difficulty in feeling empathy. In this way, experiences of criticism and resistance could feel like a state that could never be changed. Feelings of failing both as a human and a professional were admitted and could result in low involvement and even resignation. “Much of this job can be uphill. You get so much negative critic and criticism from the patients; it affects you over time. All the nagging makes you go from being engaged and empathetic to getting a bit of numb and cold in the end.” Nurses expressed difficulties staying dedicated and feeling compassion when facing negative comments and resistance during great periods of time. At some point, it seemed like they just had to convince both themselves and the patient, about the direction of the care. Feeling shame Nurses shared narratives about encountering patients that not directly awoke feelings of compassion; instead, they were perceived as intimidating or arduous. Nurses felt they had to care for them, feeling compassionate, despite the initial unpleasant emotions that occurred. A feeling that was experienced as difficult to handle and awoke a sense of L. Hammarström, et al. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing 34 (2020) 435–441 438 shame. “Of course, some patients you like more than others. Some can be quite intimidating or annoying, I've found myself struggling to feel for some of them. It's not something that you're proud of, rather the opposite.” Sometimes the nurses struggled with setting their own emotions aside and had to admit that they were not always proud of their own handling. One of the nurses was embarrassed that she was unable to handle emotions of not being compassionate. “Well, I must say, that it's hard sometimes to care for these patients. They have done terrible crimes and can be quite threatening. But at the same time, it's my job to take care of them, wanting that's best for them, and when I can't. It feels kind of strange, it doesn't feel professional, like something you don't want to talk about.” Discussion The present study focused on exploring and interpreting nurses' compassion when caring for patients with mental illness in forensic psychiatric inpatient care. This study presented one main theme: “being compassionate in forensic psychiatry - an emotional journey”, which was further broken down to three themes: “Interpreting the patients suffering”, “Response to patients suffering” and “Response to own suffering”, which was further described in six subthemes. The main theme gives insight into the emotional journey nurses went through when encountering patients with severe mental illness in a context that can be focused around control and coercion, over long periods of time. The nurse's narratives entailed that compassion is not static, but instead dynamic and changeable derived from the nurse's own ability to interpret and respond to the patients suffering. Letting the patient's expression make an impression and thus responding to their own suffering. Being compassionate seemed to be closely linked to the nurses' ability to cope, respond, and reflect upon patients who are forthcoming, withdrawn, or being erratic. Nurses were invited to share the patients suffering; this meant confronting their own feelings of not knowing or being unable to help, thus also risking acting in order to alleviate their own suffering and not only the patients suffering. Staying compassionate could be seen as a key component of being able to endure and making expressions of suffering understandable. The result contained narratives about encounters between nurses and patients, where the nurses are interpreting the patient's suffering, which actualizes that giving is in a dialectic relationship with receiving, caring seems to be a mutual dependency. Where nurses not only are giving and the patients are receiving, but also the other way around. As stated in the theme, patients' expressions of suffering are either perceived as a cry for help, patients fleeing or becoming unreliable. Being in an asymmetric, mutual ethically challenging relationship with the patients, also means challenges perceiving the other and maintaining professionalism when there is a risk of being rejected or not understanding (Hem & Heggen, 2004). Compassionate response towards the other starts with gathering attention and recalling intention, an internal process that allows compassion and reliance to emerge in the nursepatient encounter (Halifax, 2014). Encounters in forensic psychiatry invite the nurses to always be ready to shift focus being able to gain a deeper understanding of expressed suffering, which is gained from a hermeneutic conversation together with the patient (Rydenlund et al., 2019). Factors of understanding one's own profession and oneself illustrate how the confusion of nurses about their own roles and responsibilities must be made clear through self-reflection in order to improve psychiatric nursing (Hem & Heggen, 2004). Nurses' narratives also described the development of compassion and not being taken for granted. Being able to understand “the other” is based upon a mutual, sincere, and honest relationship. When facing ethically challenging encounters over long periods of time, personal chemistry and establishing a mutual ground to understand the other can just be too difficult, and facing aggressions can become a substantial problem (Moursel et al., 2018). Being in