A codependent person is essentially addicted to helping people in a way that drastically exceeds the normal care someone would exhibit towards another person. Codependency sufferers need to be needed and often exhibit such strong behaviours that they cause the person they want to help to become less self-sufficient. This is called enabling. An enabler often allows the codependent person to continue in their harmful behaviour by making excuses for them or just overlooking negative actions. Codependents can often become dangerous even to the people they claim to be helping, creating artificial situations and problems to ensure that they remain needed by that person in order to feed their own addiction.