Tanking For A Person With "tank Anxiety"?

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Hello! I'm a *relatively* new player, started maybe last summer, who just recently finished the Shadowbringers expac (and I've been avoiding basically all FFXIV media and online spaces to avoid spoilers lmao). I'm largely a DPS main (though I prefer supporting, but the FFXIV healers don't scratch my support itch), with a leaning towards BRD, DNC, and RDM. I finished ShB with DNC. However, despite enjoying DPS, I want to be more well-rounded, so I'm working on getting my preferred healer, SCH, to 80, but I also want to work on Tanking, which I'm absolutely terrified of.

I'm naturally a very anxious person (classic "grew up a 'gifted kid' and now has a crippling fear of failure and having people being disappointed in me"), and naturally, the "leading" role of being a tank is something I approached with trepidation. Back when I was on the free trial, I even made a second character and said "I'm only allowed to play tank on her," and got WAR, PLD, and DRK all up to 60, and enjoyed them a lot! I'd like to specifically emphasize, I DID have fun tanking, I think all the tanks have fun kits (I haven't played any GNB but it looks fun). But now that she's my main character, and I've since re-leveled most of my other jobs (with the aforementioned DPS being higher leveled than the tank jobs now), leveling my tanks through SB and ShB content scares the hell out of me. Even rolling Susano in trial queue or the post-HW dungeons in 50/60/70 queue would freak me out.

Do any experienced tanks, or people who share my anxiety, have any tips to overcome this? I know it won't come overnight, but I'd like to work from "If I mess up on tank I WILL cry" to "Eh, it's just another dungeon".

EDIT: I JUST posted this so idk if anyone has read this yet, but it might be worth clarifying, I know some of my anxiety comes from dying, and letting my teammates die. I know that is partly beyond my control, being at the whim of the healer, but that's also another point of anxiety for me, the dependency. My final big anxiety point would be like, not pulling in dungeons the way my party members want me to, and having them get pissed off at me. I tend to prefer medium pulls for survivability, but if a healer tells me to pull big I start spiraling lmao

EDIT 2: Thank you for the messages and encouragement thus far. I kinda feared this, but I also figured it was the correct answer, a large consensus seems to be "Just do it". As suggested I'll try to warm myself up with some of the squadron missions, and once I start running with real people I'll let them know I'm new to tanking some of the later dungeons/trials.

submitted by /u/Khirnera
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