I use to have nightmares but I dream of people I know, people I’ve met recently, and not of pink monsters with tentacles or demons etc. I don;t know how to deal with such nightmares because the situations in the dream are very close to real life… that doesen’t mean my real life is a nightmare, hehehe, but they are like a common situation in my every-day-life and still freaky, with one or more strange details. Most of the time embarassing details. Can I get lucid in a nightmare like this which is very close to real life and tell myself - “now you’re dreaming, this couldn’t happen to you” ???
I had those kinda dream in the past. Usually I was hanging aroud with my family, and then some sort of evil twin of my mother or my dad just come into the room, then everybody turn to me a threatens me…
I use to get out of those nightmares by screaming as loud as I could. And for a second, I knew I was dreaming.
So yeah, you can take advantage of those dreams to get lucid, and maybe kick some asses then… 
Just tell yourself before you go to sleep that you will get lucid in this nightmare, do some RC once in a while, keep reading about LD, and you should be a lucid dreamer soon. 
Nightmares like this are really annoying, I want to manage them better and turn them into pleasant experiences. When I do something in my dream I wouldn’t do in real life, it’s really embarrassing to me. And I’ve dreamed about unplesant situations like sitting at a buss-station with many heavy suitcases, it is winter and very cold and I’m waitning ,it’s so horrible because it’s very vivid. Or sitting at a table and be forced to have conversations with people I don’t like… etc. Very common situations from real life, so to say. I promise myself I’ll put an end to it using LD 
It’s possible to use LD’ing in order to overcome nightmares. It has been tested with success by Pr Laberge and Pr Zadra. But as you say, in your case the difficulty will be to realize they are dreams, since situations are very close to real life.
I can see two solutions. Every time you experience an unpleasant situation IRL, you wonder if it’s a dream and perform a RC. And if you have otfen such nightmares, you practice autosuggestion when you go to bed, saying mentally: “next time i’ll have a nightmare, I’ll realize it’s a dream”.
Good luck!