Literally no sense of direction... at all

[Pippa12]

I’ve just had a complete melt down as my sat nav had technical difficulties and I couldn’t get it to work. I’ve done this 40 minute journey every week for 5 weeks now, but I cannot for the life of me get there and back without GPS.
I rung my husband in blind panic (again!) and although he’s calm and kind, he’s completely perplexed at my lack of directional skills and feels there is more to it.

I struggle with directions and remembering how to get to places everyday. I rely heavily on my Sat Nav for the shortest of journeys. If we are in a hotel for instance, it will take a good few days before I can confidently get to reception/pool or navigate round the resort. I am otherwise fairly clever and together person with a technical job in a managerial position with lots to organise and execute, but why oh why can’t I get from A to B without assistance.

Anybody else have similar experiences and any ideas how to improve this after 37 years of bloody embarrassment and torment!

[randomsabreuse]

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!

[FrankensteinIsTheMonster]

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.

[ItWorriesMeThisKindofThing]

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.

[Theluggage15]

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!

[whyhell0there]

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.

[corlan]

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!

[Beckidewinter]

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.

[FrankensteinIsTheMonster]

@corlan

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!

We were back at camp inventing arrowheads.

[clopper]

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.

[tomatoplantproject]

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.

[BananasAreEvil]

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

[0blio]

@NotOnMute

Are any of you really bad with remembering faces? I am, and I know a few other people who are both prosopagnosic and have real trouble with directions / routes. I’ve wondered if there’s a related bit of brain that just doesn’t quite work.

I can read a map, walk on a bearing, spot landmarks etc. Just can’t work out where I am without some sort of clue other than how I got there.

Interesting! I'm a bit face blind and I get lost even in shopping centres. My mum was the same.

[Luckyelephant1]

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.

[ZeroFuchsGiven]

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.

[the80sweregreat]

Been lost so many times it's embarrassing.
I feel your pain, but it's also good to know I'm not the only one who hasn't any sense of bloody direction at all! I've had the Micky taken out of me all my life about how lost I have been.
It is humiliating when others can go somewhere once and remember it.

[AlfonsoTheTerrible]

@Changerazelea

Topographical disorientation disorder! My husband has it. Really feel for him.

Thank you! I've just looked this up on Wikipedia: I have Developmental topographical disorientation.

I can't use landmarks because I don't recognise them from a different perspective / angle. It's like I see things for the first time.

I am so grateful to know that I am not alone in this.

[WhatsErFace2020]

I could cry reading some of your posts - it’s exactly how I feel! I’ve always struggled with my L and R (embarrassingly so and it’s the reason I’ve never learnt to drive)

I also am in a senior management role and do well in every other aspect of life EXCEPT if you were to ask me how to get to a nearby town from her that I’ve been to thousands of time I could tell you the start of the journey and see the end of it but the middle part is just black for me 🤷🏼‍♀️

After years of my DH (the human satnav) taking the piss I looked into it and it turns out it actually has a name = Directional Dyslexia

www.dyslexia-reading-well.com/directional-dyslexia.html

[AlfonsoTheTerrible]

This thread has brightened my day no end. Thank you, OP.

[newtb]

Sounds like xh. He could miss a left turn take the next one and get lost going round the block. Me otoh left-handed female drove from Lymm to Brussels and only had to ask at one set of lights which way to turn. Don't know how I do it. After the second trip to Brussels he sulked for years

[DelurkingAJ]

Joining the ranks of the utterly hopeless and I was worse, if anything, before SatNav. DM bought me a SatNav when they first came out as ‘you can get lost in a paper bag’. I carried an A-Z for years in fear of my phone dying. I also get lost in hotels and it was a running joke at my first grad job that if I was in the lead going somewhere in the building I’d need to be hauled in the opposite direction to whichever way I set out for a meeting room.

[the80sweregreat]

I always lose the car in the car park , even if I've only left it for twenty minutes or something which is a pain when your pushing a big trolley about out of the shops trying to find your car in the rain and look like someone who knows exactly where the car is.
I got lost coming out the ladies in a restaurant once ended up wandering around a bit wasn't even drunk. How can you get lost coming out the same door you went in? I can!

[thefallthroughtheair]

Same here! You're very much not alone by the sounds of it. Just occurred to me that there must be suggestions online about what can be done to help?
I plan journeys really thoroughly before embarking on them. And give myself loads of extra time for the inevitable panic!

[MeanderingGently]

I'm the same but I learned to use landmarks very early on in life....and I'm quite visual so I learn to navigate by "pictures" of the route.
I try not to use SatNav at all because it means I don't learn a new route. If I'm walking somewhere new I often turn round to see exactly what it looks like coming back, so that I recognise it on my return! Can't do that in the car though....

[user1471434829]

I have found my people!!! I can read a map really well but my problem with it is memory. Landmarks are completely unhelpful as you have to remember what to do when you reach it! E.g. which exit to come off at the Sainsburys roundabout or which way to turn at the old cock pub. It took me 3 months in my house to reliably emerge from my estate at the place I wanted to without using Google maps. Basically I use Google maps all the time. Before sat nav I used a to z and stopped a lot to check it 😂

[Craftycorvid]

My people! I think I’m dyscalculic as it’s not just directions with me; it’s numbers and some other sequential information. I remember landmarks....in the wrong order and, hey, sometimes I’ll decide a landmark from place A is actually in place B. I can be reduced to a sweaty mess trying to get anywhere unfamiliar, though last week I actually found my way somewhere using one of those ‘you are here’-type street maps. I was beside myself at the achievement. Thing is, I have an excellent visual memory and I’m highly observant, but putting details together to make a whole picture, forget it.