I am not sure whether you expect appriciation for your hardwork from the clients or from your boss? If it is the former, it is not a realistic expectation as they won't acknowledge your hard work. Because they pay for this service, and it is their right to expect it from your company. Of course they will complain if there is any shortage in the quality of your service. However, you can very well expect appreciation and motivation from your boss. Who witness your hard work, who understands the pain and struggle you are going through to deliver this, and he knows how much you contribute to the success of the project he managers/is part of. So, it is important that he recognize your work, respect it, gives you flexibility and of course appreciate you. If he doesn't do that, then he must be clueless or not suitable to become a boss. Or else, there might be some personal issues. Find that out. Confronting directly can backfire too. So better involve some higher authority in this. Get everything in writting, be it orders, appreciation, criticism or whatever. I did that with my boss, and it helped. He used to always criticize me and make me feel guilt as if I haven't produced anything good for the salary I take home. Despite of my hard work, he always found faults and irritated me by micromanaging. He expected rather commanded me to work beyond and above my toR, and when I failed, he made me feel useless. So, I started to write everything. If he says, your work is not great verbally, I would respond to it by a mail quoting what he said, and what I felt about it and why I could not do much more than this. I would CC the other bosses. If he complain that I do not pick my phone during odd hrs, I would respond to it nicely saying how it is impossible to do that. At my work place it is not necessary to attend calls after office hrs - we are not IT. So, I somehow made the management aware of all his criticism and negative remarks about me, and how I felt after hearing them. In fact I never complained, but CC"ed then about our email conversations. This made him take precautions before blasting at me. In fact he was waiting for a huge mistake from my end to fire me. But he knows he can't fire me just like that, as the management knows it all. I tell you, this is not the right environment to work. So, find an alternate place immediately
I have been in a similar kind of situation earlier OP..I can feel your pain. The bad work situation affected my health, work life balance and family life. I had nervous breakdowns. Do look for a job change, or change to different team or work profile if possible