My mother pulls that type of head game all the time; just another little family game she liked to play to keep us on our toes.
It makes you feel completely crazy & frustrated & helpless. It's taken me years to not let it sideswipe me & knock me off my feet. She pulled it on me most recently in June, when I had almost 90 days sober. After begging me to get my brother's things out of his upstairs apartment (he was forced to move) & giving me a frantically detailed mental list of what she wanted out immediately & taken to him in the hospital & what could be taken to my house & stored for him, she then turned around less than 24 hours & accused me of stealing his things, demanded to know what I was doing in my brother's apartment when he was not there going through his things & taking them. Trying to make me feel like I was crazy, like I had imagined her telling me to move him out. That's gaslighting.
Before I was in recovery she wouldn't have succeeded in making me believe she hadn't told me to do all that~~ but she would have succeeded in making me feel helpless, enraged, frustrated, & tired of her manipulations. It'd have been worth an epic, epic drunk. A call in sick 3 days drunk. Even with almost 3 months under my belt it got to me~~ I had an internal argument on the beer aisle with myself before I removed myself from the store.
It's a despicable method of passive aggressive psychological manipulation & borders on sadistic, IMHO.
By the way, 4 months sober now. And she tried it again just last week. It's getting where I can just laugh & feel sorry for her.