Controlling personalities refer to people who have a strong need to impose control over people and situations. This controlling tendency stems from underlying issues like insecurity, need for power, and desire for perfectionism. Controlling people can be found across all personality types, but some types are more prone to controlling behaviors than others.
What is a controlling personality?
A controlling personality tries to dictate and regulate other people’s behaviors, relationships, and decisions. Controllers have an excessive need to impose their will and agenda on others. This controlling tendency often stems from underlying issues like:
- Insecurity – Controlling people feel insecure about themselves or their relationships, so they try to manage external factors to create a sense of security.
- Need for power/authority – Controllers have a strong need to be in charge and wield power over others.
- Perfectionism – Perfectionists try to control situations and people to align them with their ideal standards.
- Trust issues – Due to lack of trust, controllers limit other people’s independence to prevent perceived harm.
- Rigid thinking – Controllers struggle with uncertainty and lack flexibility in thinking, so they limit situations that seem unpredictable.
Controllers exhibit various behaviors to impose control like being highly critical, setting rigid rules, monopolizing conversations, dictating others’ decisions, restricting access to resources, and using guilt trips or anger when challenged. The underlying motivation is to regulate people and situations to align with the controllers’ preferences.
What personality types tend to be controlling?
While any personality can develop controlling tendencies under certain circumstances, some types are more prone to control issues based on their natural motivations and tendencies:
Perfectionists
Perfectionists are prone to being controlling because their need for precision, order, and flawlessness compels them to tightly regulate situations and people. Perfectionists often havedifficulty delegating tasks or trusting others to meet their high standards.
Authoritarian personalities
Authoritarian personalities are controlling due to their preoccupation with status, power, rules, and social hierarchy. They seek to impose order through strict regulations and harsh discipline.
Obsessive compulsive personalities
OCD tendencies make people predisposed to controlling behaviors. Their need for control helps manage anxiety tied to uncertainty, perceived threats, and lack of order.
Narcissists
Narcissists control people and situations to protect their grandiose yet fragile self-image. Their sense of entitlement makes them feel justified in manipulating people for self-serving ends.
Codependents
Codependents try to control their partners and loved ones as a way feel needed and avoid abandonment. Their lack of boundaries also makes them prone to controlling dynamics.
Examples of controlling personality behaviors
Here are some common examples of controlling behaviors exhibited by people with controlling personality styles:
Micromanaging
Micromanagers dictate even minor details of how tasks should be done and struggle to delegate responsibilities. This controlling style undermines people’s sense of autonomy.
Possessiveness
Controllers frequently check up on, text, or call romantic partners or friends excessively to maintain control. They often limit social interactions with others.
Criticism
Controllers criticize loved ones’ behaviors, appearance, mannerisms etc. frequently. Criticism helps impose their standards on others.
Rule setting
Controllers impose long lists of rigid rules about how things must be done in relationships, families, or work settings. This desire for order limits flexibility.
Stoking guilt
Guilt tripping and shaming others when they don’t comply with the controllers’ demands help manipulate them into submission.
Rage
Controllers often flip into fits of disproportionate rage when challenged or when situations spin out of their control. This inspires fear and compliance in others.
Financial control
In relationships, controllers restrict access to financial resources, forbid spending, or make all financial decisions unilaterally to impose control.
Gaslighting
Controllers undermine others’ reality through distortions, misdirection, and false accusations. This makes people dependent on the controller for their version of reality.
Sabotage
Controllers may deliberately sabotage others’ goals, success, or relationships so they remain dependent on the controller.
Emotional abuse
Abusive controlling behaviors like name-calling, put downs, intimidation, isolation, threats help dominating and regulating victims’ self-esteem and choices.
What causes a controlling personality?
Controlling personality styles generally develop due to a confluence of biological temperament and adverse childhood experiences that shape personality. Potential causes include:
Childhood trauma
Experiencing neglect, abuse, excessive criticism, or authoritarian parenting as a child can predispose people to seeking control later in life.
Attachment issues
Insecure parental attachment makes children more prone to control issues due to lack of nurturance and support in tolerating life’s uncertainties.
Temperament
Innate, biologically-based personality traits like neuroticism or introversion contribute to control issues in some individuals.
Learned behaviors
Children who grow up under controlling parents or caregivers internalize and mirror these controlling behaviors in adulthood.
Underlying mental health issues
Clinical issues like OCD, PTSD, anxiety, paranoia, narcissism or borderline personality amplify tendencies toward control.
Cognitive distortions
Thought patterns that trigger mistrust, perfectionism, fears of losing control etc. reinforce controlling behaviors.
Relationship insecurity
Fear of abandonment or betrayal in romantic relationships leads some partners to become increasingly controlling of their significant other.
