Prayer is communicating your love and trust and troubles to God and thanking him for all his blessings.
Prayer is supposed to help faith grow. What it does is make doubt simulate faith. It is this doubt that teams up with good feelings that brings the benefits not prayer and not faith.
It is interesting that people do not ask God to raise up their loved ones or to make an amputated limb grow back. They ask for guidance in looking for healing or they ask for a better way of looking at the problems. They say they believe in a God of miracles but do they really? If miracles are good why not ask? Even if they are rare why not ask? They are using prayer to try and soothe the pain in their hearts. They do not think it really has any supernatural power. Their prayers are not signs of faith at all. People with implausible beliefs tip-toe around things that can expose those beliefs for what they are!
The person who prays for a specific miracle is sure they will not get it. That is why they do not ask for it. So they ask for favours that come across as happy natural coincidences. For example, they want the cat to get better and suddenly and finally a medicine is found. Or the cat dies and they reason that they now see it was for the best. No wonder many people seeking help for themselves or another do not ask for anything precise at all. They make general requests. When people do not ask for anything concrete it is easier for them to imagine that their prayers are being answered. It is the same reason why fortune tellers do not forecast anything specific. The intention is to deceive.
Imposing restrictions is like, "I want John to survive this cancer. I ask that. I don't want a sudden ground-breaking cure to be found that he gets first. That is too far-fetched. I don't want his tumour to disappear. That is not going to happen. I want luck and his immune-system to keep him here and to help him." That is a prayer in reverse. "God don't miraculously or marvellously cure him. Use what is there to get a good result. I won't ask for a marvellous result. Just an okay one." Whatever this is, it is not faith but grasping for a placebo FOR YOURSELF and demeaning a mere good wish. It is only right to wish the best for him but you degrade that wish by turning it into something it is not, a prayer. It is as if saying hello to somebody means nothing to you unless you want it to trigger something magical and supernatural.
It seems that we impose restrictions on what we pray for in order to avoid discovering signs that prayer does not work or help or even help enough. For example, you may be bereaved and pray for a way to deal with it. In time you feel it is easier. You were going to feel better anyway but you tell yourself that it was prayer or God that helped.
We conclude that if you keep praying for more specific things and they do not happen you will soon see that prayer is based on self-deception. You already know it is but you don't want to remember that. So you pray for things that you think you will get anyway so that you can tell yourself your prayer did it.