How to avoid ailurophobia/other things during lucid state?

Moved from gathering to gen luc :moogle:

Hi fellow dreamers! this is Bhushan (read about me to get intro.)
I’m new here & this is my first post here…
I’ve been lucid dreaming since I was a child & as I grew I was able to reach the conscious state without much delay and I started to explore since then…many dreams to share but I’ll tell you the recent one…
Last Friday, I was dreaming & I came to pass a lane in my dream when I entered lucid state… I walked for some distance & the next lane there was a nice nostalgic brick walled ground-flat with some stares which I always loved & I was thinking about going in and have some romantic encounter or something exiting thing… but many times I try to place scenarios some of my disliked things or phobias also come to my mind on the other side & you know since you had a thought it just pops out of somewhere & ruins everything…I’ve ailurophobia (Fear of cats)
so, when I was entering the house I thought “What if there is a cat?” & what do you know, there was a cat sitting on the inner side of the stairs…
I tried to battle that cat with counter-thoughts and other thoughts that would emerge in other things & make the cat go… but it wasn’t leaving & I knew if I go in any intense expressions (fear, anger etc.) the dream would break… I was screaming at the cat & it changed my scene…beyond the wall now it was a messy railway station platform & because of that cat the dream was broken…

These kind of things have happen often… my question is how to avoid/conquer these? that’s so annoying… and you know how it feels when a dream breaks without reaching something… in the middle of the way…

thanks…

Well, if you fear of something then you are likeliy to think about it. And you probably know that in LD it is likely to materialize. One method is to ignore the manifestation - by focusing on something entirely else, not trying to change the manifestation. Whenever a cat (or something else) appears, turn away and focus on some one thing from your surroundings, like bench or car. Try then playing with this bench or car by changing its color or something. In time you’ll notice no cat is threating you.

The other method is to conquer the fear - simply, keep practising, one step a time. In next dream, try to create a small kitteh and play with it. If it attacks or bites you - ok, since you created by your conscious thinking, you can of course control it by changing its behaviour or transforming it into something else. Keep practising with different and bigger cats until you’ll conquer ailurophobia.

Hope it helps.