A person’s ordinary limits deserve respect before they become an extraordinary crisis.

Limits announce themselves quietly at first: tiredness that no longer clears, a shortening temper, small things being dropped. Those signals are cheap to answer and easy to dismiss, since nothing is obviously wrong yet. What tends to get attention is the collapse, by which point the response required is far larger than rest would have been.

Take the early signs in yourself and in others as information rather than complaint. When someone says they are near their limit, believe them the first time. Adjust something small now, while a small adjustment is still enough to matter.