This part workshop and part presentation acknowledges the crucial role of connection and alliance with people in extreme states to facilitate recovery, growth and wellbeing. Mental health nurses are a unique professional group in that they spend lengthy periods of time with people in extreme states across the lifespan, in varying contexts with mental health and psychosocial problems which may be framed as mental illness. In this workshop the importance of communicating with empathy as a therapeutic tool will be reinforced and highlighted as an essential element of recovery focused and trauma informed care. Participants will be invited to consider how to do this in a recovery focused way in whatever context they might work and with people in extreme states.