You wouldn't think I'd be a good candidate for any level of empathy, much less the hypertrophied kind, but it is.
To most people, 'empathy' is mostly an abstract idea representing their ability to recognise and understand other people's emotions.
To me, it's rather like my sense of smell. Emotions swirl in the air, miasmic, clouds of information, energy-molecules just like my nose picks up matter-molecules. I can't see them, I can't detect them any other way, but I pick them up nonetheless.
When I was five years old, my very first psychologist called me an 'emotional sponge', and said it was impossible to hide anything from me.
I don't know how it works, or why I am this way. It just is, I guess.