visual thinking & sense of direction

Post Reply New Topic

Im wondering if other people experience direction sense the way I do... if someone asks me how to get somewhere I find it very hard to explain to them, usually I would play videos in my mind of the things I see on my way and try to relate that but Ive never known any street names.. pronouns arent my thing. Generally this leaves me feeling unsure of whether or not I know the way myself but then if I just get in the car and drive I just seem to know the way.

Anyone else come across this? And, i wonder if there would be a strategy for explaining a route to NTs?

My sense of direction is well above average, since I hardly get lost. But, explaining directions to someone else is quite a different story. A lot of times, I find my mind going blank and getting quite nervous. I hate it when my answers come out as very vague, because I'm much better than that.

Like you said, I have to visualize the route before I explain it. Once I visualize it, I can explain it in great detail. I can tell someone to take a left, a right, a left, a right, and so forth from five or six blocks away. But, again, that is if I am thinking clearly with no distractions. Maybe the external stimuli is what causes my mind to go blank in many circumstances, I don't know. I can block out external stimuli fairly easy, so I don't know if that's it, either. I think it's the weariness of telling someone misinformation that causes my mind to go blank.

My advice, and it sometimes works for me in similar circumstances, would be to think like you're not talking to the person. Just think that you're telling yourself that you need to get there. That's all the advice I could give on this.

- Ray M -