Highlights - what happened?

I had a hair color disaster 3 years ago. I finally cut the last bit out last month and had totally virgin hair.

I went to get some highlights and I feel that she ruined my hair. Is this possible? I had naturally very dark brown hair, it is fine and breaks easily, but in pretty good shape and shiny.

She put in highlights only 1 or 2 shades lighter than my hair. I told her to do it in the most gentle way that I didn't want damage, so she said she would use dye for the highlights instead of a high lift tint.
(was that the best thing to do?)

Anyway, the highlights are so subtle that only I can see them. Nobody has even noticed. The highlights are not really visible, but my hair looks dull and limp and the ends are very dry. I don't like the texture either and it looks like the part around my face that was very fragile, is much more broken looking.

This is my question... since the color highlights is so close to my natural color, is it possible the the dye could have done this?    I assume that not much chemical was put on the hair if it only lightened a little so how come my hair has changed so much? Or is it due to the dye?

What can I do. Is there hope... I am very depressed.. I waited so long to have virgin hair and I think I just ruined it.

Any thoughts on what happened or what I can do?

THANKS SO MUCH.!

Hmm.. did you just get partial highlights ?