My nightmares make no sense...

the Stuff Dreams are made of...
1

As many know, i used to have nightmares consistently before what seems about 6 months ago. At least once a week. My “nightmares” as i called them were always located between being fully asleep and being awake, and usually pertained to some form of entity.

It has been months since my last nightmare, but even back then, the nightmare made no sense, as it lacked this nightmare trait that i used to continuously have. I just had another “nightmare”, but the scene was nothing other than me trying to get sleep at my grandparents house, mixed in with someone I met having a birthday, and wanting some form of coin for their birthday.

My nightmares are only nightmare in feel, and are literally NOTHING but paranoia and an overcast of fear that isn’t even that strong with me in the dream world. But I am constantly finding it necessary to wake myself up, and dread falling asleep completely, despite there being absolutely nothing to be afraid of… My brain is simply frightened for no explained reason whatsoever, and it prevents me from sleeping… There is nothing in these “nightmares” that justifies any form of fear, yet they are somehow nightmares in my mind.

2

Maybe there is something that’s making your brain afraid, but you just can’t remember it being there after waking up? If your dream recall is good (which it probably is), I highly doubt that’s the case, but perhaps it’s something you can’t see at all? Like an incorporeal presence of some kind?

Another idea I have is that you’ve repressed something, so instead of remembering the events or circumstances themselves, you only remember the emotions they caused you to experience. Alternatively, if fear and paranoia are the object you’ve forgotten or suppressed, then they could be spilling over into your dreams because of that. I don’t profess to know anything about you — I’m just making wild guesses here — so I apologize if I’m being offensive or something.

Have you tried asking a DC about these nightmares?

3

That sounds pretty standard. Sometimes, in dreams, we “just know” that a dream character we’ve never met in waking life has been our friend for decades. In waking life I could be such a fan of soft-serve ice cream, but I can have a dream where I say that I’m lactose intolerant and declining based on that–which would make no sense because I’m neither lactose intolerant nor averse to ice cream.

Attributes get themselves stuck symbols, in ways that don’t make sense, and run a gamut between abstract (mood of despair or frustrated desire) and concrete (soft-serve ice cream always symbolizes to me how the joys of life are fleeting and melt away or something, which is fine when I feel like living in the moment but causes anxiety otherwise–for example), and aligned or misaligned (the dream process could be intertwined or removed/tangent/parallel to the dream emotional process.)

Perhaps this is an extension of that. In your nightmares, you “just know” that the person asking for a coin at the birthday party at your grandparents’ place or whatever is going on under some cloud of a Very Bad Thing.

4

EllyEve described it pretty well. Nightmares only cause fear because the dreamer is afraid, and afraid of what depends on the person.

There are also three different forms of fear, one of which, someone may be more afraid of than another. Some talk about “External fears” and “Internal fears”, et cetera, et cetera, but I’m going to talk about the fears linked to video games as they’re the most relate-able to this situation and dreams in general.

Creepy: The fear of something that is almost normal, but there’s just something not right about it. Like a teddy bear with human eyes instead of button eyes. It’s creepy as all hell.

Scary: The fear of something obviously horrific, otherworldly, and otherwise life threatening, and most of the time, it is in fact threatening your life. Like jumpscares, cthulhu, the cloverfield monster, and so on.

Dreadful: The fear that tells you, "if you continue, you’re going to die". It’s that gut-wrenching fight-or-flight sense that tells you to get the hell out of dodge, and sets your nerves on edge, but is not technically life threatening. A black door at the end of a blood-filled hallway is a good example.
This is considered one of the greatest forms of fear, and is generally the fear associated with phobias.

The reason for me saying all this, is that it sounds like you have a bad case of the “dreads”. No hair puns intended.
As to what this is aimed at, I can’t be sure, but then again I’m not the dreamer in this scenario. Learn what’s causing the dread, or deal with it as a feeling instead of an object. Realize there isn’t anything to dread in the immediate area, and cast aside the fear.
Remember, the only thing to fear, is fear itself.