Hello. I'm new to this site and am looking for some help interpreting a really disturbing nightmare that I had last night.

Just to give a bit of back story: I am currently having to re-visit and address the situation of my parent's separation that happened 2.5 years ago. I'm now 24 and struggling to come to terms with it all as I've pretty much spent the last two years burying my head in the sand, working away from home and creating as many distractions as possible so i don't have to address the family issues.

Within the last 10 months I've moved closer to home for a new job and have been in a loving and stable relationship with a boy I've known for at least 7 years. My work life is good and I'm finally starting to feel like an independent young adult . I'm in the process of buying a car, the bf and I have opened a joint bank account and we're looking to move in together before the year is out.

I recently had to visit my grandma for her 80th birthday celebrations back at home. It's the first family occasion (bar xmas and birthdays) where my dad hasn't been present and I found it very difficult. So much so that I cried to my mum about it at the party which obviously made her very emotional and upset to.

The whole ordeal made me extremely distressed and I ended up having a nightmare last night that made me wake up crying, something that's never happened to me before and it really upset and confused my bf. The nightmare was this:

I was in an unfamiliar house with my brother. We were standing in the kitchen possibly chatting ( i can't remember the details too well) suddenly i was aware that there was a pizza in the microwave right next to me. There was also an unknown woman in the kitchen with us who told me that you need to take care when there's food in the microwave and that it could start a fire. Before I knew it I looked around and the microwave had indeed caught fire, I immediately panicked and noticed there was a fire blanket on the wall of the kitchen. I remember so vividly taking the fire blanket off the wall and taking it out of its container. It wasn't a blanket at all, more like oven mitt gloves that you use to take trays out of the oven with. I was struggling to figure out how to put them on and cover the fire with them so i handed the instructions to my brother and told him to read them to me. He replied and said that he couldn't because he was trying to calm down and that he couldn't deal with the situation right now. (I think i found this particularly upsetting because in reality my brother is extremely responsible and level headed - i know that if this had happened in real life he would've put the fire out instantly) Instead he stood silently while i panicked as the fire got bigger and bigger. I remember shouting up the stairs to my mum and saying "mum! there's a fire downstairs help!" i remember hearing her reply "I'm coming!" and then the kitchen was filling with more and more smoke, i could even feel how hot the fire was. My mum was coming downstairs and I kept shouting "MUM! MUM! MUM!" But she wasn't coming to help. I just remember so clearly thinking "this is how i'm going to die. This is how it ends" It felt so so real and it scared me so much that I woke myself up and burst into tears.

I've never had a nightmare like it and it has been affecting me all day since. My bf doesn't really understand why it's made me so upset but I've tried to explain to him that it was the emotions that distressed me the most and not the actual actions in the nightmare.

I must also point out that I do have a fear of dying and have done for as long as I can remember. I've had panic attacks about it numerous times, sometimes on my own and sometimes to my mum. I think that that could be relevant to the nightmare.

If anyone can help me dissect this further or even give me some advice on my family situation I would really appreciate it. It's getting to the point now where I don't want to burden any more of my friends/family because sometimes I think i sound like a broken record.

Thank you and I look forward to reading any responses this post generates