Your response to Lou is exactly what I was thinking too. Lou, try just simply validating her. Don't bring up another perspective or POV, just validate her during some of your conversations and see what happens.
You don't even have to agree with her as Heather said, but surely you can at the very least see....how she might have her POV. Simply saying something such as "I can certainly see how you COULD feel like people are out to get you." and then say nothing more. Don't try to give her a POV that people aren't really doing that....if you take it past the point of the validating statement and try to show her another POV, you are no longer validating her.
BELIEVE me, I know how difficult it to listen to someone make a statement like "everyone is out to get me" and just leave it at "I can see how you might/could feel that way." I have a tendancy to try to point out how things aren't truly that way myself with my H. I notice though that with him (considering I get to hear how awful the management is where he works everyday when I first see him)....that if I just simply listen, make affirming sounds so he knows I'm listening, and occasionally respond to a statement with something like (depending on the statement) "I can see how that would make you feel like that", or if I already know he's angry I might respond to a comment he's relaying to me from a co-worker that ticked him off...."I imagine that went over like a ton of bricks, someone talking to me like that would tick me off too."
Validating someone....doesn't mean you have to agree with them, and it doesn't include trying to get them to see another perspective. Validating simply stated means that you basically listen to them and empathize to a certain extent that they have a right to "feel" the way that they do. No matter how nutty they may appear to you
