I'll start by saying I've not been at this all that long either. I seem to find I'm confident almost to the point of not being careful enough, and pushing for ever closer results, and inevitably cutting myself occasionally, although like you, I can sometimes feel it coming and react. It's usually the unintended changes of "angle of approach" (as opposed to blade angle to the skin) that catch me out when placing the blade on the skin for the next stroke, rather than excessive pressure. I find a certain pressure is needed to get a flat wide sweep, so not necessarily "less is better" but never more than a bit more than the weight of the blade, it's better to have too little pressure than risk a real slice!!
One thing I find hard when talking about angles is knowing what people mean by "increasing the angle" as the datum isn't clear. As such, I think of it as "spine widths from the face", and my aim is usually to hold the razor about one spine width away. I find that in practice it's hard to maintain when you are concentrating on other aspects, but I also find that it's sometimes helpful to change angle, to more than one spine width but less than or equal to 2, especially under the jaw or round the chin. Not sure if that's increasing or decreasing, but those are the parameters/angles I find work for me thus far, and expressing it in spine widths seems intuitive and unambiguous, if that helps.
As for what's the orthodoxy I have no idea!