Has anybody on here got a terrible sense of direction? And does it embarrass you?

[Wisteriabloom]

Just wondering if I'm the only one, or if there are others too! Here are some examples -

If I get up from where we're sitting, in an airport, large restaurant etc to go to the loo/my turn to get the drinks etc, I have trouble finding my way back unless I literally make notes of landmarks - (ie, turn right by statue, past huge mirror, turn left by the bar etc). I now know to do this and it REALLY helps, after embarrassing experiences of panicking and being completely lost on the way back and whoever I'm with coming to look for me, incredulous that I couldn't remember the way!😳

Also, I'm not a driver and recently had some friends staying. We were going to a restaurant one evening, (it's one that dh & I have been to fairly often). But have walked or bussed there, as both non drivers.

This time our friends were driving and I was in the car trying to direct, (dh was meeting us there as had been somewhere else). There was a diversion in place and I just couldn't think of any other route to direct them, other than my 'normal route' that we now couldn't use! We got there eventually (a bit late!🤔) and I could tell my friends were a bit confused I was struggling to direct, as I'm a Local, and have lived here years!

I do have Dyspraxia btw, however i manage to hold down a responsible job, am talented in music & languages, and a great cook, but my navigation skills are embarrassingly close to zero!

Even at school I can remember it taking months before I confidently knew my way around (new secondary school) whereas my classmates, even the less academic ones had cracked it in the first week!

I can also struggle to recognise places if I'm travelling to them from another angle, ie, I can get from A to B easily, but to get from A to C I'd have to go via B, even though it takes twice as long!😳

As I've got older I've developed coping strategies, ie, noting landmarks and practising routes if I know I'll be expected to direct but it can be debilitating! Dh just can't understand it, I reckon he was born with an inbuilt SatNav! He deliberately walks behind me for amusement if we're staying in a hotel, as he knows it will easily be a couple of days before I can get from our room to Reception without making a wrong turn, so frustrating!! Just wondered if anybody else has this issue!

I'm another with no minds eye and no sense of direction. I LOVE google maps!! My job requires me to navigate around remote areas, one day they will find me wandering around in wee circles!

My mum is like this. She was never a confident driver and I think that’s a large part of the reason why.

Her sister can’t tell left from right - when I was staying with my aunt and doing all the driving, Aunty was directing me, but in the end I had to write R and L on her hands so she could direct me better.

Their mum, my grandma, was agoraphobic - she could get away with never leaving the place she lived and could blame being too busy etc - so I wonder if a poor sense of direction contributed to her anxiety.

Me! I have literally no sense of direction. Absolutely awful. I’ve largely embraced it, but I do find it embarrassing in work situations. I do everything in my power to not have to lead a group anywhere (especially driving) as it will always go wrong. I can read a map but generally only if turned the way I need to travel. I struggle to follow google maps when I’m driving. And I hate having to go to the loo in any office block that isn’t my work place. So so stressed that I won’t find the way back to the meeting room.

My dad is the same. I’m not dyslexic or anything, but I do think it’s genetic.

I’m very bad at faces though, particularly men. Give me a film with lots of men a similar age and I’m stuffed. War films become pointless. Or a work client meeting with lots of grey-haired men.

Yes, me 👋. My DH can't understand why I don't know the way back from places that I know the way to. Well that's because I can't visualise the way back as being the opposite. I have to learn it as a separate and completely new route. I struggle to visualise loads of things in my head, I'm face blind and my imagination is shit. I think all of these things are related.

I also have dyspraxia. My family joke that I'd get lost in a car park, which is true. I'm always getting turned around and get really anxious going to places I don't know. I hate giving directions with a passion and get so embarrassed. I don't drive either so I know exactly how you feel. My hubby finds it hilarious I will turn the wrong way leaving shops.

just a bit of my brain that is missing

That’s exactly what I tell people about this too.

I could have written your post OP. I have to consciously make a mental note of which way I’ve turned into somewhere so I can go out in the opposite direction. I do drive but am limited to places I know. I can use a Satnav but only in a set area as I don’t always understand where it wants me to go. I can only go by the voice directions as I can’t relate what I can see on the screen to where I am and what I need to do to follow a map.

I’m so glad you’ve started this thread because I haven’t come across anyone in RL who has this problem so severely.

I can do very basic maths - ie plus, minus, times and division but that’s it. I can’t do mental maths at all, give change, work out percentages or see patterns when it comes to numbers. I have dyspraxia and can’t tie shoelaces properly, can’t walk or park the car in a straight line and am always dropping, spilling and bumping into things. I can’t dance, follow instructions in an exercise class but I can ride a bike and play 3 musical instruments and I am really good at English - I taught myself to read before I started school and have a massive vocabulary (which I’m not quite sure how I acquired). I don’t feel my brain is wired up normally. It’s nice not to feel alone.

Yes to poor direction sense and yes to embarrassment. I can’t drive and can’t give people directions even close by if they are driving me. I always explain at the start of the journey.

Hopeless sense of direction & hopeless at map reading. I spend a lot of time getting lost.

It’s a running joke amongst those who know me. I was brought up in a town, moved 7 miles away to a small city and then eventually moved back to the town. I have to use my GPS on my phone to find places 5 mins away from work.

I was having my autism assessment and had to attend several times over a number of months. Every time I got completely lost!

