You may recognize a former self in someone whose choices you now find difficult to watch.

Watching someone repeat what you did is uncomfortable in a specific way. The difficulty is not that their choices are strange but that they are familiar, and you know where the road goes because you have been down it. What looks like disapproval is often recognition with hindsight attached.

Before you intervene, notice that you did not take the warning either, and that what changed you was probably the experience rather than the advice. Say what happened to you once, without a conclusion, and then stay available. Presence afterwards is usually the useful part.