ESSA approach ILS 19R

I was coming into land on ESSA today for ILS 19R, but there is something that made me confused, and is always making me confused. The case when approaches feature a holding pattern. 

Here is the chart.



From the STAR you should be flying directly to the ARL VOR, then turn right to D5 - ARL, then join the clockwise holding pattern. But if you look closely you can see this can be extremely inconvenient. I was coming from the northwest to intercept ARL, so therefore you need to make a very tight right turn towards D5 - ARL, then a very tight left turn to join the holding pattern. For a change, I let the autopilot handle it completely. From D5 - ARL it started to fly parallel to the pattern on the right side of it. On the end, it made a right turn, then intercepted it properly, got stabilised, and did a full lap on it, then land. But what the autopilot did was quite wrong because flying on the right side of that pattern would places you right into the final approach path of 19L. 

So what's the correct thing to do here? Fly from ARL to D5 - ARL, left turn, then roughly follow the pattern, turn right to intercept the localizer. OR - fly from ARL to D5 - ARL, left turn to get onto the pattern, get stabilised, do a full lap and only then intercept the ILS. Is it even mandatory to use the holding pattern at all?