There are diverse descriptions of supportive activities in nursing to be found in the literature. That which they have in common is their association with good care outcomes, but they may differ depending on the context in which the care is given. In a Swedish municipal elderly care setting registered nurses work in a consultative way and they describe a part of their tasks as being comprised of supportive activities without specifying what kind supportive activities they mean. The aim of the study was to explore the main concern of the support given by registered nurses to a group of patients in an elderly home care setting. The study was conducted using Grounded Theory (GT). Data was collected using non participant observations regarding the supportive activities of 12 registered nurses at the home of 36 patients between 80 and 102 years. The core category was about dealing with today's emotions. This was done by encouraging the situation and reducing patient's limitations, but situations also occurred in which there was a gap of support. Support was about capture the emotions that the patient expressed for the moment, but there were also situations in which registered nurses chose not to give support. In order to develop a holistic eldercare more knowledge is needed about the factors causing the registered nurses to choose not to provide support on some occasions. Copyright © 2012 N. Dauman & S. I. Erlandsson.