I was warming up with some dinking and was reminded about the advice to "keep the paddle in front of you" and its corollary of "hitting the ball in front of you." That led to follow throughs and if you watch too many PB videos you'll stumble across the idea of letting the follow through from a dink bring your paddle back up to chest height. You are in a bit of a crouch, so this chest high stuff is actually closer to the ground. We might call it mid-torso, but the paddle needs to be a touch above the net and in front of you.
A dink isn't much of a hit, but it has to be a hit. And let the paddle climb after the hit. Why doesn't this happen automatically? I suspect in our fear of hitting the ball too high we stop the stroke and don't let it follow through. You don't get the follow through and you probably get more net errors too.
So it's the old song and dance of angst versus reality. (BTW, as an old German major it is pronounce ahhngst, in German it just means fear, it doesn't have the flavor of an irrational fear as when used in English.)
Turning off fear with an endeavor is pretty tough. You hit a ball that might go long and you freeze in angst rather than moving up to the net. Swallow the fear and keep going, nothing you do after the hit is going to change the outcome. Same with short shots, is it in the net? Yikes! Just follow it in, get the answer later.
With all of that in mind, I think the suppression of the follow through might be part of the fear. Your new job is to recognize the fear, accept it and do what's correct anyways. Having the paddle in the proper position will quickly return dividends, some effort here will be worth it.
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