4 signs you grew up with an overly critical parent, even if you feel successful

• Highly critical parents are obsessed with what they view as success.
• They can constantly nitpick their children's actions and promote perfectionism.

While some parents can barely acknowledge their child exists, the other extreme is a parent who constantly nitpicks everything their kid does.

Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson, a clinical psychologist who specializes in emotionally immature parents, told Business Insider that some highly critical parents are "very perfectionistic and feel better when they're able to achieve or accomplish things, often at the expense of their children's comfort or self-esteem."

According to Gibson, these parents may employ black-or-white thinking, seeing life as divided by victories and failures. Their children might achieve academic or financial success as adults, but it can come at a huge emotional cost. "They become very critical of themselves, there's that feeling that they're never good enough," she said.

Gibson shared some signs you grew up with an overly critical parent, even if you consider yourself a successful person.

You strive for perfection in order to feel worthy

If a parent's love always felt conditional, Gibson said it can translate to an adult child always striving because they feel they're only worth whatever they've accomplished lately.

"They really push themselves to become the kind of person that they think their parent can admire and therefore love," Gibson said.

In the long term, she said you can become relentlessly critical of yourself, fixating on mistakes and self-comparisons rather than feeling secure just being yourself.

You push yourself to burnout all the time

Beyond needing to be perfect, growing up in this environment can teach you "to keep pushing yourself all the time to become more and more of what you think other people will admire," Gibson said.

For example, you might keep hustling more and more at work — at the expense of your health and happiness. You're not thinking '''How can I make this job enjoyable? How can I set boundaries that will keep my energy good?'" Gibson said.

Instead, work becomes about being a people-pleaser and doing what other people expect of you, regardless of how you feel about it.

You don't pursue what you actually like — or even know what it is

Over time, Gibson said this internal perfectionism can "become kind of like a guiding life principle."

It becomes exhausting to keep up, she said, because you're pushing a persona. "That part of ourselves, that sort of that social presence that we put on, that part of us really doesn't have its own energy source," Gibson said. "It's like a mask. It doesn't have any depth to it."

Beyond upping your risk of burnout, it also makes it harder for you to pursue — or even know — what you actually find interesting or exciting, she said. You might be stuck in medical school or a law firm when you hate every moment of it, without ever considering a different career.

You do the opposite of what your parents want, but still feel lost

Sometimes, children of highly critical parents can end up rebelling against what their parents want for them.

"They may act out, refuse to even try," Gibson said. "They almost become the antipode to that driven parent, not being ambitious at all, not seeming to care about success or prestige."

While they can seem freer on the surface, Gibson said they can be just as emotionally trapped because "they're fighting against something to the point where they really are not having an opportunity to get to know themselves and what they really want." All they know is they don't want what their parents do.