The pitfalls of praise

[Turk]

Praise is one of area's where too much of a good thing can be bad, especially for me. It's only in recent years I've had a better understanding about how I process praise. I hate praise, mostly because I don't know what to do with it, or if it's been earned. My undiagnosed upbringing, certainly made praise an unhealthy alternative to productive support. There was no such thing as Aspergers when I was growing up, but my deficits were constantly covered up, by false praise. It was done in a manner to hide the the discomfort, around the possibility of my parents feeling insecure, around parenting. What it did to me created more issues than build confidence. It gave me a false perception of my abilities, and at times when I failed, rather than learn a valuable life lesson, I was offered up more praise. It created arrogance and denial, and it was the foundation of future failings.
To make matters worse, I almost did the same thing to my son, if not for a different reason. With his diagnosis it became evident that he had poor resilience to giving things a go. In steps dad, who offers false praise in an attempt to keep him moving forward. Small achievable goals, followed by mountains of praise saw him excel and achieve. I thought I was doing the right thing, then I noticed a familiar and disturbing trend. I saw arrogance, false self belief, and a projection that told the world he knew everything. It was an OMG moment that had both his childhood and mine, coming into alignment. Don't get me wrong, as this was essential in the early years, to keep him moving forward. But there was a cut off point that I missed, and failed to provide true parenting insight.
Things are different now, and he and I have both learnt humility, however I still have unhealthy behaviour around praise. When people offer it, it sets off all these triggers, that have me rejecting it. Rejecting it seems to bother some people, but false praise has caused so many issues for me, I can't afford to accept it at face value. I'm also concious of my want to make people feel good, which quite often takes on the shape of praise, whether they've earned it or not. It would seem I'm the victim and the perpetrator, rolled into one. Everyone deserves recognition for effort, but in the wrong hands, it can be a destructive tool.
I'm interested to hear whether others have issues with praise, and if so, how they come to terms with it.

 

[Effy]

A lot of praise makes me want to not do it anymore. I feel like people tend to praise others for well, everything, provided said things fit in with their expectations. If you meet their expectations, you're praised. If you don't meet others' expectations, you're not praised. I don't live to be praised, I live to make myself happy. I've not yet come to terms with it.

I've requested time and time again to not be praised, but then I'm told, "You're impossible to please, aren't you?" and so on. It's ridiculous; they don't understand the emotional mess it adds to me.

 

[wyverary]

When I was younger, I had no idea how to properly accept praise...I lapped it up!

Now, I have learned to be grateful, and humble, and thankful, and then think, "I really didn't deserve that praise!"

 

[DogwoodTree]

In my family, it's codependency at work. People give compliments to "make" you feel good, and then they feel better about themselves. It's never about giving accurate feedback, which is tons more useful.

My mom is so dependent on people being dependent on her so that she'll feel needed...she criticizes and cuts me down when I do something well on my own (can't have any independence going on here), and praises when I've done poorly on something (see, I'll make you feel better about yourself). I've gotten to the point where I have to completely ignore any feedback from her except what's absolutely necessary for work (I work for her...long story).

But since I also refuse to give gushy feedback to help keep everyone else's emotions boosted up, they treat me like the bad guy who's at fault whenever anything goes wrong since I've obviously "withdrawn my heart" from them and I'm just being mean...that all the problems stem from the fact I'm not "nice" enough.

These may be necessary defensive measures in my codependent family...but it bleeds over to healthy relationships, too. My pastors give me genuine compliments, and I get angry and can't accept the praise and push them away. My husband gives me a compliment, and I automatically assume he just wants to get me in bed...I can't hear what he's actually saying. (Granted, a lot of times that is actually what he's wanting...he has a hard time focusing on much of anything else about me.)

 

[Turk]

In my family, it's codependency at work. People give compliments to "make" you feel good, and then they feel better about themselves. It's never about giving accurate feedback, which is tons more useful.

My mom is so dependent on people being dependent on her so that she'll feel needed...she criticizes and cuts me down when I do something well on my own (can't have any independence going on here), and praises when I've done poorly on something (see, I'll make you feel better about yourself). I've gotten to the point where I have to completely ignore any feedback from her except what's absolutely necessary for work (I work for her...long story).

But since I also refuse to give gushy feedback to help keep everyone else's emotions boosted up, they treat me like the bad guy who's at fault whenever anything goes wrong since I've obviously "withdrawn my heart" from them and I'm just being mean...that all the problems stem from the fact I'm not "nice" enough.

