Excellent advice and I like resources in the above posts. For me, I don’t have many nightmares and in recent ones, I have gone towards the shadows and embraced “the monster” which usually dissipates the negative energy. I describe one such nightmare here.
Recently, however, I reacted quite differently. I was riding in a train and it was a very small car. No seats were empty except one. Many seats seemed to be covered with dried dead bodies, animals and humans, and there was one person who was inviting me to sit. It was a man with his head cut off. He had scissors in his hand his head looked sorta like Gomez from the Adams family. He offered to cut off my head with his scissors. I thought about it, and thought about sitting down. I became lucid and realized what he was asking. Instead of getting my head cut off I woke up with a scream. Then, it was exhilarating! I realized that I should have let him cut off my head so I could see everything from 360 degrees. I felt sad that I didn’t complete the act.
A few days later I was in a dream and tried to catch a balloon. When I reached for it found myself on the floor with an agonizing thud and nearly had my head taken off, sustaining a broken collarbone and a sore neck! I believe I was trying to get back to the former dream in the latter one. I don’t believe the dream was trying to hurt me, just fulfill my intention!