Indeed they are, and I have only become how cognizant of how controlling they are after becoming fully aware of how relatively uncontrolling the parents of my friends are. They touted platitudes when I was a child about how they would "Be satisfied with anything you want to be, so long as you are happy." But of course, whenever I want to settle down for a while, or just take it easy for a few months with respect to job-related matters, they are clearly upset, guilt-trip me about supporting my living situation, push for me to be more and more ambitious, etc. I believed those platitudes from childhood because I was a kid, but it took years of seeing otherwise to finally see that they are, in fact, controlling.
They can be nice sometimes, and there are respects in which I am friends with my parents. I love my parents dearly, but it is obvious that they are too controlling. Thus, I am starting to scale back everything I confide in them about my private affairs. It's very sad, because they know a lot about such things (whereas I know relatively little because of my dependence, which I am now trying to slowly break) and are capable of some good counsel which has helped me in the past; but the counsel of people who may freak out at anything you say is too expensive. Therefore, I am ending that aspect of our relationship and will elect to start tackling things myself, even if it means making mistakes which could have been avoided with my parents' knowledge.
