-de-sac.
And that, in the end, is what makes this not just ineffective, but violent.
Not in the cinematic sense. Not with noise or blood.
But in the Atwoodian sense—quiet, procedural, administrative violence.
The kind that happens in offices.
The kind that gets documented in vague memos, passed up to “leadership,” then shelved.
The kind that erases people with a smile and a policy binder.
Because when someone tells you they are suffering, and that your system made it worse—and you do not respond—you are not offering neutrality.
You are offering contempt in slow motion.
You do not get to claim moral authority while ignoring moral claims.
You do not get to say “we help” when help is indistinguishable from pacification.
You do not get to name your organization after distress, then treat distress as something to be moved along, tidied up, redirected.
I was not asking to be comforted.
I was asking to be reasoned with.
I was asking to matter—not emotionally, but epistemically.
To be treated as a person whose reasoning had weight. Whose words required a reply.
And when that reply never came, I understood:This was not about me. This was about preserving a system that cannot bear to look at its own contradictions.
So here is the final truth:
If institutions are not persuadable, they are not reasonable.
And if they are not reasonable, they have no business deciding what kind of care people like me receive.
They have no authority to claim they serve us.
Because we have already been excluded from the conversation they pretend is happening.
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