I used to have massive, vivid, terrifying nightmares. From childhood until mid to late twenties. Started having less of them once I started working through stuff, and now generally only have anxiety dreams of varying strengths. Common, memorable elements of the nightmares included: sleep paralysis, sexual abuse scenarios, terrifying cult-like figures, running for my life, brain losing capacity for speech and voice getting caught up in something twisted, confusing I couldn't control, being pursued, something wanting to hurt, kill me, being covered in blood, crowd looking up, metal fragments embedded in skin, religious transcendence over the pain and violence, mind breaking apart, going insane, losing the thread of reality, heavy bodies on top of me and i can't fight or stop them, and so forth.