Being a kind of vintage folk style I'd hoped to stay kind of organic as possible
It's one thing when you have band playing live, and everyone kinda "jogs" with the beat simultaneously, changing the feel, etc.
When you are recording individual tracks, one at a time....all you will end up with is sloppy timing if you don't have a reference to play against...so there's "organic" thing here, it's about timing.
Again...if you tap your foot...you're keeping time, same as a click would, and it's still possible to play a little ahead or behind the beat if you're going for a certain feel...but it's important that you have a reference if you plan to overdub additional tracks.
My preferred method is to lay down the drums and maybe a scratch rhythm guitar against a click track...and again, the drums can play "around" that click beat. There's no rule saying every hit has to be perfectly on the click beat.
Once the drum track is done...I turn off the click and play to the drums, tough in the past, I use always leave the click on, but then, I've been using one from my earliest recording days, so it's really a subconscious thing...I'm not focusing on the click ever, it's just there, in the background.
That's another thing...lower the volume of the click way down, so it's just audible, and not banging in your ears...and then I also like to pan it off to one side, so it's not there in the middle of my sound image when I'm tracking.
At the end of the day...any decent musician should be able to play with a click without issue, and it's just a matter of using it for awhile until you get use to it.
The more you avoid it, the more you will fear it.