Continuous struggles

The continuous tense causes me no end of confusion in day to day pt… formal I am OK…

We have all the technical grammatically correct stuff .. present continuous, past, perfect..subs blah blah… but its not a direct translation with English…

I am not primarily interested in writing… just day to day real informal conversation…some people and AI tell me present continuous with a concept of time is all you need… e.g. estou a trabalhar aqui ha tres dias… meaning I have been working here for 3 days… vs the technically correct tenho estado a trabalhar aqui ha tres dias…natives pls help…

but you hear ter andado blah blah…

But I hear the other forms being used…

Please help, what is best approach to learning this tricky tense…