I don't know if I would agree that they are awful but I take the point and the distinction. I certainly don't want to be around them or listening to them.
I can't bear the people pleasers who know they are mugs but keep doing it and stress those around them.....because that is MY experience of them.
They do too much for people, know they are a mug, resent it, but then helplessly claim 🤷🏻♀️I'm just a people pleaser.
Those that have familys often put mere acquaintances, before their own family, so in my view it is about ego and trying to look good in front of other people.
Like a nice mother at the school gates who gives out about her neighbour for imposing on her even though she smiles and says yes to taking her child for the third time that week....a child her son does NOT like, nor want coming home with them.
Or the woman whose friend is too busy on a saturday apparently, to ever do a match run with her child and insists on dropping her son to get a lift with her, so she never gets a break.
She bitches about her but never says a word.
Or the woman who does everything for her ungrateful parents and hates it, gives out about her siblings for doing nothing, leaves her partner to constantly pick up the slack on a daily basis with their children, and is "stunned" when he decides he wants to separate because he has had enough....
All people pleasers that I think are actually selfish in that they do what THEY want to do, and to hell with the collateral impact on those around them.
Spending money on a boyfriend when you have children and are a single parent on a budget is selfish IMO.
Good parents don't bring losers into their childrens lives.