My advice: take people as they are, as well as you are able to see and know how they are.

If/when you are in a difficult interpersonal situation that needs calming down, try to find a way to get/keep yourself calm first. And I guess, in your case, that would be what can you do to help with feeling scared? Which of course leads to the question of how can you stop the other people from being scary!!

Unfortunately, your understanding of the word empathy is not correct. That’s kind of what I wondered when I said that it was just coined in 1909. These days the way that “empathy” is used it seems almost like a fad.

People can be vindictive for lots of different reasons and, in fact, empathy can be used to find where and how to strike people where they hurt. It won't necessarily stop a person from hurting others.

If you don't tend to be vindictive yourself then it's understandable that it's hard (at first) to feel the vindictive feelings in another, which IS what empathy is. But once you can understand where the other person is coming from, then you can better understand how to take care of and care about yourself (which can help calm the scared feeling?) Then, if you still care about the relationship and want to try to help the other person you're in a better position, and have more information (through your empathy with them) to do it.

Not caring and not having empathy are not the same thing.