I've since developed more interest in dream interpretation, although I 'work' more on intuition and logic than actively researching or studying it. I was starting to test out "staying with the anxiety and fear" just a little bit, rather than getting into the fear-inducing situation and then running back to safety. This was parallel to what I was doing consciously in my approach to dealing with agoraphobia. It was loose, not in an enclosure, and although uncomfortable I stayed with it. The last time I had a big cat dream must have been many months ago now, and in it I stayed with the big cat. They shadowed me and were around corners, but we were getting to know each other and warily extending an olive branch of sorts. Looking over my shoulder all the time, the cats following, but as I was in control, so were the cats. I would stand still for as long as I could before turning and walking shakily, but slowly, away. I would calmly maintain eye contact sooner, instead of desperately trying to avoid it. But the more I faced up to my difficulties consciously, the more I challenged myself in my dreams not to be as frightened of the big cats. Interestingly, throughout my recovery journey, not only have the big cat dreams decreased in frequency, but a subtle and consistent shift in the way the dreams panned out developed. Even if consciously I believe all is going well, after the appearance of the big cats I always find something, no matter how minor, that I had tried to bury or ignore without acknowledging or addressing it.
If I'm avoiding something that is troubling me, the big cats will make an appearance as I sleep, and I then know I have issues to address. But the dreams are accurate indicators of the state of my mental health regardless of how conscious I am of anything I'm struggling with. Sure, they still frighten me, and I'm still not keen on big cats in real life. They are dreams as, in a most unusual way, they are a gift. Since this discovery, I rarely refer to them as nightmares.
I only made this connection a couple of years ago, and what a revelation it was! I figured it out myself, dream interpretation was never an interest of mine so I had never looked up what the dreams might mean, but through my counselling sessions I started to see correlations between my state of mind and these nightmares and the exact events in them, and suddenly it made sense.
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