Getting lost

1 min readByShari Morehouse

I have just discovered aphantasia and I’m quite sure I have it along with SDAM. I’ve always had a problem with getting lost. My explanation has always been that. I can’t hold a map in my head. I don’t visually see the route in my mind. I think this might be a combination of both not being able to see it plus not being able to remember it. Although routes do become familiar enough that I can generally find my way home although it has happened that I’ve missed my turnoff . I’ve had this issue ever since I was a kid (I am 68 now ) when I could get lost in a big building if I forgot which doorway I came in. I am wondering if this happens to anybody else and if I’m right in thinking that this is the reason why I get lost so easily.

Sort comments by

Faylene Roth•recently

I'm 78 and just discovered that I was an aphant a year or two ago. I'm just now exploring what it means to who I am and why I'm the way I am. It should be interesting to learn what are the range of experiences we all have. I happen to have good spacial orientation and am pretty good at following directions as long as I'm in a place where I know the direction of north. I seem to remember directions by using common street numbers and names, not so much landmarks unless it's a major corporate name. I'm also good with left and right. My husband (who is not aphantasic) is not good with left and right.

Richard Emery•recently

My fix has been to use absolute directions (NSEW) instead of right/left/up/down. That seems to be easier for me to latch onto. I only recently discovered that I had aphantasia (age 69). Up to then, I had always assumed that talking about mental pictures was just poetic license! When I explained this to my wife, she looked at me and said that now she understood better why sometimes I seemed to deliberately misunderstand her directions. She has adapted her directions to me to reflect the fact that it doesn't do much good to tell me where something is by using nearby structures, or two rights and a left...

Irma Vermeer•recently•edited

Aphantasia and a Hearing Imbalance here (affects internal GPS and orientation). Direction? What is that? Please make google maps functional inside buidings, including inside public toilets, so I can find my way back out. Been trying a new trick, I talk to myself while navigating. I remember what I said to myself and it actually seems to help despite remaining completely directionless and unable to notice if 2 routes merge later on.

Aidan Schmidt•recently

I don't know much about aphantasia, but I do know that I have aphantasis and I am the most directional challenged person that I ever met.

Alice Grebanier•recently

It's hard to know what traits are or are not associated with aphantasia. The most directionally challenged person I have ever known was my mother. She did not know left from right. She could get lost in her native city, New York, where the streets in most areas go in numerical or alphabetic order. She also was one of the most visual people I have ever known, and often would tell people to fix a moment in their mind by holding up their fingers to form a rectangle and taking a mental picture. I'm aphantasic, so I was hopeless at taking those mental pictures as she suggested. But my sense of direction is much better than hers ever was. But that doesn't mean there is no association. For example, the occurence of SDAM appears to overlap with aphantasia, but they are not the same thing. I am aphantasic, and my autobiographical memory is pretty good, even without visual imagery, so it's not a one-to-one correspondence.

Kristin Martin•recently

I don't know whether it's aphantasia. I'm auDHD. Not only do I get lost constantly, but at 60, still can't easily discern my right and left hands (no wedding ring: sensory nightmare).