My parents are very pessimistic and it effects my family?

I'm the third in a family of four brothers and no sisters and for as long as I can remember, my parents have always been so pessimistic and it's really effected us growing up. I do love them and they took great care of us and looked after us but their pessimism distances the family.

At the heart of the matter is that they're too involved. They have to have a say in everything we do and because of that they think they have to make our decisions for us but we can make our own decisions though when we do, they get complain that we don't listen to them.

My dad:

- Always downplays any achievement. If you tell him your lecturer personally commended you - he won't even sound pleased; he'll just say 'that's encouraging news'.

- Extremely over-protective e.g. he didn't want us to learn to swim because he was afraid we'd drown; never taught us to drive fearing we'd get into an accident; didn't teach me to shave fearing i'd cut and bleed to death.

- Blames us for things constantly.

- short-tempered. I'm afraid of talking to him.

- He'll either be too involved or not involved at all.

My mom:

- I really do love her.

- but sometimes, out of nowhere, she says the most pessimistic things! me and my brother will be joking with her and she'll be laughing and then all of a sudden she'll say 'when i'm old, you won't care about me' and then we wonder if we've done something wrong and we're horrible children.

- me and my brothers, we don't talk much because we have really different interests but we do get along, but my mom makes it seem that our family is dysfunctional but it's not that abnormal. she just makes us feel bad to be a part of it sometimes.

- she clings to faults that we made 1000s of years ago. I fooled around in my first driving lesson and since then she accuses me of not being serious about learning to drive.

- she focuses so much on the negative that she misses out on the positives about us so that when someone tells her nice things about us; she's surprised!

My parents focus so much on the negatives and they worry so much. I just want them to relax and have faith that it'll all be okay. If they gave us a bit of space and didn't pass judgement on every move - they'd find that's its not as gloomy as they think it is.