I try to help people with no sense of direction to acclimate wherever they are. I point out things like ‘the coast, the big ocean is that way.’ West for some, East for others. Once you have East and West down, it becomes a little easier. The Sun always rises in the East and sets in the West. Most people will at least try to take this information in. Those that don’t just don’t want to know.
One day I was walking with a college classmate. The building was very large, with long hallways. We had walked most of the way to the end of the hallway when she announced that she was heading to the subway. We had been walking West, and the subway is to the East. As I pointed out that she would have to turn around and head back the way she came, she cursed, and asked just how I knew, how I oriented the world from inside a building. I told her that she could do the same thing. If we had kept walking West, we would have reached the ocean, so walking away from the ocean is heading East. By this time she was too frustrated to take in and actualize the information. I tried to smooth things over, stating not everyone has a sense of direction. Did not help much.
She sounds like me. My girl brain just does not know how to orient to directions. You would not believe how much of my life was wasted in driving lost before GPS.
If I go into a large building, I must remind myself to study features so that I go the right way on the way out. It takes some work.
Men just usually seem to understand direction and know where they are.