I had a similar experience when i did a discovery flight in an R22,
I had lots of RC helicopter experience at the time, no real stick time tho. Second time in a heli. First was a Tour over the grand canyon.
The instructor took us up, showed me the coastal sites, then asked if i wanted to take the stick. Absolutely!
I did some figure 8s, orbited the airport while maintaining airspeed and alt. All of that was easy.
Then lets try some hovering.
We parked about 3-5ft over the landing pad, and she started handing me controls one by one.
Collective, then cyclic. There was a small miscommunication on the anti-torque however, as I never "took control" but my feet rested on them to try to feel what she was doing.
Turns out she wasn't doing anything, so we were doing pirouettes over the landing pad and i was maintaining the hover within the 10 foot 'H' circle, while spinning around. Not super fast out of control, but fast enough to do a 360 in 6-10 seconds.
She kept telling me I'm doing great and how impressed she was, I'm wondering why we are starting on hardmode, fighting for my life to keep the helicopter over this little circle as we are spinning around and around.
I know she was blowing smoke up my ass, but felt really good to hear that I did better than all of her students with 30+ hours of experience. And she couldn't believe this was my first flight.