A metronome can make some people feel uneasy. It will never get slower to make up for you taking too long to find the next note. It is always there, waiting. So some musicians turn it off the moment they are uncomfortable. And that is usually fine. If a metronome is being overused or used with too much music at a time, it is not doing anyone any good.
A metronome should be used like one check at a time at any given moment. Pick a short, two-bar section to begin. Read the notes, take note of rests, and clap out the rhythm. If the rhythms are already not making sense, you will not learn anything from a click that is always on. You should know the notes before using it as a metronome.
Start the metronome at a tempo that is slower than your target speed. This seems like the slowest pace possible. But, slower playing gives your eyes, fingers, breath, or voice more time to respond. Count the rhythm of the phrase out loud with the click as you start to play. If it is all quarter notes, just feel each beat. If the phrase includes half notes, feel those notes through their full values. If there are eighths, count the rhythms of the phrase aloud before trying them and play through them at such a pace that the smaller notes are not playing as soon as the eighth note rhythm starts.
After the phrase is ready and counted, play or sing just the measure in question or the short phrase you picked. When it ends, stop. It does not matter if it sounded fine or not, because you probably were moving into the next line without paying attention to what you were working on. At first, just ask one question, Did the beat stay even for this part? It is not a time to pay attention to the whole sound of the music, expression, posture, or note choices. At this point, the metronome is just to listen to the beat.
If the metronome is causing tension for you, go back one step from trying it with the notes. Just clap and count or tap and speak the rhythm names. Then just try the notes. Then try with the metronome but slower. This is not an avoidance of the metronome, but a way to make sure that you are not doing multiple things all at once. Rhythm, pitch, reading notes, and moving the notes are things we can do one by one.
There is no need to keep the metronome on throughout your entire practice period. A couple of focused checks of one small area can be more useful to your learning than ten minutes of chasing the click. Use it to measure one measure, one measure where you usually stop, one measure that you lose a rest in, or that measure that starts speeding up after the downbeat. As soon as you have determined that measure is in your mind and in your fingers, take the metronome off and try that same section while keeping that even pace in your mind or fingers.
At the end of your metronome-assisted playing, it should be a learning session, not an end-all session of perfection. Maybe it was a note in bar four that was not quite even or a half note that you cut short. Maybe you need to see the note before you play the measure. Use a pencil, write the mark you feel that you need. Slowly return to that point in your playing. And use the metronome if you think that it will help your rhythm in some way. It does not have to be there to punish you. It is there just to help you discover where the rhythm can improve for you.