I absolutely hate most things about me. I find it hard to believe that people genuinely like me. I have a chronic illness and pain but feel totally useless at times. Can anyone help?

I think you need me to tell you that you are important. 12 years of living and I haven’t come across anyone who wasn’t important or useless. Because all humans are brilliant and great. I’d suggest that if you want proof to feel helpful, then use this website to answer others questions and help anyone you can, trust me, it’ll feel much better. And if your not sure whether people like you or not, then ask them for 100% honesty and even say that you won’t get hurt no matter what the answer, even if you do. Then if they don’t like you, find other people who might do. There’s someone for everyone.

I understand how difficult it can be to love yourself. With chronic pain and illnesses, you can often feel like a burden to others and that they don't truly want to be around you, except for pity. The first step towards loving myself for me was recognizing where these beliefs about myself came from. Ask yourself: what makes me feel not loveable? What have people told me throughout my childhood that has shaped my belief of love and self confidence? Who is worthy of love and why? What is the basis of love? For me I used to think being beautiful made you worthy of love, now I realize just existing makes you worthy of love. Discovering you're worthy of love will help you realize you're worthy of good friends who like you, who love you. Compassionately observing these difficult thoughts and emotions helps too, and then working to find thoughts and emotions that better serve you. I hope this helps.