Anxiety feels similarly.
The most valuable thing I've gotten from the past several years of therapy is a better model for how humans actually process information. The simple model a lot of people have is:
1. Receive some stimulus, input, or experience.
2. Process and understand it.
3. Respond to that emotionally.
What we actually do is more like:
1. Receive some stimulus, input, or experience.
2. This data is way too ambiguous to make sense of on its own. So to turn it into coherent information, interpret it through the lens of a narrative about who we are and how we expect the world to work. This happens automatically and unconsciously.
3. React to that interpretation emotionally.
4. Watch logical rational brain then scramble around trying to come up with a coherent story that explains why we started feeling a certain way. The answer it comes up with may or may not agree with the unsconscious process that happened in step 2.
So much of therapy is "Why does X make me feel Y?" How do I fix X? The answer is almost always that X doesn't make you feel Y. X in the context of belief Z you have about yourself leads do you feeling Y. You fix Z by questioning the often toxic beliefs you hold about yourself. But it can take a lot of work and therapy to even be able to see Z, much less root it out and install a better narrative.