I don't know what sort of abuse you suffered, but here is my perspective as someone who had a Japanese father and suffered what one might call emotional abuse for the first twelve years of my life, before my mother divorced him.

For a while, I thought like you that my father had not given me enough praise, that he was always critical and viewed me as a failure, and never hesitated to tell me so. I felt something was wrong with me, that I could never earn his approval. I bought into the anglo-american garbage about this being an unhealthy practice for children and leading to poor self-esteem.

Now at 24 I am grateful to my father. He gave me the gift of self-hatred. Yes, it is a gift. Only the best are worthy of self-esteem. If you are not the best, you are ordinary and unremarkable, a fate worse than death. That is what my father taught me. My father taught me strength, the strength that comes from never being satisfied with oneself, always seeing others, even the whole world, as an enemy and a competition to be defeated. His teachings gave me the power to surpass my peers. I am always at the top of every class I take and I have never failed to accomplish any endeavor I put my mind to. Who cares if I'm not happy? I am capable of excellence, a state of being far more meaningful and permanent than happiness and self-worth. Being happy with yourself is stagnation, and is the reason so many western children fall woefully behind their eastern peers in every possible area of human achievement except, perhaps, being fat as fuck and culturally unsophisticated. At the end of the day make your own way in life, but I felt compelled to offer a counter to everyone else here.