Not worried, just curious.

I am incredibly spatially impaired. For example, I didn’t know how to get to my high school until I first drove there myself; it wasn’t far from my house and I had lived in the same place my whole life.

Once I do know an area, I’m easily thrown off by anything unusual – I distinctly remember not recognizing my neighborhood when trick-or-treating as a kid, because I usually wasn’t outside at night.

Another example, I just graduated college last weekend and my campus is very small, so over the past four years I’ve come to know it very well. But I found the landscape so transformed by the crowds of parents and graduates during the ceremony that I actually got confused about where I was a couple of times.

I get very overwhelmed by trying to take in information when I’m somewhere new, which has made driving very difficult for me; I am constantly afraid that I haven’t noticed everything I need to know about an intersection, for example.

Is this terribly strange? Is it indicative of some kind of disorder?

Topics: psychology, neurology, vision, medical, brain, thinking, input, perception