I've never had sleep paralysis, thank goodness, that would freak me out even though I'd know what it is. I have had a few (and I mean, very few) nightmares about my therapist / therapy. I haven't discussed them with my therapist but I've thought about them and they did relate to what was happening in therapy as well as my own fears.

Anyway, in my experience, dreams often tend to have more levels. There's one level that may be related to the people or activities in the dream and the symbolism you attribute to them and how they relate to your current life situation, but if you look into it on a deeper level, it does tend to say something about yourself rather than those other people. In my opinion, dreams operate with a lot of symbols and metaphors, even when the dream seems rather straight-forward (I know my dreams seem like that sometimes).

In my case, nightmares with similar topics end when I understand them and change something in my real life. I remember before my college admission exam right after high school, I was extremely stressed and even fell sick and I used to have nightmares about water, flooding or me drowning in stormy seas / flooding pools. Right after I got admitted into college and my personal life also got better, I actually had a dream about waters receding peacefully and after that those dreams stopped.

Speaking of the different levels of dreams. When I went for a couple of sessions of Jungian dream analysis, I went in hoping to talk about dreams about a certain person in my life and help solve my issues with her. But true to her Jungian training, that therapist was more interested in my meanings and projections than in my relationship with that person, which was a little bothersome to me, but after those sessions my physical health improved (!!). I mean, it was so sudden and without any medication and after such a long time, that it couldn't have been a coincidence. So in my opinion it's definitely worthwhile to explore dreams on more levels, if you are open to that kind of thing.