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!

@isthismylifenow

Oh you are not alone OP. I'm glad there are so many of us tbh as I thought it was just me.

I lose my car in car parks all the time. I always take a photo of the parking spot number and level I am on. If I have a photo I seem to be OK, if I didn't take a photo, we'll then I'm stuffed.

I also hate going to the loo in a shopping centre as I never know which way to walk out if there is more than one entrance.

Just this morning I took the wrong road in the school run.

And let's not talk about trying to do a zumba class at gym, or a dance with particular moves, like Jeruselma etc. I'm always going the wrong way and just cannot for the life of me remember the steps.

I use waze on my phone wherever I travel if it's slightly out of my comfort zone. Ie more than 3 or 4kms from my house.

We once parked on the top deck of the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, returning to the car later we were horrified that it wasn't there, looked all over the place, no luck. Mentally reporting the loss to the rental company and the problems it would cause we went back down to try and speak to someone in the hotel, no-one really concerned so we went back up to the top floor and as we exited the lift, there the car was, exactly where we'd left it! Later we learned that not all lifts go to the top deck, we'd simply looked at the last button rather than the number.

Same. I can’t function without sat Nav and have exactly the same problem finding my way round on holiday. I also forget which direction I was going when I come out of a shop in a shopping centre.

@DragonWillow

I have a pretty good sense of direction but DH has none what so ever - he can honestly get lost in his own garden

This is my DH too! It's frightening how little sense of direction he has.

@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.

It's unhelpful to say "I'm not like this but all you have to do is XYZ".

I AM like this and was before I could drive and I can only drive anywhere outside of my town because I have a sat nav. It's not learned dependence - it was always necessary. The idea of having to rely on maps/signage causes anxiety.

I can read a map and I can use a map to find a walking route somewhere but only because I can check the map whilst walking and rotate it as necessary so all the landmarks are in the right orientation.

I couldn't do this while driving. I can't hold a picture of the map in my head at all (I have poor visual imagination), can't remember each individual instruction for long enough, and landmarks wouldn't help because I wouldn't be able to work out the route from one to another.

Not to mention the fact that I don't have a wall to put a large map on anyway.

I have no natural sense of direction and also use landmarks as much as I can to help myself

Pre satnav I used to print out internet directions and memorise the important town names on route. Many a stuff up with that, especially the time the directions sent me down a farm track instead of the motorway - I didn't even get them wrong.

Before that I'd use a road atlas, plan a route and write it out and stick it to my dashboard.

Satnav is a total lifesaver!

I have a good sense of direction and don't use satnav except on very rare occasions for the last bit of a journey but I love maps and spend hours looking at them.

The thing that does confuse me is the opposite for a lot of people - upside down maps! I know a lot of people turn them round, I get completely discombobulate by that - a lot of the maps on the bike hire things in London are the wrong way up and I have to find one that is the right way up :)

I find Google maps quite unhelpful as it doesn't tell you what direction you are going in (ie you have to walk or drive a little bit to work out which way you are pointing), but the OS map app is really good (£25 a year, a bargain) as it tells you that are eg facing east at the bottom.

I am better at in-car navigation - DH is very good at knowing where he is going in a new town we've not been in before, whereas I don't pay attention. I think the landmarks thing works really well.

I've got lost running on heathland where every path looked the same. Fortunately the sun was out that evening, and knowing it sets in the west, helped me and my friend find our way back to civilisation (ran 9 miles instead of the planned 5 though!) (stupidly, neither of us had mobile phones with us).

I used to print out internet directions and memorise the important town names on route

Yes similarly I work out the route, know which towns we need to go through and which roads, and as long as the reality is the same as the map, don't get lost. Sadly, sometimes (especially with roundabouts) it's a bit different to the map.

I’m a bit like you!

I’ve known a few people with a really strong, true sense of direction and it’s quite awe inspiring.

They are my brother, my son (even as a toddler!) and an au pair we used to have. They just know!

@SoupForLunch

I have a family member who has lived in the same small city for about 30 years, in about four different properties. There are quite a few places she goes to regularly where, in order to get there, she has to first drive to the first property she lived in. The journey only makes sense to her from that spot. It's batshit to me. Sometimes she'll be driving five miles out of her way in the wrong direction. Repeatedly. Odd.

Not quite the same, but my aunt used to navigate people around Liverpool via the bus routes because she didn't drive. I guess it makes sense, it's the most obvious reference point.

OP, I am like this with directions, and was diagnosed as dyspraxic in my 30s. I was a harder case to spot, as it only affects gross motor coordination for me (directions, knowing where my body is) but my fine motor coordination; holding a pen etc. is not an issue.

Things to consider: Do you regularly accidentally bump your head or knock into things? Are you atrocious at sports that involve a ball? Do you frequently loose important possessions (keys, phone, purse)?

*lose (before my co-occuring dyslexia gets jumped on by the grammar and spelling police).

Not quite the same, but I have lost my car. Once on a work call, I parked my car in the office's multi-storey and couldn't find it after the meeting. Walked around for ages before realising I was on the wrong floor.

