So hard fact. Okay. Empathy is recognizing something someone is going through and being able to put yourself in their shoes/experience it vicariously, via your own memories of some similar happening or whatever, and to feel for them because of that. And my saying "I [would] feel similarly" is a colloquial expression of the same thing - or, perhaps, better, it's an expression of the conclusion I come to post-empathizing. Does that sit better with you? To say, I empathize with him, therefore I conclude, based on the times I have been angry and bitter and in a shitty situation, that I would have a similar reaction were I where he is right now. So, they are separate things, but tied close in this case.