Signs of a controlling romantic partner
Romantic relationships offer fertile ground for controlling behaviors to emerge. Here are some signs your partner may have a controlling personality:
- Isolates you from friends and family
- Gets jealous about outside relationships
- Insists on knowing your whereabouts at all times
- Snoops on your devices, emails, accounts without consent
- Makes major unilateral decisions about the relationship
- Restricts your access to finances
- Gives you the silent treatment when upset
- Criticizes your appearance, intelligence, talents etc.
- Rages when you don’t obey or challenge their rules
- Pressures you sexually against your wishes
Impact of being in a relationship with a controller
Being intimately involved with a controlling partner can exert long-lasting detrimental effects, including:
- Diminished self-esteem and self-worth
- Depression and chronic anxiety
- Erosion of boundaries and sense of autonomy
- Habituation to criticism and abuse
- Isolation from social networks
- Codependency issues
- Loss of personal interests and identity
- Substance abuse problems
- PTSD and trauma after effects
The cumulative impact of prolonged controlling abuse is progressive erosion of the victim’s well-being, dignity, resources, and mental health.
How to deal with a controlling partner
If you suspect your partner has a controlling personality, here are some tips:
- Pay attention to any recurring controlling behaviors
- Trust your instincts – don’t rationalize red flags
- Don’t blame or change yourself in response
- Create a safety plan if you feel at risk of harm
- Set firm boundaries around what behaviors you will accept
- Call out and challenge controlling behaviors calmly
- Get support from friends, family, or domestic abuse helplines
- Consider consulting a mental health professional
- Leave the relationship if abusive behaviors escalate
You have a right to feel safe and respected in intimate relationships. Controlling behaviors erode self-worth over time, so it’s important to seek help at the first signs.
Helping a controlling friend
If you suspect a friend has a tendency to be controlling, here are some tips:
- Point out concrete examples of their controlling behaviors gently
- Suggest they seek counseling to understand the roots of this tendency
- Encourage self-reflection about how their behaviors affect others
- Offer perspective about how they come across to others
- Set your own boundaries about which behaviors you will tolerate
- Advise them on developing skills like compromise, empathy, and self-control
- Don’t enable their behaviors by always going along with their demands
- Let natural consequences of their behaviors happen
- Express caring and concern while reiterating your boundaries
Controllers often have limited self-insight about the impact of their behaviors. Kind, compassionate truth-telling can encourage change, as can therapy.
When to get professional help
Seek help from a mental health professional for yourself or your loved one if:
- Controlling behaviors are impacting quality of life
- Relationships are being damaged
- Self-esteem is diminished
- You feel depressed, anxious, or chronically upset
- Controlling behaviors cross over into emotional, verbal or physical abuse
- Controlling tendencies co-occur with other issues like OCD, anxiety, substance abuse, or personality disorders
- Self-insight or attempts to change have not helped
A psychologist can help develop coping tactics, get to the root of control issues through therapy, and prescribe medication if underlying conditions like anxiety, depression or OCD are present.
Therapies to stop controlling behaviors
These therapeutic approaches can help reduce controlling tendencies:
Psychodynamic therapy
Explores how early childhood experiences may have shaped controlling personality tendencies.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
Identifies and challenges cognitive distortions underlying control issues.
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)
Helps build distress tolerance skills and manage emotions without controlling others.
Schema therapy
Identifies and changes long-standing schemas and early maladaptive schemas leading to control.
Mindfulness based therapies
Build present moment awareness, self-regulation skills, and acceptance.
Interpersonal therapy
Enhances assertive communication and conflict resolution abilities in relationships.
Family systems therapy
Improves family dynamics that enable controlling behaviors of individual members.
Combining medication for underlying conditions with targeted therapies can help controllers develop coping mechanisms to manage their need for control constructively rather than through unhealthy behaviors.
Tips for managing your controlling tendencies
If you recognize you have controlling personality traits, here are some tips to manage them:
- Build self-awareness through journaling about your controlling behaviors
- Examine your motives behind wanting to control people and situations
- Develop distress tolerance and self-soothing skills to manage discomfort
- Challenge cognitive distortions like black and white thinking
- Learn to validate others’ perspectives
- Communicate needs constructively without demands
- Compromise instead of controlling outcomes
- Loosen rigid routines and rules
- Forgive mistakes in yourself and others
- Seek professional help to change engrained behaviors
With commitment to change and growth, controllers can relate to others in healthier ways, over time.
Conclusion
Controlling personality tendencies arise from insecurities and unhealthy thought patterns. While any personality type can struggle with control issues, perfectionists, authoritarians, narcissists and codependents are especially prone. Controlling behaviors erode relationships and emotional well-being over time. Self-insight, professional help, setting boundaries, and learning coping strategies can help mitigate controlling tendencies.