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You need to understand both mentally and PHYSICALLY what your car is capable of. This means first of all putting a hot shoe in your car with data acquisition. They will be a lot faster. So now, mentally, you know what you are doing differently (by looking at the data). Now strap a passenger seat in your car and run a few laps shotgun. Now your brain no longer says "OK I know he goes through here 5mph faster but that's impossible" it says "oh no we're going to die, oh hey look he did it." Don't under-estimate the power of that. Your body and mind both need to be in sync. You can't force yourself to go fast it has to happen naturally. If you think you're going to die you are tense and cannot perform properly so you will not be able to go as fast as the relaxed guy.
And as far as the "scare yourself" part that's substituting bravado for brains/skill. That gets you hurt and in the wall. In all my years racing I have only been scared twice. You should never, ever take such a big bite into the unknown that the consequences are in the tires or crashing. When you are attempting to go faster in the turn it should be 1mph here, 3 feet later braking there. If you do that the consequence will be simply that you have to brake for longer, can't get to the gas early enough, you lose 1mph exit speed etc. You don't want to go flying off into the weeds just to prove that you can't go that fast into the corner. That doesn't teach anything other than how to crap your pants in a hurry.