This paper explores how health care workers in both somatic and mental health care organizations deal with their emotional labour. Very little research is done in Sweden on emotional labour among health care workers and their emotional well-being. The point of departure is the emotion management perspective formulated by Hochschild (2003), and Bolton´s (2000; 2005) further development. They indicate that the individual worker is capable of using different emotional management strategies depending of contextual situations. Referring to Bolton we argue that the rules of ethics, as well as, personal motivation affect management strategies.The empirical material is based on two narrative interview studies, one with medical staff in somatic care, and the other with staff in psychiatry. The objective is to identify how the health care workers handle emotions and, especially, how they are doing containing or “harboring work” (Olsson 2006) in relation to different groups of patients. Is there a difference in the harboring work arising from diverse emotional weight of the work, i.e. is there a difference in the workers’ harboring emotions if the patient has a less serious or severe state of ill-health? Is there a noticeable difference in the professionals’ harboring work if the patient has more bodily oriented problems or mental ones?Our aim is to understand how the emotional attunement works both emotionally and intellectually in different work situations, as well as, the emotional work/strategies.