Is it normal that mental health help chats are so useless?

It sounds like you had some really strong difficult emotions, and that you felt overwhelmed and scared or anxious.

Since I don't have much information I am guessing here: but it seems like you were hoping to find a way to make the emotions calm down or go away, and neither you nor the person in the chat was able to. 

Sometimes when we recieve advice it feels worse, because it basically reads as"you SHOULD be able to do this" (though this may not be the intention of the person giving advice). And then we feel even worse.

I remember once my GP told me "you know tobacco is dangerous right? you should quit". And I felt so angry because i heard it as the GP not thinking I knew this already. 

So, bearing this in mind I am conscious of the fact that I am at risk of becoming another person giving you advice that is not helpful, and you walking away from this feeling more disappointed, misunderstood, alone, or hopeless.

To be honest with you, I would need to know a lot more about your situation to even want to give any advice. 

But I will say one thing that i think is true in most situations: We humans can't control many things in life: what emotions we get, what thoughts pop into our heads, what challenges show up in our lives, or how other people react to us. This is a difficult and scary condition of living on this earth, that we all share. 

When we expect or try to control what we cannot: E.g. trying to NOT be anxious, or make another feeling go away, we are set up to fail. So in addition to the feeling itself, we get stressed about trying to "fix it", and feel like a failure when we can't. Therefore the most "helpful" or realistic way to deal with emotions is to:

1. Notice them
2. Accept that they are there, even though we dont want them
3. Be as patient and loving towards ourselves as we are able to
   1. f we are not able to be patient and loving, perhaps we can be accepting of that as well. Sometimes it's hard. 

Basically: It is not your job to try to "handle" or get rid of the anxiousness or emotions. 

I am also interested in that sentence you wrote: "I am not exactly sure what I hoped for from the chat, but I was very disappointed". Perhaps we could get curious about this: What do you think you wanted to hear? Was it to be heard and understood? Did you want advice or no? I dont know, but perhaps you'd like to look into what you wanted from other people in this moment, and then you might be more able to judge whether this is possible, and whether you can communicate this next time? Thus giving the other person a better chance to see you as you want to be seen. Still keeping in mind we are all flawed, and just doing our best. (Which sometimes is not very good at all)

All the best to you,