The solvents I itemised, alcohol, white spirits and lacquer (cellulose) thinners won't cause the problems you're worried about Gill. They also don't raise the grain, or raise it only imperceptibly requiring no more than a very light sand with something like 320 grit abrasive paper.
They can occasionally cause slight leaching of an original dye or stain if the carrying medium was the same as the solvent used, e.g., alcohol used to strip shellac over a spirit stain base. The colour can be adjusted after stripping if required, but it's seldom been a problem in my experience.
Dip'n'strippers use caustic soda based stuff and this can cause problems. It penetrates glue lines and joints, and the process raises the grain often very badly, often requiring sanding back hard to get a smooth surface ready for repolishing. The sanding back cuts through the original colour and patina revealing fresh wood. If the caustic soda isn't thoroughly washed away it can also cause the new polish to lift and other problems.
Methelyne chloride (I can never remember the proper spelling!) strippers shouldn't cause problems if used as per the instructions on the can.
I prefer Nitromors original in the yellow can if buying it from a DIY outlet. (Some of the other versions of Nitromors are neutralised with water which raises the grain.) One trick with this stuff if there's a lot of layers to remove is to daub it on and wrap the item in a plastic bag or sheet to prevent the stuff drying out. You can leave the item like this all day to let the stripper do its work making paint and polish removal quite easy.
Nitromors in the yellow can is neutralised with alcohol or white spirit, although I've also used lacquer thinners. I generally prefer white spirits because it evaporates slower. I buy generous amounts of white spirits-- it's cheap-- and spend a lot of time scrubbing out any traces of stripper from cracks and crevices where it might lodge with cloth, wire wool, nylon pads and stiff bristle brushes.
After stripping and any minor light sanding required a good first coat over the now bare wood is a dewaxed shellac to seal it. Shellac is very tolerant of less than perfect surfaces, and importantly dewaxed shellac can be used safely underneath any subsequent film forming polish, even water based stuff like quick drying water based varnish. And don't water based polishes need something underneath them to warm them up? I haven't yet found a water based polish/varnish that performs satisfactorily-- they all look either cold, dead, flat, milky, blue tinged or lifeless, and sometimes all those faults at once, ha, ha--- ha, ha, ha.
Regular shellac can be used under nitro-cellulose type polishes and under oil based varnish, but it always just seems easier to stick to dewaxed stuff. You can get dewaxed shellac in pale to darker colours if your sources are good, and I use a trade supplier so mine are.
Anyway, enough of this drivel. I've work to get on with and there should be enough information here for you to go on with.
You have been worrying, I wouldn't say, about nothing, but you don't need to if you follow some essential guidelines and precautions. Slainte.