How do you deal with control freaks?

You're 24, you've probably listened enough already to these people. But the first thing to remember in dealing with a control freak is not to become one yourself. Don't try to control a controller's controlling. You can't. You get out of their way. What often leads to frustration with controlling people is when we're in a relationship of some degree of dependency on them. We need them and that's what we resent, that dependency. Otherwise, their controlling wouldn't be an issue because we would have gotten out of their way a long time ago. I'm sure you love your mother, but you need to break free of that parental hold she obviously still has on you and become your own person and start working toward believing in yourself and your own ideas and your own philosophy of life, and that you have a right to choose your own life and live it the way you see fit. And let your cousin say what she wants. She can't control you without any real authority or power. And she doesn't have any over you. What she has is the authority you have invested in her. Her authority and therefore "control" over is you is solely the authority you have given her. She has no intrinsic authority over you. Neither does your mother, for that matter. You're 24. So stop given them that authority that you're feeling the weight of when they try to "control" you. Take that authority back and give it to yourself. It's yours. It belongs to you. But to do that you have to start believing in yourself and relying on yourself, in your own abilities and your own ideas and your own selfhood and the legitimacy of your own opinions, especially in regard to the conduct of your own life. You have every right to believe in that. Then you will be free of their controlling, which exists in your own mind and nowhere else. It's a power you've given them. Once you take that power back and return it to yourself where it belongs, then all their "controlling" reverts back into what it really is and was all along — just other people's opinions that you can listen to or not as you please and not be bothered by anymore than you would listening to someone talk on television, because you will have your opinions and at the end of the day those are the opinions that will rule in the conduct of your own life. But you have to decide to make them rule and decide that you are going to have confidence in the worthiness and value of the kind of life you want to live. You have every right to have that confidence — it's your life — but you have to believe that you have every right to it. Good luck.