Starting off.

Empathy vs. Sympathy
People seem to get these things confused a lot, so I thought I would define them to make things clear.
Both of these words deal with emotion and relating with others.
Sympathy comes from French meaning "together suffering", whereas Empathy comes from Greek meaning "in feeling". Now with this in mind, Sympathy is defined as recognizing someone's suffering and feeling for them, while Empathy is defined as actually sharing someone's suffering, briefly "putting oneself in another's shoes" to be cliche. In essence, Empathy includes experience.In my experience, I've always felt sympathy and compassion for people, but I don't remember having true empathy until this year. I truly care for other people, and sometimes put their needs before my own. But, I had never truly felt and understood their emotions until recently. I've even been able to experience emotions I've never had before. I've felt joy, pain, hatred, anger, anxiety, depression, sadness, sickness, and addiction. Problem #1: I can't always tell what the difference is between my real emotions and somebody else's. Problem #2: Some people just don't get it. Even those who say they get it, don't really understand until A) I feel something of theirs, or B) They witness me feeling something of somebody else's. Even those who fall under category B have doubts until A happens. Now I can be considered a "Highly Sensitive Person"- "This is a specific trait with key consequences that in the past has often been confused with innate shyness, social anxiety problems, inhibitedness, or even social phobia and innate fearfulness, introversion, and so on." Totally describes me right? or at least the way I was in high school. As a good friend just told me, it fits my personality, and they weren't surprised about all of this. 
This is my empathic life.