Is there a milder term for gaslighting?

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Gaslighting is often associated with abuse but I believe non abusers do it too to a degree. Like people say something and then they regret it so they pretend they never said it and deny deny and the other person second guesses themselves.

Parents feel remorse and feel so bad what they did they also will deny deny it ever happened. Like for example I have a memory in my head about being spanked with a wooden spoon and then next thing I know, it was in two pieces and my mom yells at me saying I broke it. At age nine, she told me this never happened and if I told anyone this story, it would be a lie and then she said it must have been a dream I had. So for a while I just thought it was a false memory my brain created and then I realized as an adult maybe this really did happen and my mom had lied it ever happened because she regrets it and was like "Oh s**t, she still remembers, I will just pretend this never happened." *denies it happened*

I also remember at my old job, my office clerk told me to do something so I was doing it and then I was caught and told I wasn't supposed to be doing it with chemical bottles. I said the office clerk said I could do it. Later he told me I shouldn't use names because I nearly got him into trouble and he never told me to do that and he doesn't know who told me. I thought I had a bad memory and couldn't even remember faces. Now I realize maybe he did tell me and my memory was right but he just regretted it and made it look like it was all on me to avoid responsibility. Hence the reason why when you get talked to by your boss and written up, they have you sign a piece of paper and give you a copy while they keep the other and keep it in their records so you can't deny it.

Would you call it gaslighting or does it have another name for non abusers?

not to put too fine a point on it, I would call those types of people garden variety manipulative mind-game-playing backside-shielding liars.

Why make a mild statement about it instead of just truth-bombing ?
Anyway, sounds like a sufficient description for another diagnosis to add to that list, and growing...

Roughly speaking: mind games, brain washing, mindf..king, intentionally hostile undermining, inflicting deliberate confusion, practicing malicious invalidation and psychological entrapment, all come to mind. They aren't whole synonyms for gaslighting though - gaslighting is the outcome, and these alternatives refer more to the tools and tactics gaslighters use to cause deliberate harm in the guise of innocence. Gaslighting is one of the typical tactics that Narcissists use (the cluster B type of narcissist, rather the everyday kind with an over-active ego).

What IS "gaslighting"? All I know about it is that it's a term commonly thrown around by SJWs.

Its from a 1938 play "Gas Light", that was turned into two movies (a less famous 1940 British movie, and the more famous American 1944 movie starring Ingrid Berman, Charles Boyer, and Angela Landsbury), about a guy who isolates his wife in a house and tries to manipulate her into thinking that she's going insane by doing wierd little things (like moving pics around the wall, or dimming or brightening the gas lights), and claiming that the wife is "just imaging things" or that she "doesnt remember moving the picture" etc.

My mom used to exclaim that its "gas light time"! if she did something absent minded. So I associate the term with the older generation (parents of my baby boomer generation).

But the younger generation to me seems to have latched on to the term, and also to have turned it into a verb: as in "to gaslight" someone.

On a basic level, it means you try to plant false memories in people so as to make yourself look better.

or make them think they look worse.

As naturalplastic posted, it comes from an old play, also a movie, about a man who played mind-games in a concerted effort to to make his wife feel like she was losing her mind and she was the weak, crazy one.

The term "gaslighting" means whenever someone is trying to make you feel like you're the "mad, bad or sad" one when actually they are the one being bad, abusive, lying etc. It's a form of emotional abuse, deception and manipulation meant to make the recipient second guess themselves and self-invalidate.

Wikipedia is your friend ...Milder forms of this are called "Playing Mind Games", "Salesmanship" and "Flirtation".

The dichotomy you two are talking about reminds me of Thank You for Smoking, when the main character exclaims "I didn't have to, I proved that you're wrong, and if you're wrong then I'm right."

I see. I often see people say others are playing games and I could never figure out what it meant. Now I know they mean they are doing what gaslighters do except they are not abusers. Like how we have the words ignorant and naive but people will use the word naive as a nice way of calling someone ignorant because ignorant has a negative connotation to it than naive. Instead of calling a kid a brat, we say they are acting up if we don't think a kid is truly a brat. I also notice how people will use the word aggressive instead of abusive or violent when a kid does abuse or do things like pull out knives on their family members and threatening them and hitting and punching and kicking and throwing stuff and everyone fears that child. But to me aggressive is a nicer word than admitting their kid is abusive or violent. I will only say a kid is aggressive if they are far from abusive and you don't fear them and they don't hurt you despite that they hit or pinch or bite which is pretty typical in two year olds.

Gaslighting is not to be confused with gas lighting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_lighting

Or fart lighting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fart_lighting

Indeed when I saw the title of this thread, I thought it was going to be about fart lighting. A dangerous thing to do.

I think I get what "gaslighting" means now. Thanks.

Just "manipulation". That would be the "mild form" of "gaslighting".

There's also a song recorded in 1967 that's titled 'Gaslight'.