Parental Praise and Finding Fault

What I have learned about what can happen when parental praise is both superlative and also accompanied by faultfinding:

The bar for being acceptable to the parent is set near perfection.

In your mind, your sense of being worthy of love becomes dependent upon having performed at a high level of what is expected.

If you believe the superlatives, there is a sense of being exceptional.   If you believe the fault-finding there is a real sense of distress at failing to live up to what is expected.   Believing both parts of the dichotomy creates a confused feeling of both pride, and also an enduring sense of dissatisfaction with self.

The combination of being regularly told that it is anticipated that you will be intrinsically amazing but also regularly being reminded that you have been in the past, and still are, annoyingly flawed reinforces the sense that you have failed.  It creates distress at the thought of having those flaws discovered and increases self-recrimination over them.

You become unwilling to express personal feelings that are less than perfect, believing that they will be dealt with judgmentally.

Praise from others ultimately becomes hollow and meaningless to you.

And appreciation, when received, though pleasant, and well meant, ultimately just triggers private dissatisfaction with self because of the past automatic coupling of both praise and fault-finding in the communication patterns that you heard so often as a child.