Hello Isabelle,

The first piece of advice I would give you would be – take a breath and calm down. You are clearly in a bad state at the moment because of what has happened and your anxiety is causing you not to think clearly. You need to put some time and distance between the events of yesterday and how you are currently feeling. This might seem like the end of the world now but believe me it isn’t. One day you will look back on this calmly and view it as just an incident in your life. You might even see the funny side in it.

Talk to your family about how you feel. It may be best for you to write down your feelings if you have difficulty expressing them verbally. Let your Mum know you want to find ways to make it up to her. You really need to talk to someone especially if you are seriously feeling suicidal.

It may be that you are getting into a cycle of obsessive thought about this. It would do you good to calm down and try not to think about this for an hour or two. You could try meditation or if that doesn’t work for you try doing something engaging like watching a film.

Secondly understand that your Mum will always love you no matter what. Yes you have disappointed her, but she also understands that young people make mistakes. I’m a parent too and no matter what my child does I will always love him, I have no doubts that your Mum feels the same.

If you haven’t done so already I think you should tell someone about the crude behaviour of the security guard. Just because you had committed a crime does not mean that you should be abused in that manner.

In the longer term, when you are feeling calm and able to look at this situation objectively you may want to ask yourself why you behaved in the way you did. You are clearly not the sort of person who enjoys this sort of behaviour so why did you do it? Did you give in to pressure your friends placed on you? You may want to sit with that for a while and work out why. It’s possible that you are a people pleaser and that you put other people’s needs and wishes in front of your own.

Remember that you are very very young and everyone makes mistakes. There are no bad people only negative actions.