Max Littman, LCSW

May 8, 2025

Some people just seem to have a knack for direction. They can glance at a map once and then confidently walk or drive through a city they’ve never been to. They know where the sun is at all times, can recall the angle of a turn they took an hour ago, can remember and use obvious and not so obvious landmarks, and almost instinctively know whether to go left or right when a road splits. It’s an impressive skill: one part memory, one part intuition, and one part practiced awareness.

But we don’t just navigate external landscapes. We navigate internal ones, too. And some people, for a variety of reasons, are more practiced and attuned to their inner mapping than others.

In therapy, especially through Internal Family Systems (IFS), we begin to develop an internal sense of direction: a way of knowing where we are, where we’ve been, what our parts are communicating to us, and how to find our way forward inside our own minds and bodies.

Mapping External Terrain and Mapping the Mind

When we use a GPS, we’re relying on a pre-constructed map of the terrain: one that helps us understand what’s around us, how far we are from our destination, and which turns to make along the way. Internal mapping isn’t all that different. When we begin to understand our system of parts, we start creating a map of our own internal terrain. We identify common regions, like the perfectionist corridor, the vulnerable pocket of grief, the critic’s watchtower, or the foggy swamp of dissociation.

We begin to learn:

  • What part is showing up right now?
  • Where did it come from?
  • What other parts usually travel with it?
  • What helps us return to home, to Self when we get lost?

Just as some people have a better sense of external direction, some of us have developed stronger internal orientation. Often, this comes from necessity. If you’ve had to anticipate emotional weather in your family, dodge unpredictable reactions, or constantly self-monitor for safety, you may have developed a sharp internal radar. One that can sense changes quickly, but may not yet know how to interpret or trust them.

What Brain Science Says About Direction

People with a strong sense of direction often have particular neural advantages. Neuroscience research shows that the hippocampus, the brain’s memory and spatial navigation hub, plays a central role. One study from University College London found that London taxi drivers, who undergo rigorous training to memorize over 25,000 city streets, had significantly larger posterior hippocampi than the average person. This region seems to grow in response to extensive navigational experience and spatial memory demands.

Alongside the hippocampus are cells called grid cells, place cells, and head direction cells. These cells help create internal representations of where we are in space. Think of them like a mental GPS that helps us form internal maps, track movement, and orient toward familiar or new destinations.

Some people have naturally more active or well-developed systems in this region, while others strengthen it through repeated use. Interestingly, research also shows that those with poor spatial sense often underutilize the hippocampus and rely more on visual landmarks like street signs or shops, while strong navigators can build mental maps independent of visual cues.

This same brain region is deeply tied to memory, emotion, and even imagination; functions that are also central to how we map our inner lives.

The Embodied Layer: Spatial Awareness and the Senses

A strong sense of direction is not only about cognitive mapping; it’s also deeply rooted in spatial awareness, our ability to sense where our bodies are in relation to the environment around us. This is an embodied intelligence that begins forming in infancy, shaped by movement, sensory integration, and feedback from the world.

Spatial awareness draws on multiple systems: proprioception (the sense of body position), vestibular function (balance and motion), visual input, and motor coordination. And equally important, though often less talked about, is interoception, the ability to sense what’s happening inside our bodies. Hunger, heartbeat, breath rate, tension, fullness, emotional shifts—these internal cues are all part of how we orient and stay in touch with ourselves.

Interoception is the internal mirror to external spatial awareness. While spatial awareness tells us where we are in space, interoception tells us how we are, offering signals that something is too much, not enough, or just right. It helps us notice early signs of anxiety, exhaustion, overwhelm, or calm. People with stronger interoceptive awareness often have a clearer sense of their emotional and physiological states, while those with weaker interoception may struggle to name or even notice what’s happening internally until it becomes extreme.

When these inner and outer systems are working well together, we can sense and respond to our environments with more precision and ease. But for many of us, trauma, chronic stress, or disconnection from our bodies can blur these signals. That’s why part of building an internal map isn’t just understanding our parts intellectually. It’s also about feeling where we are inside and letting that inform how we respond.

Practices that develop spatial and interoceptive awareness, like mindful movement, dance, yoga, breathwork, or simply pausing to notice internal sensations, can help us locate ourselves again, both externally and internally. They strengthen the neural pathways between sensation and presence, supporting clearer internal mapping.

Just like physical terrain becomes more familiar the more we walk it, our internal landscapes become more traversable when we move through them with awareness. And our bodies, which hold so much of that information, can be a compass we learn to trust.

