BACKGROUND: Compassion is an important component of providing quality nursing care, and the literature on compassionate care in psychiatric nursing is limited. AIM: The aim of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore the experiences of psychiatric ward nurses regarding self-compassion, compassionate care and compassion fatigue. METHODS: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted by thematic analysis with an inductive approach of semi-structured interviews with 16 psychiatric nurses across psychiatric ward in a state hospital, Kirkuk, Iraq, selected through purposeful sampling between 15 October and 15 November 2023. RESULTS: The analysis of the data, two main themes emerged: 'freedom in difficulties' and 'togetherness of suffering'. These results indicate that psychiatric nurses need individual and organizational resources to provide compassionate care. CONCLUSION: It is thought that developing programmes to improve the self-compassionate care of psychiatric nurses by institution managers and policy makers may be effective in reducing compassion fatigue and providing compassionate care. In the future research, how religion affects psychiatric nurses' ability to provide compassionate care and the role of belief in coping with compassion fatigue experienced by psychiatric nurses needs to be investigated.