You’ll understand your old self better from a distance. Go easy on them until then.

The version of you from two years ago was working with pressures you have already forgotten. From here their choices look slow or obvious, but that is distance doing the work, not insight. The understanding will arrive and it tends to be gentler than the current verdict. Until then, the harshness is mostly inaccuracy.

When an old memory makes you cringe, add the context: how old you were, what was happening that month, what you did not know yet. It is not an excuse, just a complete sentence. You will want the same treatment from the version of you in five years.