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I ranked 56th out of one million students on Türkiye's university entrance exam, earned a master's degree from Harvard as a Fulbright and TEV scholar, and completed my Ph.D. at Cambridge, with a year as a visiting PhD student at MIT. Then, with my final degree in hand, I was blindsided by an anxiety I could not explain.

It took me years to understand why. My happiness rested entirely on academic achievement because somewhere along the way, I had come to believe my family would love me only if I were successful at school. In school, the rules were clear: study hard, get the grade, earn approval. Professional life offered no such clarity. Even when I met my own standards, I couldn't be sure others agreed. What if I couldn't maintain my success? Would my family still love me? Would anyone?

I can trace how that belief formed. My family motivated me the way many loving parents do: with rewards and praise and, when those fell short, with subtle criticism. Each carried the same underlying message: "You are loved when you meet my expectations."

Years later, as a researcher, I kept returning to a question that was both scientific and personal: What if praise and rewards sometimes reveal something deeper than encouragement?

When Praise Becomes Controlling

A classic study by Richard Ryan and his colleagues (Ryan, Mims, and Koestner, 1983), co-founders of self-determination theory with the late Edward Deci (Ryan and Deci, 2000), asked university students to solve puzzles with hidden figures while receiving different kinds of praise.

One group received informational praise: "You did very well on that........

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