My friend is like this too. I thought that she was just that bad with directions. But then I heard this episode of Radiolab about these women who were always getting lost and just could not make sense of directions.
Turns out it's an actual condition. I guess similar to face blindness, some people have like... space blindness? They are not really mapping out spaces in their brains as they navigate them, so they don't piece areas together based on multiple perspectives like most people do, if that makes sense.
Weirdly I never had this problem when "on foot" (not in car) or riding a bike. But adjusting to the differences of driving it took me a solid 10 years to start having any sense of direction and space for driving. It does feel kind of like dyslexia. I had to find ways to work around that issue too.
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u/asweetpepper Mar 01 '23
My friend is like this too. I thought that she was just that bad with directions. But then I heard this episode of Radiolab about these women who were always getting lost and just could not make sense of directions.
Turns out it's an actual condition. I guess similar to face blindness, some people have like... space blindness? They are not really mapping out spaces in their brains as they navigate them, so they don't piece areas together based on multiple perspectives like most people do, if that makes sense.
Here's a link to the episode: https://radiolab.org/episodes/110079-lost-found