Scared to improve dream recall

I've always had lots of nightmares. My mum says I inherited it from her (she has a LOT of nightmares). When I was young I learned to forget dreams and I was fine otherwise I would be scared to sleep. I learned of LD and gave it a go. I've had a few in my life but never did too well remembering them. I often remember glimpses of scary dreams and I'm not sure if I want to remember them, but I would love to lucid dream. I realize I'm also missing out on some amazing non lucid dreams. What should I do?

Once you start Lucid dreaming, if you find yourself in a nightmare and become lucid, you just can go to whatever is scaring you and ask him what does he want, so you should try to have LDs.

You can't 'inherit' nightmares, dreams are based on your energy and emotions before you sleep. For example, if you go a bed happy your likely to have positive dreams. If you go to bed depressed, unhappy your going to have negative dreams. And another thing, your expecting to have nightmares, therefore your obviously going to have them. Tell yourself you will have positive dreams. Its all in the mind.

I don't know for a fact, but it seems likely it's possible to inherit maybe an overactive amygdala (organ in the brain responsible for primitive emotions like terror and aggression, that's activated during nightmares). Or possibly hearing a lot of stories from his (her?) mom in childhood could cause the OP to also have nightmares, thinking it's inevitable.

But I totally agree, having the right attitude and confidence is key to ending the nightmares.

@ the OP - most people who become natural LD'ers do it because of nightmares - the dreams are so scary they either learn towake themselves up or to understand that it's only a drem, and this often leads to lucidity and dream control of a high order. And that's for kids who know nothing about how the mind works or how to achieve lucidity!! Knowing what you now know about it (and so much more that you're going to learn from this site) you should be able to use any nightmares to become lucid, confront the nightmare creatures or frightening images and either ask them what they are or what they want, or embrace them with love, either of which causes nightmare creaturs to turn into allies and help yu rather than fight against you. In fact it's very beneficial to the subconscious mind - nightmares are usually caused by fighting with some part of your self, and the key is to accept and love that part instead, even though you're afraid of it. Like a predator it senses your fear or aggression and these will only spur it to attack harder - the answer is to accept and embrace it.

Hi Unicyclefan welcome to DV.
I would say that I agree with Darkmatters on this one. It does seem that we inherit some of our ancestors fears and phobias. I have seen some case studies of where kids have the same weird phobias as a parent or grandparent. It can even jump a generation or two before it manifests again.
I had a lot of fearful dreams etc and got most of my relief from them before I had even had my first Lucid. Normal dreams can be leveraged to get a good kick at the stuff that is bugging at you. If you can Lucid dream that seems like the obvious route to take, if not there are other options to try. PM me if you want some hints about what worked for me.
Cheers
LP