Now if in a multi-storey I always make a mental note of what floor (and sometimes it tells you what zone too). And if outside, I'll remember I was 3rd row across or opposite a tree or whatever. I think some of the time it's about being mindful and thinking about things - we do everything in a hurry and then we forget eg coming out of a shopping centre and forgetting which direction you need to go in - before you go into the shopping centre remember that you eg passed the post office so you know which direction to go back in.

I've lost my car few times. Most notably at a horse trials as they added more rows of cars after I parked, throwing my visual memory out. I have a "tile" on my keys so I can find them...

I'm horrible at the backhand in all racquet sports but ok on forehand, often attacked by doors, door handles and radiators... but was top 10 in UK in fencing in my 20s.

Avoid group aerobics like the plague as can't do L/R under pressure!

It's actually made my day to read this thread.
I didn't realise there were so many of us.
If I don't catch the bus I get lost walking to work.
I have learnt over the years to landmark and I have a list of verbal instructions I tell myself as I'm walking anywhere, but I do wish I could have a mental map as then maybe I could drive a car and be more confident.
I have degrees and am at the top of my game career wise so I'm not a fool but I can't actually visualise things like routes. I sometimes get up and down mixed up!

Out of interest, does anyone else have difficulty reading clocks? It took me years to learn to do confidently.

I've lost my car few times. Most notably at a horse trials as they added more rows of cars after I parked, throwing my visual memory out.

Me too. There's a smartphone app called Find My Car that I use. You have to start the app and mark your location when you park and it can then guide you back to it later using GPS. It's quite handy.

I have no sense of direction either. Left and right confuse me, numbers are a mystery, no spatial awareness so am always covered in bruises, lose my car on such a regular basis I now park in the same spot whenever I go shopping. Can’t throw or catch and often look for my glasses when they are perched on top of my head!
Before Sat Nav I used to write my route out on post it notes and stick them to my steering wheel.

Out of interest, does anyone else have difficulty reading clocks? It took me years to learn to do confidently.

Yep — baffled my teachers and parents as I was a hyperlexic kid reading fluently by age 3 but just couldn't get telling the time through my head at all. My mum is pretty cool, though, and told the school they'd be disregarding their rule against digital watches in my case

I am the same. I was astonished when I first realised my then 5 or 6 year old daughter had a better sense of direction than me.

I also have a bit of a problem with left and right. Driving abroad was a nightmare because the Sat Nav would tell me to turn right, or left, but because I'd somehow got used to the way the roads are in the UK and managed a weak link between the words 'right' and the actual action of turning right in the UK, it totally confused me. In the end I had to stick a sticker in the corners of the windscreen with 'L' and 'R' on them.

My mother has the same problem. I have read somewhere that it is a recognised thing.

FWIW, I have no problems with sports, reading, numbers or clocks. I have a good visual imagination and good spatial awareness when it comes to handicrafts.

Just terrible with faces and directions! And, interestingly, the three years I spent as a child trying to learn a musical instrument were really spectacularly unproductive. Struggled with every stage of the process from reading music to fingering.

My friends son has a PhD and can't tell the time very well. I was amazed as he is so bright.
I'm thick as mince but I mastered the time quite early on. (Mostly so I could gaze at the school clock in order to get out of there! )
Just a shame I'm so rubbish at everything else though especially numbers.

I struggle with telling the time, I had a digital watch as soon as they came out. I have a watch with hands but I mix up the shape, for me the shape of 9.00 and 3.00 are the same, but I normally know if it is the middle of the night it is 3.00.

The faces thing, yep no good with that, I met my brother in a pub a while ago, someone opened the pub door for me, I said thank you, walked past and it was only when he spoke I recognised him. MY BROTHER!

Fascinating that for so many of us face blindness is part of the problem.

I struggle to visualise things in my mind. And I think of streets in straight line grids so when they curve in real life, it completely throws off my awareness of where areas are in relation to each other.

Sat navs are a great crutch but they’ve made me worse. In the days of paper maps I used to work hard at navigating. My dad drilled into me how to read maps, to write out step by step directions, to pay attention to landmarks and how to work out direction by the position of the sun.

I genuinely thought he had a magical compass in his head, but I think he’s just not as lazy and day-dreamy as I am, and applies himself to paying attention to his surroundings.

We had an oil cloth map of the world on our kitchen table for a few years and it provoked all sorts of discussions. I’m tempted to get a fabric print of a map of our city to muse over at mealtimes and see if I improve any.

I've noticed a few people say about exercise classes. I've just realised, I used to be terrible direction wise but now I'm not. It must be a repetition thing, I know I often count the steps in my head.

Wonder if I can somehow apply that to knowing which way to go!

Another prosopagnosic/terrible sense of direction here. Nothing wrong with my mind, I’ve got a bunch of degrees and a lot of random useless stuff like many dozens of pieces of classical music and poems memorised. But it takes me an entire year of living in a new place before I feel confident enough to turn off Google maps for short journeys to places I regularly go.

My lowest point was driving to a multi-storey carpark on my own one day, parking, going into the attached mall for something, coming back out and being completely unable to find the car. I had to call DH, who has a magnificent sense of direction, who came (fortunately from quite close by) and went into the carpark and very quickly found the car. When he hadn’t even been the one who drove it into the carpark in the first place.

Now I text myself dropped pins when I’ve parked the car, and also landmark like a lunatic. Very few landmarks inside underground carparks, though.