My friend/colleague now will message me if I have gone out for a long time

Oh and it took me an hour and a half to find my
Polling place once - it was 5 mins from home

Yup - me too - I avoid department stores as I will end up in them for days unable to find the exit (like Father Ted!)
I always lose my car in car parks.
DH just has to look at a map or a street and know which way to go.

Me too. All of the above. I'm impressed so many of you can embrace it. It makes me feel so stupid and embarrassed when a friend is in the car with me and I have to ask them for the millionth time how to get back to my house. I used to break out in a cold sweat when starting a new job, trying to find my way back to my desk when each floor looked exactly the same.

I saw someone mention faces too, I'm the same, if I see someone out of context, in a different place to where I've seen them before, I panic as I'll have no idea who they are.

Interesting to see the ADHD references. I have a strong suspicion that I have inattentive ADHD, not formally diagnosed, but just from reading up about it. I wonder is it linked?

Yes me too! I thought I was the only person on earth who turns on satnav for local journeys that I have done 100s of times. I regularly get lost walking around my home town. I cannot ever find my way back to my car in a car park.

On the other hand I have a professional job and a masters degree. I am not stupid, but have no sense of direction /spatial awareness at all.

Totally found my people (or not as the case may be)

My sense of direction is very strong, but it is usually off by 90°. Not always in the same direction.

@ElizabethinherGermanGarden

My sense of direction is very strong, but it is usually off by 90°. Not always in the same direction.

Sorry shouldn’t laugh but

@RandomWordGenerator

I’m very bad at faces though, particularly men. Give me a film with lots of men a similar age and I’m stuffed. War films become pointless. Or a work client meeting with lots of grey-haired men.

Oh this is so me too.

Directions though, I'm spot on. My friends accuse me of having a sat nav embedded in my brain. I instinctively know which direction I'm driving. I feel North, South, East or West.

I instinctively know how to spell words. But I spent several episodes of downtown abbey not knowing which of Mary’s suitors they were talking about - I couldn’t tell the difference

Wow. I had no idea there were so many of us. I am forever going miles out of my way because I risked not using the sat nav for a journey I should know. I also get the faces thing. At work I often tell customers the wrong direction to another office by pointing to the wrong window on the other side entirely. My partner always asks me where I think the car is when we go for a walk on the Moors and is incredulous at my way off answer. If he left me there I would never find my way home.

I'm terrible at faces too. I have to have spoken to someone on a ge occassions before I recognise them.

I have a terrible sense of direction, always getting lost and forgetting which way I turned to get to places/getting myself mixed up. It's a pain but I'm not embarrassed by it, it's just the way it is. I have dyscalculia and pretty sure ADHD (but the atypical/used to be ADD presentation), although not diagnosed, and I really struggle with my left and right, too. To the point where I had to ask the examiner in my driving test to use hand signals rather than just saying left and right.

I'm not really embarrassed by it. It annoys me when people make a big deal about it - DH has an excellent sense of direction and used to do a lot of "How can you possibly not know where we are?! We've been here a hundred times!" but then I told him how irritating that is so he stopped. I think he realises now that it's not me being dizzy, it's a genuine issue that I can't do much about. I'm good at lots of other things, so just making sure I have a sat-nav with me at all times isn't too much of an issue.

What is weird is that I can always find my way anywhere on horseback and it's the only time I get that kind of innate "I know exactly where I am" feeling. I think it's a combination of being higher up and getting a better view of what's ahead of me/over the hedges than when I'm walking, but also moving at slower speeds and giving me more time to decide than driving.

Yes, I do. I work in a hospital which makes it dangerous when the emergency bleep goes off and I don't know where the ward is. I have to move hospitals nearly every year for training and I start all over again

I use a sat Nav for every single journey just in case I get to a junction and forget which way to turn. My parents scalded me for years because they said it was down to a lack of practise with maps which I just don't buy

I've also lost my car many times in car parks. I have to take photos on my phone if landmarks eg the area / floor and which set of stairs I'm using in the hope I'll recognise something and find my way back. It's very disabling

Hellooooo my people!!! Do you remember when in-car sat-nav first came out? Those giant, sticky bastards that sat on your windscreens and were soooo expensive? After seeing me burst into tears trying to read a map and my hands shaking with anxiety because I was lost and stressed, my DH (then fiancée) bought me one as a Christmas present. We didn’t have much money and I knew he must have scrimped for it at the time. We were about to move to a new, VERY busy city and I was worried about it, so it was such a generous and thoughtful gift! Now he makes jokes about me needing one in my own house. (We’ve been together 18yrs and have 3 kids and lived in many cities and all around the world - he’s used to me getting lost!) We also joke about getting a tracking chip like a dog, but given what some odd bods believe about vaccines, perhaps I shouldn’t have written that! 😉

I also have one of my fondest memories related to being lost. We were driving to a location about five minutes from my friend's house in two cars. I got to the roundabout and the sign pointed left, I thought it was right but followed the sign (well, you all know why!). I realised I had gone wrong and was lost but couldn't seem to find my way back even though I only needed to turn around. I phoned my friend and she talked me back to where I should have been. When I finally got there my two friends were laughing so hard one was crying, and it still makes us laugh! Lovely shared moment, and no need to be embarrassed as we are all diverse and have things we are good at!