Whether unlimited PTO is a carrot or a stick depends entirely on the company.
My previous employer had unlimited PTO, and it was great. My team's manager lead by example, and would take arbitrary days off just to go do something fun, and would tell us about it. We could take time off, and I can't remember a single time when a request was denied. (Obviously, the whole team can't take off for weeks on end, and there must be someone on-call, but we mostly managed it well.)
But I've definitely heard of companies where in practice, unlimited PTO is just a way to avoid paying out that money yearly/when you leave, and where the company culture looks down on anyone taking any time off.
You mentioned it yourself - you don't feel safe to take time off. So either your company is one of the latter, or you're psyching yourself out.
-------
Generic advice for anyone interviewing with a company that offers unlimited PTO: ask everyone you interview how much time they've taken off in the past year - that'll be your barometer for how the company treats unlimited PTO and its employees.
My previous employer had unlimited PTO, and it was great. My team's manager lead by example, and would take arbitrary days off just to go do something fun, and would tell us about it. We could take time off, and I can't remember a single time when a request was denied. (Obviously, the whole team can't take off for weeks on end, and there must be someone on-call, but we mostly managed it well.)
But I've definitely heard of companies where in practice, unlimited PTO is just a way to avoid paying out that money yearly/when you leave, and where the company culture looks down on anyone taking any time off.
You mentioned it yourself - you don't feel safe to take time off. So either your company is one of the latter, or you're psyching yourself out.
-------
Generic advice for anyone interviewing with a company that offers unlimited PTO: ask everyone you interview how much time they've taken off in the past year - that'll be your barometer for how the company treats unlimited PTO and its employees.