Literally no sense of direction... at all

I am the opposite but I think it has a lot to do with being brought up in care, Whenever I was taken to new children homes I would memorise the journey so I could get out of that door as soon as possible and have my bearings.

I still memorise journeys now.

Also I bloody hate it when google maps starts directions with 'walk east on xxx road'. Do I look like I know where east is?! I usually have to walk back and forth a few times before I know which direction I'm supposed to be walking. On London streets sometimes that's impossible as the app often gets confused and thinks you're on a different street.

Same here, 50 YO, no sense of direction or spatial awareness. Gave up on driving. Too unsafe.

Me too, rubbish sense of direction. I am good at map reading, good at landmarks, but really struggle with working out where to go - it's like a brain fog descends! I used to get terribly anxious going anywhere unfamiliar and having an iPhone and Satnav have helped me enormously.

I'm really competent in life generally but this aspect has me beaten.

Same for me, absolutely hopeless with directions. I always need to navigate using landmarks and buildings. Sometimes I look on google earth and kind of trace my route if I am going on a longer and more stressful journey to try and get significant landmarks in my mind and look at road layouts. I get lost in woods on walks and also in towns. It is an embarrassing problem to have and I have never got any better. I feel like that part of my brain is underdeveloped somehow, if there is a certain part of the brain in charge of navigation.

I'm exactly the same. I have no sense of right and left and the compass remains pretty much a mystery... Amongst other things, I could never be in AC-12 "...quick DS Becky, head northwest for 2 miles and then turn left at the junction to head them off..." would result in a moment of blind panic before I asked for a postcode for google maps...I don't really drive because I find it too stressful. It's my dark secret.

I have the same problem. It's strange there's so many of us, as you'd think it would have been bred out of the species. Back in the caveman days, we'd all have got lost in the wilderness and been eaten by sabre-toothed tigers surely!

I'm not like this but I feel like my sense of direction would be diminished by using sat nav. I like to be able to discern the route for myself.

I find that using a paper map then having a look at Google street view at key points (when you need to change roads, for example) for landmarks is really helpful. Not sure I'd be able to cope with driving to any unfamiliar place without this! Walking places is a different story though - it's so much easier to stop and get your bearings/examine the map.

I’m absolutely hopeless, in the car and on foot. I have a sense of panic when I have to travel around by myself.

If I’m in a large restaurant or at a big do and haven’t carefully checked where I’m sitting before I go to the loo, I can get lost on the way back. In large hotels I get completely lost, I generally come out of our room and head off in the wrong direction while my husband patiently waits for me to turn round. I really hate it.

I’m fine and perfectly competent in other areas of my life!

Me too. Have had a lot of embarrassing situations as a result - I dread anyone asking me for directions. I struggle a little with faces too.

DH thinks it's funny but occasionally is in disbelief at how bad it is to the point where he's convinced I'm making it up. I'm not!

Other people's attitudes are almost worse than the difficulty itself, for me — I have strategies and tools (mostly involving Google maps — and no, it's not learned dependency any more than wearing my glasses is learned dependency; before smartphones, I just wasted hours of my life and missed out on things by not getting there in time instead) to deal with my lack of ability in this area, but there's nothing I can do to force people to understand that it's a genuine difficulty that I have to adjust my life around.

I have a horrible sense of direction (have to look for landmarks coming out of a shop on a high street I have known for years) but cope because I have a good memory for routes and landmarks. Once I know an area I can usually link "known" routes to get between different places but it's constant work and a slight lapse in concentration tends to lead to needing to find a layby and dig out the map/satnav!

Somewhere like Milton Keynes is a total nightmare because it all looks the same with the grid system.

I'm good at reading a map but not if I'm the driver!

Another one here too. I have found my people! I have dozens of examples of getting lost even indoors - in hotels, getting lost inside offices whenever I start a new job etc.

The blue dot on the phone map is my saviour.

Landmarking does help massively though. When I park my car and head away from it I turn and try to memorise how it’s position will look when I’m returning to it. Taking a pic of the location in a car park helps.

I do find if I’m in an unfamiliar place alone and I make a huge effort to place myself in the location and carefully check the map it will sink in. Conversely if I’m with someone and distracted / chatting, the location skills totally fall apart.

I'm exactly the same. Academically clever, in a good job, can remember useless things from years ago. Yet if I go to the loo in a restaurant, 9 times out of 10 I will come out and turn the wrong way. I have no sense of direction whatsoever. If I approach a familiar roundabout from a different exit to normal it takes me ages to compute that it's the same roundabout. Totally reliant on my sat nav/Google maps and I don't envisage this changing tbh. It's terrible though, I genuinely get embarrassed at how awful I am with navigation. DH thinks it's funny but occasionally is in disbelief at how bad it is to the point where he's convinced I'm making it up. I'm not!

I am the same - am diagnosed dyspraxic.

Department stores are a nightmare, particularly if they don't have windows. I get looking at clothes or something then want to leave and I can't see any lifts/stairs/exits.

And I'd be rubbish as a member of the Famous Five going through those smugglers caves and tunnels. I'd die in there if it weren't for Timmy and my bits of string and chalk. Always made me anxious reading those.

I am the same OP, so is my Mum. I sometimes think people think I am joking as I just really have no idea of directions. If I go somewhere I never know the way back. Like others have said landmarks help. I also do 'trial runs' if I have to go to a new place so I can write down directions while DH drives.

I always swear by a trail of crumbs, although obviously today I'm in completely the wrong town looking in confusion at a huge pile of crumb drift from the wind.
Advice please, many thanks.

I'm the same. My sense of direction is dreadful and always has been. I can get lost in the town I grew up in! I didn't have sat nav when I first started driving so obviously couldn't rely on that.

When I used to make the long drive from uni to home (once a term), I used to write down the main road numbers/where they were heading to and stick it to my dashboard to help me

I also learnt some key landmarks e.g. turn left at the unusual house etc.

Once I have learnt the way somewhere, I can go that way only. Nothing worse than folk going 'oh but you could go xyz way' because that then disrupts my carefully stored instructions.

I am educated to post graduate level and hold a responsible job so it's not that I'm totally dense.
I am dyslexic though and I think that has a lot to do with it.

Are you me OP? I got lost in a shopping centre recently - took me ages to find my way out.

On a more serious note, I've never had a good sense of direction. I manage to get lost using google maps - any direction that starts "go north" leaves me in a muddle since I've no idea which way "North" is to start with. However much I rotate things it makes no sense. As for those hedge mazes I can't go in them - DP has to take the children as I get panic attacks just thinking about them - I got lost in one on a school trip when I was about 10 and got into so much trouble on top of being pretty paniced already :(

I'm dsypraxic and the general consensus is that its a symptom of that Its rubbish

Not just you. I also forget routes easily. After maternity leave I had to use my sat nav for a good few weeks to do a journey of 40mins that I had done for three years before having the baby.

Oh yes. I can't use Sat Nav though as it barks things at me like "turn left" and.....guess what? Did you mean the other left?

I went the wrong way in my driving test (he said turn left, I went right, or the other way round maybe) - but still passed as I did the wrong direction safely, apparently.

I do what others have already suggested and run through on Google streetview first. I find that really helpful. I also take a printed out map if I'm going somewhere new, so I can stop and refer to it if necessary.

If husband / children are navigating and I'm driving, they know to give me plenty of notice and actually point the direction rather than this vague "left" nonsense.

I have a hopeless sense of direction but I can manage as long as there are words on buildings etc to guide me. Out in nature with just trees etc, I completely panic.