How observant are you?
iterationx: My friend is an air traffic controller and worked at O'Hare for a while but is now in Grand Forks.  He described his work situation, when he first arrived it was chaos, then he slowly learned all the acronyms, he learned the layout of the airport and mapped it to the acronyms.  Then later he said that it was as if time slowed down because he perceived all the events simultaneously, basically because he became a domain expert in this regard.  It sounds like you are not a domain expert at spatial awareness and maybe body language.  There are plenty of theater books (especially improv books) that teach spatial awareness and plenty of books about body language.  I think if you read a few of those you would have a different experience in this regard.  I think I am very observant because I've read a few of these sorts of books.