I am short with a somewhat femme figure, sparse but obvious facial hair, a flat chest, and a voice that sounds somewhere between a very gay man, a 13 year old boy, and an older woman. I am very visibly crossing many lines that people look for when trying to figure out how to address someone. Meaning, in a time when attacks on trans people and our rights are very quickly ramping up, I am in more danger of harassment and assault than I have been in the last few years.
As far as who is looking out for me: I am, that is part of my goal, but I also have a husband and a few friends who I can ask for help. However, I am in a slightly better position in life than most trans people in this country, since I live in a blue state that is (probably) unlikely to strip me of my rights. Hence my focus on helping others. There will probably be a lot of people coming here for medical treatment, and I want to make sure I help in any way I can.
As someone who has suffered from night terrors and other disturbingly vivid dreams, I would recommend starting to do “wake checks”.
Set an alarm on your phone to go off every few hours at random times during the day. When the alarm goes off, do something that produces a reliable result, like turning a light on/off, turning on a faucet, checking the time on a clock, or pinching yourself. Make your checks as varied as possible, and do them in a different order from day to day, because you don’t want the results to become part of a pattern.
Once you are in the habit of doing that, start doing those checks any time something ‘out of the norm’ happens. What ‘out of the norm’ means is up to you, but essentially any time you think that something is weird or out of place, do a check. What you are doing is training yourself to check whether you are in reality or not.
Once you start doing that, you will probably continue that habit when you end up in a dream. However, these checks will not produce reliable results when you do them in a dream. Turning on the faucet won’t make it give water, the time will change drastically, lights won’t turn on when you flip the switch, etc. These are now your cues to see if you are awake or not. If one of these things ever DOES start to give reliable results in a dream, stop using it immediately and substitute a different one.
Once you have a way of determining if you are awake or not, you have a way to wake up. Most people wake up after realizing they are in a dream, and even if you don’t, realizing you are dreaming should result in a massive shift in what is happening in the dream.
One warning though: if you have night terrors where you end up paralyzed, you will want to have a contingency plan. My night terrors usually started in a situation where I was unable to move, and that is the main reason I struggled with them for over a decade. The only thing that helped there was meditation where I would focus on “feeling” my fingers and toes and how they moved, and then getting myself in the habit of using that meditation as an anxiety response. Doing that in a dream will usually end up waking me up because it forces my brain to focus and eventually move my body irl.