Aspies with a good sense of direction

Post Reply New Topic

Are here?

I still read about people with ASD, who get lost all the time. I am the opposite and I'm interested how many like me are here.
Are here any Aspies who love maps, who can rotate seen objects and relate it to the axis, who feel the four cardinal points, who have their inner GPS?

I'm generally pretty good with directions.

Yes. I'm good at reading maps and following directions. As long as I know a couple of big roads, I get by just fine. When I first went to Rome, we didn't use maps to navigate the city: our teachers knew where we were going. The second time I went there, I found that I didn't need a map at all. I used landmarks to get around and didn't get lost once. It freaked the living daylights our of my father

I'm pretty much the same way. My wife is quite the opposite and it kind of blows her mind the way I can just drive off down some random road with the (justified) confidence that I'll eventually end up on some road I recognize and find my way home again.

In fact, way back when America's Next Top Model had Heather, a diagnosed aspie, I identified with her a bit and kind of wondered if maybe I had it.... until she got herself hopelessly lost and never recovered, and I figured that I didn't have what she had since my sense of direction doesn't suck. I've since learned just how much of a variety exists among aspies...

I am 30 and I literally cannot remember the last time I got lost. I always know where I am and most of the time I can intuit which direction is North indoors. It's hard to explain but I just "feel" where I have been and where I need to go to get where I want to be.

With map - yes. Without map (and if I don't know the route) - no. I also have problems with maps or directions being too abstract, for example:

Go along A street, so you will reach B street.

In real life: there is A street, but there is a moment where A street becomes C street and D street. It confuses me and makes nervous. It makes me think that maybe I missed something (for example A and B cross) and got lost. In fact, the C street joins desired B street.

I'd prefer more accurate version:

Go along A street, so you will reach C street and D street.
Keep going along C street, so you will reach B street.

And if you are somewhere in the forest and you choose the new path, do you still know where you are and how to come back?

Same here. I'm good at using a map, but verbal directions always screw me up.

Verbal directions suck everywhere, but I mean inner sense of direction, without asking people.

My sense of direction is the worst thing in the entire world and I constantly get lost when going anywhere new all the time, almost without exception.

Then again, I'm nonverbal learning disorder, and not much of a visual thinker at all. Like I'm able to visualize things to an extent, but generally most of my thoughts come out like 10 paragraph or 10 page essays in my head that I have to condense. So not good for directional or visual-spatial thinking.

I used to have a crap sense of direction until I installed google earth on my computer. Now I just look at the satellite image of a place and I'll know it like the back of my hand. The problem was I just need an overhead image of a place, otherwise it makes no sense to me.

Depends. If the forest is completely monotonous I think almost anyone will eventually get lost. I'm extremely good at remembering landmarks and have a good feel for topography though. I've done off-trail bushwacking in the mountains to get to a peak. Route finding in the wilderness can be fun, but a lot of people have a strong fear of going off a market trail.

Maps have always been an interest of mine - I have an instinctual compass within me as well.
But now, with modern technology and sat navs, I'm sort of obsolete

I don't quite have an internal compass without using landmarks to orient myself. I will get turned around at night in an unfamiliar location with monotonous scenery. I'm good at judging space and distances though and always have an accurate top-down picture of things in my head.

That was not about asking people but about written instructions. Asking people is much worse. I can't remember verbal instructions without writing them on piece of paper or mobile phone. Or I can remember some, but later I'm not sure if I did it correctly.

Unfortunately, I don't have this inner sense of direction.

I'm very good with directions. I don't even understand how people can't read maps. I mean you look at where you are, the street you're on and the area you're in and look on the map in that area at the street name and go from there. Then you take the roads like you saw on the map. How is that hard?


I rarely get lost when I go to places new. I just write down the directions and go from there. I read road signs. If I miss a turn, I just turn around and go back.

But I need things written down, I cannot remember verbal directions. If they are short directions, then they be easy to remember.