Yep, all that positive reinforcement only taught us not to trust praise. At least, that was my response. Praise just reinforced how I already felt about myself. If I felt I was doing well, praise felt like confirmation, and it felt great. If I didn't feel I had done something to deserve it, praise felt awful, like I had been called out as being especially pathetic.

My knee-jerk reaction to an unexpected compliment is still to feel humiliated and angry. I've learned to think twice and sometimes realize, yeah, I did handle that well, or yeah, this is a nice outfit, but I still have that instant of feeling attacked before I control my reaction.

I think that's a lesson to learn: you can't erase the difference between success and failure. If you try, you just end up confusing them. A kid who hears praise every time he fucks up learns to associate praise with failure and learns there's no way to deal with failure except to pretend it didn't happen.