I do not find it hard to sympathize with them; I have a lot of sympathy for them.
Sympathy and empathy are hard, and to be sympathetic means stepping out of your own shoes to try to understand people and situations that you don't understand.
Wait I thought empathy was the one out of my shoes and sympathy was feeling bad on someone else's behalf?
I looked it up and you're right! I thought they were more or less interchangeable but it looks like that's not true. Similar to how jealousy and envy are different