Is there an easier way to learn Present Perfect?

Hello there, English Experts!

I am an English student here. I have been studying English for a good number of years now, and there is one thing I've never managed to get right: this thing called the present perfect. I just see that terrible combination verb + participle and immediately I think: here we go again, I mean, it's so confusing! It's called present, but we use it to talk about the past! Who can understand that? My teacher has also told me that it's not any kind of past (sure, because then it would be too easy, right? lol). We should use it if we do not know when the action took place. And if that is not enough, there are those words you have to remember, because they always go together with the perfect tenses: yet, already, just, ever, never, lately, recently, since, for... To be honest, I haven't memorized then to use them yet. And whenever I think I'm getting the idea, something new comes up. Now it's this present perfect continuous thing. We've been studying it for the past couple of weeks and it's a hard one. What I've gotten so far is that it's got something to do with actions that are still in progress, but I'm not so sure, because there is one exception (there's always an exception... lol). Well, this is it. I hope I get some good advices to learn these things that I've never been able to learn because I do need to improve my grammar. My best wishes to all of you, English Experts, and thanks for those who help me!