These may be necessary defensive measures in my codependent family...but it bleeds over to healthy relationships, too. My pastors give me genuine compliments, and I get angry and can't accept the praise and push them away. My husband gives me a compliment, and I automatically assume he just wants to get me in bed...I can't hear what he's actually saying. (Granted, a lot of times that is actually what he's wanting...he has a hard time focusing on much of anything else about me.)

Hmmm sounds almost like Munchausen by proxy, which is awfully familiar.

 

[Daniel]

Rejecting it seems to bother some people, but false praise has caused so many issues for me, I can't afford to accept it at face value. I'm also conscious of my want to make people feel good, which quite often takes on the shape of praise, whether they've earned it or not.

I suffered from too much praise and an over-inflated sense of self. In my case, I only did things that came easy to me, and I avoided things where I wasn't comfortable. I cruised through high school, where I had already established friends, and I got to do activities that I liked (music and baseball). I was a good enough student that I was consistently told--"you can do anything you want, anything you set your mind to."

Then I went away to university, and then I tried to enter the workforce, and I ran smack into brick walls of failure. I had no idea I had such blind spots about myself, but I was hit with realization after realization that I was missing huge areas of life experience, especially around adult social skills. I got to a point where everything I had built myself up to be good at in my youth turned out to serve me no good whatsoever in the adult world. Those people who said I could do anything I set my mind to turned out to be totally wrong. And I had to swallow my pride and realize that there was much I couldn't do.

My self esteem took such a dive that I couldn't accept praise because I just felt like a phony most of the time. At the same time, it was as if the only validation I could get was by achieving things, accomplishing things, or doing things well, and I became dependent on that external validation.

Identifying myself as an Aspie has made much of this experience make sense to me. I'm finally starting to develop values of my own.

 

[Turk]

Wow Daniel, you story is so similar to mine, it had the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Very eerie. Thankyou for sharing that.

 

[Daniel]

Wow Daniel, you story is so similar to mine, it had the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Very eerie. Thankyou for sharing that.

Thank you for starting this thread! Times like this further convince me that my self-diagnosis was correct.

 

[Ste11aeres]

I must be the odd one here, praise has no effect on me. Actually, that's not true; when people praise me, I take it as confirmation of my weirdness, my not belonging to society. "You are so smart" is interpreted as your mind works differently than others. "You're pretty" reminds me of how my appearance and style of dressing is different than that of others in my age group, etc.

 

[Randomperson]

Opposite side of the spectrum here, constant beatings and demoralization and never a word of praise. So when someone does attempt to say a kind word or possibly praise, all I can think is "What does this ********* want from me?".

As far as self esteem goes, I have no idea what that is. I certainly hold no esteem for my self, nor anyone else for that matter.

 

[Peace]

I think you hit the nail right on the head for me Turk.

 

[Hidden]

I thought this was just me!!! Okay, that sounds arrogant, but I didn't know anyone else who felt like this.
I hate praise, too. It frustrates and annoys me, because what can I do with it? It doesn't help me - I know I'm doing something wrong somewhere, and I'd much rather be given constructive criticism. And when I KNOW what I'm doing isn't good enough then I get really annoyed.

 

[bentHnau]

I must be the odd one here, praise has no effect on me.

Same here, up until I figured out that other people wanted/needed praise for emotional reasons. After that, I became a bit disgusted with it, and I feel a tinge of that disgust sometimes (less and less often with time) when people praise me because I imagine that they are assuming that I am one of what I consider to be emotionally weak people (the people who get emotional rewards from praise).

Sometimes it's nice to be praised because it lets me know that the praiser enjoyed something that I did, and I'm happy about that enjoyment, but praise does not work directly on my emotions, and it certainly does little for me intellectually. It's quite useless.

"You are so smart" is interpreted as your mind works differently than others.

That's how I interpret that compliment as well! Well, not exactly; I interpret it as "I have no idea how you do what you do with your mind." I noticed that I only got smart comments from people who wouldn't have any idea how I did whatever seemed smart, rarely from, say, my university professors, and so I concluded that it was more representative of their ignorance than my "smartness."

 

[DogwoodTree]

Same here, up until I figured out that other people wanted/needed praise for emotional reasons. After that, I became a bit disgusted with it, and I feel a tinge of that disgust sometimes (less and less often with time) when people praise me because I imagine that they are assuming that I am one of what I consider to be emotionally weak people (the people who get emotional rewards from praise).

Yes, this.

I especially despise the compliment, "You're so sweet!" Basically, that's saying (in my mind) "There's really nothing special about you that stands out, but I have this back-up word I use for everyone because it simply says you're a nice enough person that I don't need to reject you outright." Or it says, "Wow, you're trying really hard to get me to like you with the things you're doing for me, but I'm going to throw this compliment at you and then...I'm going to stand over here."