It’s not a problem of mental models. It’s that the UI is not good.
The Cmd-Tab to switch between apps is good because it’s Least Recently Used (LRU) ordered, and the there is a visual to show what you are choosing.
Once you’ve done Cmd-Tab to choose an app then you need to do Cmd-` to choose the document. But this is usually not LRU and not visual.
In Firefox I can configure LRU and visual tab switching, but not windows switching. And Finder or IntelliJ I can cycle through windows but not in LRU order.
I have a good mental model of my apps, windows, documents and tabs, but my mental model is LRU based, not cycle based.