Clairsentience and empathy is quite similar in how if your clairsentient your empathic, but if your empathic your not clairsentient. Yes I know that's a lot to take in. For me I have been chalking my ability up to be clairsentience because it's such a broad term. However I'm not so sure.
For me:
I SENSE emotions and energies, but I don't FEEL these emotions as though they were my own. I can sense energies and emotions of animals/people/nature. I have to wear my crystal at all times whether it's in my pocket or in my pencil case I have to have it around me. If not, right after lunch, fourth period, I'm so overwhelmed I have an unexplainable urge to curl up and cry. As if that's not enough, I feel completely drained. It's ridiculous. This also happens when just communicating online. When someone signs in I immediately know their general mood before they even say their greeting. Whilst talking to someone via IM I can sense if their energy is low or just different. Not just by how they are talking. I do relate a lot to empaths, again, I do not feel emotions as though they were my own but only sense, which is what has me a bit frazzled.
I am able to look at a picture, in the person's eyes, and tell their emotions at the time. For example; quite a while before the Chris Brown crazy ordeal, I was putting up a poster I ripped out of a mag and decided to try this on him. I didn't like what I saw. I didn't get a vision. Just... A bad feeling I suppose. Bad energy. Just bad. I brushed it off as nothing because honestly... But months later his face is plastered on the news for what he did to Rhianna. It absolutely blew my mind. I didn't predict this. I didn't have a vision of this. I just simply looked into his eyes and I just felt bad. This happens to me a bit too in general. I can look into someone's eyes and just 'know' and 'sense' if their someone I would want to hang out with. I found this for a clairsentient exercise and figured I'd try it out. I'm good at it apparently:/
Hopefully this helps:) Any feedback would be great =) Thank you!