It sounds like maybe you do have empathy? Experiencing some level of suffering when you witness someone else's suffering would be empathy. Sociopaths do not experience this. From my understanding, the part of the brain that processes pain and fear is much smaller or nonexistent in sociopaths, so they couldn't feel bad even if they wanted to.

There is another thing called compassion which is generally wishing others to be well and giving people a break. Most people don't have much compassion as it somewhat goes against the human instinct to compete with others and do what is best for yourself. That being said, compassion can be directly developed through loving-kindness meditation, if you're motivated to become more compassionate. I personally also find that developing an understanding of evolutionary psychology and doing mindfulness meditation can also lead to more compassion as it leads to more understanding of how we are all, for the overwhelming majority of our conscious lives where we are not being mindful, slaves to whatever thoughts and feelings happen to be arising at any given moment. Some of us are lucky and don't experience much in the way of negative feelings or thoughts, some of us aren't so lucky. Either way, realizing that a lot of life comes down to the luck of the draw is a powerful realization that can lead to more compassion. This i feel is another reason why some of us lack compassion - if we're successful, we have some understanding of what set of actions we did that lead us to be successful. But no one ever sits there and thinks about all the things that didn't happen to them that would have lead to a worse outcome (of which there are infinitely many), so when we see another person who isn't succeeding we may just assume they are lazy or don't care without actually bothering to understand what is holding them back.

I believe that nobody can “have” empathy. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is still you who’s in their shoes. It’s just impossible to share the same emotions as someone if you’ve lived a different life, different experiences. When we see a teen yelling, “You don’t understand!”, we really don’t understand even when we were teens ourselves. I’m not a huge fan of the word because I think the first step to true connection is to admit that you in fact do not understand, but you’re there for them. Like the video suggests (which in my opinion isn’t really talking about empathy).

That's empathy. Empathy is a type of understanding, on any level. Maybe you have not experienced directly what is causing another person's emotional reaction, but you experience their emotional reaction.

Sympathy is more along the lines of caring about someone enough that you care they are in pain. If you don't feel that pain, if you aren't "crying with them", but instead are a shoulder to cry on, that's sympathy.

Both are very related and work together, depending on how close another person is to you.

I'd say you have more empathy than compassion. I think it's a good thing. I myself have much more compassion than empathy and I am working on sorting things out to be more empathic than compassionate.

Brene Brown has some pretty great books as well.