I'm an 'empath' but I don't trust titles or movements that are associated with them. To me the name is just an easy way for me to make reference to the characteristics, without going through them all.
I can tell you whole heartedly that I don't follow any new age/occult/psychic beliefs/views of any kind. I personally believe the new agers are guilty of stealing these characteristics and claiming them to be some kind of psychic ability (which they are not) and then giving them a fancy title as well as their own personal false "spiritual" explanation as to how these characteristics came to be. I don't trust any person's explanations.
The characteristics, however, are very real. This is not a psychic gift and should have no association with the new age movement at all. It's sad the two are associated.
The ability to read a room full of people in great depth, to where you know their thoughts/emotions, does not make you a psychic, it's just that you are very in tune with a person's emotions. The downside is that you see all the negative thoughts also, and I wish I could turn it off sometimes because it affects me when I take on the emotions of others as if they are my own.
All I can say is that I am who I am because of Him, so any gifts/abilities He gives me should be looked on as a blessing.
Copy/paste from a christian site....
Empathy, or the ability to listen to, understand, and relate to the emotions of others, is a valuable gift, and there is nothing unbiblical about the idea of carrying another person’s burdens, emotional or otherwise (Galatians 6:2). In fact, God’s Spirit is described as a comforter of the suffering (2 Cor 1:3-6). But claiming the powers of an empath goes beyond proper compassion and godly sensitivity and enters the realm of the psychic.