I've never made a game and I don't know what your game looks like, but I would consider two things:
-Add a shadow under your character that is always cast straight down so that it helps the player navigate their XY position, even if they are jumping
-Something that you can notice in Mario games is that the camera follows the player in the XY position, but doesn't move up and down much when jumping. I think this helps the player see where they are about to land.
It's not nightmare. It's called carcinisation and it's natural.