My Own Internal and External Sense of Direction

Personally, I’ve always had a good sense of external direction. I tend to know where I am in physical space, even in unfamiliar terrain. I rarely get lost and often intuitively know how to get back to where I came from. My proprioception, my sense of where my body is in space, feels solid and dependable. I imagine part of that comes from the outdoors being a familiar part of my lineage: my grandfather was an avid hiker, bicyclist, and bird watcher; my father, a therapist and outdoor enthusiast, shared that connection to land and movement. There’s something about growing up in a family where presence, observation, and spatial awareness were modeled, whether through quietly watching a trail or closely listening to someone’s emotional terrain, that likely shaped me.

I also have a fairly refined internal sense of direction, which I think has developed over time through consistent interoceptive practice. This inner tracking, sensing what’s happening inside my body, emotionally and somatically, has been partly fueled by my passion for being a therapist. It’s a skill I draw on every day in helping others navigate their own inner worlds. But I also suspect this ability was shaped early on by parts of me that needed to closely monitor my internal state and the responses of others to stay safe or attuned. When you’re a sensitive kid picking up on subtle shifts in tone or mood, interoception sometimes becomes a kind of survival tool, especially when protectors are working overtime to avoid shame, rejection, or disconnection.

In many ways, I think these abilities, both external and internal orientation, are a mix of legacy gifts and legacy burdens. Perhaps some of the sensitivity and spatial awareness were inherited epigenetically. Maybe some were passed down, modeled by family members who moved through the world with presence and curiosity. And maybe some emerged as adaptations, ways of navigating not just land, but emotional complexity, relational dynamics, and environments that didn’t always feel straightforward or safe. Whether by inheritance, necessity, or intention, the result is a kind of directional knowing I’ve come to respect and rely on.

And like any inherited trait, these gifts come with edges. Legacy burdens often travel alongside legacy strengths. The gift of being highly attuned can bring fatigue. The ability to orient others can sometimes eclipse the need to orient oneself. That’s why building and honoring our internal maps, consciously, compassionately, and with discernment, isn’t just a personal skill; it’s an act of healing across generations.

The Role of Curiosity and Practice

People who are good at navigating cities or hiking trails usually practice. They’ve made wrong turns. They’ve had to recalibrate. They’ve learned what to look for: landmarks, cardinal directions, dead ends. The same applies inside. Internal mapping is a skill that gets better with use. It is a calling to slow down, listen inward, and get curious.

In IFS, this might look like:

  • Naming and tracking which parts tend to show up in different situations
  • Learning how those parts relate to one another (who’s trying to help, who’s protecting what)
  • Noticing how each part communicates whether that be through thoughts, feelings, body sensations, images, or something else
  • Remembering what helps soften reactivity and bring us back into connection with Self energy

The more we engage in this kind of inner exploration, the clearer our internal maps become. We’re more likely to notice when we’re about to fall into an old reactive loop, more able to find the “exit” when we get overwhelmed, and more equipped to choose a different route when we don’t want to keep ending up in the same internal cul-de-sac.

Why Direction Matters

Having a sense of direction, externally or internally, isn’t about always knowing the answer. It’s about being able to stay connected to your bearings even when things get unfamiliar. It’s the ability to feel lost without panicking. To remember that even if you’re off course, you can access what is needed to reorient.

Some of us may have been raised with a lot of static and confusion in our inner or outer environments. Others may have developed sharper tools for survival, but at the cost of connection or clarity. Building internal maps helps repair that. It offers a way to live with more coherence. Not because you’ve memorized every turn, but because you’ve come to trust your relationship with your system: your parts, your Self, your body.

A Practice to Try

The next time you notice a strong internal reaction, such as anxiety, numbness, anger, despair, try treating it like an unexpected detour. Pause. Pull over. Look around. Ask: Where am I? Who’s here with me? What’s familiar about this place? Have I been here before? Then see if a deeper, calmer energy within you can gently orient or offer guidance. Even if the way forward isn’t clear yet, simply mapping where you are can shift your relationship to the moment.

And if you’re someone with a terrible sense of direction on the road, don’t worry. The good news is: internal mapping is learnable. It doesn’t require a strong hippocampus, just a willingness to be with yourself in a new way.

For feedback and comments, I can be reached at max@maxlittman.com.

I provide private practice mentorship, consultation, and therapist/practitioner part intensives.

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