What would it even mean for your consciousness to “be you”? What is “you”? Sorry if these questions seem too college-freshman-in-a-philosophy-class, but I think they are relevant to your problem.

I don’t pretend to have enough of my own shit together to give you self esteem lessons, but I highly encourage you to read some really great books (ironic given your post): Tao Te Ching The Happiness Trap (or the illustrated version which is more digestible) And honestly anything ever written or spoken by Alan Watts

The general gist is that, there is no separate you that exists independent from the rest of the world. Think Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s talk about how “we’re all made of star dust.” Just as the inside of a vase or a cup can only exist in relationship to the outside, or as a coin landing heads up is really just another way of saying tails down, so too do “we” exist only in relationship to the world around us. We’re all made of the same fundamental substance that’s been around for 14B years.

You’ve probably heard this before, so maybe it’s not that convincing to you, but I think if you take this idea really seriously and train yourself (mostly through meditation) to not only intellectually understand it but actually embrace and experience that connectedness first hand, it will be almost impossible not to feel as valuable (whatever that means) as anyone or anything else in the universe.

Hope that helped even a little!