lose one's bearings

lose (one's) bearings

To lose sight of or become unable to determine one's orientation, position, or abilities relative to one's surroundings or situation. Trying to find her way home through the woods in the dead of night, Sarah lost her bearings when the clouds obscured the stars overhead. I feel like I've been losing my bearings in life ever since I lost my job.
See also: bearing, lose
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

lose one's bearings

see under get one's bearings.
See also: bearing, lose
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
See also:
  • (one's) bearings
  • at (one's) doorstep
  • at doorstep
  • at expense
  • at somebody's expense
  • at someone's expense
  • at (one's) expense
  • be remembered as (something)
  • be remembered as/for something
  • be in somebody's good graces
References in periodicals archive
As far as I remember, the Ponte dei Tre Archi is the last bridge crossing the Rio di Canareggio before the lagoon (I know, though, how easy it is to lose one's bearings when the ocean is in the wrong direction).
Letters
It's a kind of illusion, so expertly pulled off that one can momentarily lose one's bearings in both time and place in a way that never happens in ordinary sprawl.
Design for Living
One definition for "death" is to become senseless, to lose one's bearings. In Claribel Alegria's Sorrow--her first collection of poems since her husband, Darwin Flakoll, died in 1995--she unearths the many ways one becomes lost when the bonds of love are loosed by death.
Sorrow