A few thoughts...
Just got off the phone with my bf. He actually suggested they might be my mind's way of giving me more storylines to work with for our screenplay. Funny that he and I both came to that conclusion.
What bothers me about having nightmares isn't the sense of helplessness or fear, it's the residue that I carry the rest of the day. I feel bad for what I've witnessed, just as if I'd watched a crime or actual murder. I wake up feeling... kind of dirty. When I have good, positive dreams, I wake up feeling inspired, and it carries through the whole day.
These nightmares are probably a combination of stress from work, home life, starting a new relationship (like Pyro mentioned), and concerns about private family issues I've been going through for the past year. Things are piling up, and my mind is sifting through everything rather laboriously.
"Wouldn't it be just
terrible if you wrote them down, sold the screenplay and it made a lot of money?" my bf said sarcastically. Coming from him, that was pretty funny. He knows how excited I get when I sell another story or article, so he knows it's possible that it could work.
You know what really does scare me? The awareness that I have this person inside of me who knows exactly what it's like to commit violent acts. During past life regression work over the years, I've seen a lot of things that had never occurred to me in this life. I know what I'm capable of.