I feel this pretty acutely. But I’ve tried to change the way I approach it. When I randomly remember my cringe moments, and I start feeling like I’m going to be obsessing, I try to think about how I’d react if it was a friend of mine telling me about some stupid thing they did forever ago instead of me. That can be enough sometimes for me to stop and say (sometimes out loud, it helps) “That was forever ago and yeah, it was stupid, but you learned.” And it helps. I can’t always move past it, but it seems like it works more often than it doesn’t. If that makes sense.

Yeah, you did some stupid shit. But guess what! If you did it more than 7 years ago, biologically speaking you’re technically a whole-ass different person now. I don’t know if this will help anyone, but I hope it does.