Hmm - you know, what I think might not be a bad idea is loading up the "Combat (basic)" tutorial, getting to the part where it asks you to strafe around the enemy Enforcer, and then just spending a bit of time to see if you can't get comfortable with that, without the pressure of firing or being concerned about other enemies.
See if you can circle all the way around it while staying in weapons range, then see if you can manage to stay closer/further, then try putting some shots on it while you circle it, and so on. Just being comfortable with this sort of maneuvering is super important to doing well in combat with most ships.
One tricky part is getting the hang of what strafe left/right mean when you're facing down (still left/right, but it's relative to the ship); getting comfortable with that is also fairly important, but not *super* critical as you start most fights facing up.
Also: in data/config/settings.json, there's a "combatSpeedMult" setting. Setting it to something lower than 1 might be something to try to see if a slower pace feels more manageable.