For years it worked. You were the reliable one, and people relied on you. Lately the same effort brings less. You are doing what you have always done and coming home resentful. A small request last week made you want to throw your phone. The things that used to recharge me don't do it anymore.
That is usually a change in the cost and not a change in you.
01
What it looks like
The strategy still runs. What comes back from it has thinned.
You help, and feel used. You stay composed, and feel alone. You work late, and the result leaves you flat. You keep the peace, and lie awake.
You may respond by doing it harder, since it always worked before.
Then there may be a snap: a sharp word, a door closed, a week of wanting to quit everything.
02
What it was protecting
A strategy lasts because it does something. Each rule's short-term payoff is real.
Under Needed, real gratitude does come back for being useful. Under Strong, people do rely on the steady one. Under Peace, the room does stay calm.
The fear under the rule has not changed either. Under Needed, it is that without your usefulness there is no reason for you. That fear may be why the strategy is hard to drop once it starts to cost more.
03
What it buys and what it costs, later on
Early on, the payoff can be large and the cost small.
Over time the cost can grow. Under Needed, resentment may arrive. Under Strong, it may be that nobody can reach you. Under Peace, the limit may arrive only at the far end, after the damage.
A strategy has stopped working when you would no longer choose it, and are still doing it.
04
How to tell what you are looking at
Tiredness alone does not say much. A hard season can make everything cost more, and so can being short on sleep. Neither is a rule.
What points further is the same resentment, or the same flatness, in more than one part of life, after the same kind of effort.
Which rule, if any, the strategy has been serving is a separate question, and the strategy can't answer it. Subtraction is how it gets asked. If the answer is not clear, there is not enough to tell yet, and that counts.
How to add up what a strategy takes is on How to Count the Cost of a Strategy.