This article analyzes the distress of social workers in conflict with the reality of work in shelters. The main categories discussed are: complete institution/ establishment, psychic torment and burnout. From the observation and workers´ reports, the research identified aspects of the everyday activities of social workers that produce suffering and how these professionals experience these moments of extreme mental and physical consumption. The above mentioned work questions the present sheltering model and points out its consequences on the lives of the sheltered subjects and professionals. In this process of affliction imposed to workers, it identified cases of professionals who still struggles against the public expression of their suffering, some in initial stages of psycopathological instabilities and others clearly ill. At the end, the research points out meaningful elements of structural and junctural nature, what enables a debate about the difficulties experienced in this working relationship and discusses the strategies to overlook the suffering undergone by social workers. Though taking a different approach, these considerations consequently focus on the quality of work and on the horizon enlargement of subjects´ citizenship.