I also found Bézier curve drawing more straightforward in CorelDRAW! than in Illustrator. I made the shift so long ago that I can’t remember the specifics, but

I also found Bézier curve drawing more straightforward in CorelDRAW! than in Illustrator. I made the shift so long ago that I can’t remember the specifics, but the main difference was that Corel let you more easily switch among the modes for a point: cusp vs. smooth, split handles vs. symmetric, move mode vs. draw mode, etc. There’s a learning curve you can get past that makes this difference go away, and it’s mainly down to grooving the modifier keys into finger memory. Once you stop consciously thinking “hold Command to switch from pen to white arrow mode” and such, you can work just as fast in Illustrator. Illustrator helps teach you the modifier keys by changing the cursor as you hold down the modifiers. So, the next time you get stuck, just press them down one at a time until you get a cursor that looks like it should do what you want and see if it helps.