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Like dyslexics who learn how to adapt to a world of street signs, restaurant menus, and official forms, people with DTD learn how to navigate in their environment without having a mental blueprint of where they are going.

Like other people with DTD, she can follow a route in pieces, but it never becomes part of a larger spatial understanding.

To understand DTD it is best to begin by saying that there are two main ways that successful travelers use to navigate their environment.

“In other words, there was no brain injury — no car accident, no brain tumor or stroke,” says Iaria, who developed the DTD diagnosis and first wrote about it in 2009.

But because so little is known about DTD and because most of the population can easily navigate with their inner cognitive map, there’s an “idiot” stigma attached to it.