From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishempathizeem‧pa‧thize (also empathise British English) /ˈempəθaɪz/ verb [intransitive] UNDERSTANDto be able to understand someone else’s feelings, problems etc, especially because you have had similar experiences → sympathizeempathize with My mother died last year so I can really empathize with what he’s going through.→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
empathize• You can easily begin empathizing with situations you only imagine.• Parents need to continue to empathize with the child.• No two humans ever communicated to the fullest extent if they did not empathize with the mind of the other.• Most of all, I empathize with the trade-offs they made, or had to make.• I tried to empathize with their own differing emotional reactions and the fact that they were falling into their own traps again.• They can be written about in such a way that some one else is able to empathize with them.• She could certainly empathize with this situation and her sympathies were not with the weeping marine. 