Ok im currently half way through my third year now and everything was going great until now. I was just finishing my final experiments and getting ready for full time writing when i found a paper published last September covering the work in one of my chapters. how can i cope with this now? can i still include the chapter in my thesis or do i have to get rid of the whole thing? i worked hard on the data too but this paper has covered everything that i was ready to present. Please help i need comfort

Did you do the experiments yourself BEFORE the other paper was published? If so, you might get away with a disclaimer to that effect.

As frustrating as it is, this is the way it works. Everyone is racing to publish their data first. It happened to me and it happened to my supervisor and it can be really frustrating.
The good news is that it doesn't stop you writing your thesis, what I would probalby do is to include their reference in your discussion as backing up the data that you have found- despite everything it is always nice to know you were right!
As for publications the option is to try find SOMETHING you have done that they didn't and use that as your angle to publish, so you show the same data but you might have looked at a very slightly different aspect of the work - I would examine their paper very closely and look for imperfections you can exploit.
If all that fails, it really isn't the end of the world - write your thesis and find a job with someone who publishes loads and learn from the experience.
Main thing is to get the thesis done

Thanks for the support. After having a week to calm down and reflect i can see where i can take things for this chapter. It just means a lot more work before i can start full time writing. im going to take a larger overview than the paper with looking at a few extra materials. Hopefully this will allow me to edge a paper out as well and continue on with getting the PhD done. I find that being a PhD student is a much slower form of research than postdoc. Where they can concentrate on the papers i have to fill out a full foundation to all my research.
Thanks anyway for the support this PhD has really been an emotional rollercoaster.