There are two kind of control freaks. First of all, there are the people who are always writing lists and never seem to run out of milk or forget to take their camera on holiday. Occasionally they can be a bit irksome, for example when they want you to settle arrangements with them way before you wanted to start thinking about it, but they’re basically benign creatures who keep their control freakiness to themselves.

And then there’s the other kind. The ones who want to control your life in some way. They’re always telling you they know best, or expecting you to fit round them, or demanding that you behave in the way they would. These are the difficult ones. And when you don’t fall in with their wishes, they can become tricky, even bullying or emotionally blackmailing to get what they want.

So what’s behind their need to control you? Generally, control freaks are trying to compensate for a lack of control over their own lives. This might be something they feel now, or it might date back to an earlier time in their life when they felt out of control. Either way, they’re trying to put it right now by doing their best to maintain control of everything they can. Possibly including you – because only then do they feel safe. They don’t trust anyone else but themselves (perhaps from bitter experience) to make sure everything happens as they think it should. On some level they probably deserve your sympathy, but they won’t thank you for it and, in the end, you can’t solve their problems for them. Obviously.

I don’t know many control freaks of this second kind who would describe themselves as such. In their view, they’re right and you need to listen to them. They’re doing it for you. Sometimes they genuinely care about you and can’t bear the thought of you making a mistake and feeling powerless, so they’re trying to protect you from yourself. Of course, if they’re successful they’re still making you powerless, because they’ve taken your control away from you themselves. But don’t expect them to recognise that.

This kind of control freak is instinctively drawn to people who have low self-esteem, because such people are much more likely to accept the controller’s authority. And the key to coping with control freaks is not to try to be pushy or aggressive or controlling or defensive back, but simply to be assertive and not accept their demands. Just tell them that you appreciate their advice and now you’re going to make your own decision. Or let them know that you recognise your approach is different from theirs, but you don’t consider either to be better or worse. So you’ll carry on doing things your way, thank you.

The only person who can unmake a control freak is themselves. So there’s no point imagining you can stop them doing it, and battling them will just make you stressed. The worst scenario is if you find yourself in a relationship with a control freak. You will need to learn to be very assertive and, if you really struggle, it’s unlikely the relationship will survive unless your partner recognises how destructive their behaviour is – even when they truly believe they’re doing everything for the best.