Book in Focus
Living Well with Cancer"/>

24th October 2022

Book in Focus
Living Well with Cancer

A Solution-Focused Approach

By Dr Dominic Bray



It’s one thing to be offered months or even years of life from clever cancer treatments. It’s quite another to benefit from them, however. 

As Socrates taught us, it is not life, but good life, that is to be chiefly valued, or as E. E. Cummings put it, ‘Unbeing dead isn’t being alive’.  

However, how may becoming ‘fully alive’ become a reality? 

The ultimate answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe and Everything as we know is 42. The ultimate answer to the question of Living Well with Cancer usually turns out to be grand-children or dogs. 

However, just as in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the really clever bit is how the answer is arrived at in the first place.

In particular, how can we professionals, who are involved as would-be helpful participants but not the ones working at living well, be helpful?

(While we’re at it, can we share our ideas in a book such as this in order for people who don’t get to see us to find their own way to their particular version of ‘grand-children and dogs’?)

This deliberately unstuffy tome, full of real-life examples and illustrations, has been written by a jobbing UK National Health Service clinical health psychologist with the specific purpose of reproducing the choreography of transformative conversations between health professional and patients (or service users, clients, recipients, or whatever the local terminology is). As such, it is accessible and useful both for any would-be helper, paid or not, and any patient or family member without access to one. 

In short, this is a ‘how-to’ book addressing the question ‘how to live well’, when it’s (frequently) far from obvious.

The bedrock of this book’s approach is solution-focused, which essentially asserts that the best results are generally achieved by inviting the recipient of help to focus on where they want to be rather than where they don’t, what they already know about getting there, and remembering that focusing on problems is frequently not only unnecessary, but counter-productive. In short, ‘if you don't know where the hole is, it’s a long day on the golf course’ (Hoyt) and ‘it’s very important to notice the doughnut and not just the hole’ (O'Hanlon). 

For the real enthusiast, the book also discusses the similarities and divergences with other models, specifically addressing the pitfalls of the currently dominant problem-focused, expert-driven approaches such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). It argues that ultimately ‘common sense’ wisdom, such as ‘He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has’ (Epictetus), is as true today as it has always been. 


Dr Dominic Bray is a consultant clinical psychologist who is very interested in developing consultations that help people with cancer and long-term conditions live what they would see as fulfilling and purposeful lives. These consultations may be his own in the form of psychological therapy, but, just as often, he spends time helping medical doctors, nurses and allied health professionals to develop their own. The backbone of his work is the person-centred solution-focused model which construes people as co-experts with professionals in working towards lives informed by what matters to them.


Living Well with Cancer: A Solution-Focused Approach is available now in Hardback at a 25% discount. Enter code PROMO25 at checkout to redeem.

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