People with NPD are frustrated by the term "narcissistic abuse" because it's closely linked to NPD itself. When they seek resources for recovery or coping strategies, they're bombarded with information on "recovering from a narcissist" rather than guidance tailored to individuals with NPD.
It's not harmful to label abuse as emotional, physical, sexual, or even using a new term like "egotistical abuse." But when it's labeled as "narcissistic abuse," it can create problems for people with NPD, regardless of intention. I understand you'll likely dismiss this, but I hope you'll take a moment to think about it.
Thank you for being patient for all the time I took to craft this reply, I really wanted to give your ask the time it deserves.
I looked into resources connecting NPD with narcissistic abuse and I did find a few. Most of them were articles written by therapists in single practises, blogspot articles or other uncritiqued works, or dissertations written by students in counselling and psychiatry. Obviously any misinformation is bad, especially when it's coming from places that should be reputable like therapists and universities. I wouldn't say in my research what I found was evidence that narcissism is "closely linked" with NPD in any reputable circles though. In todays day and age anyone can have an opinion and make it available for free on the publicly available Internet. It's our own responsibility to educate ourselves and make sure we are leaning on credible sources to form our opinions.
Speaking of the modern age of the Internet, the last part of your ask interested me and I decided to test your theory and run a little experiment.
When people with NPD seek online resources to for support with their disorder, are they are instead met with information for narcissistic abuse survivors?
I created 5 phrases a person suffering narcissistic abuse might search and 5 a person with NPD might search and put each of them into Google.
I used a VPN to manually change my my browsing location to 5 English speaking countries (Ireland, Canada, The USA, Australia and England) and, clearing the cache between every search to reduce uncontrolled variables, searched each phrase to simulate what a person may find in each of those locations when looking for support online.
I decided to see what results came up when searching "narcissist help" "narcissist support" "narcissism recovery" "narcissism signs" and "narcissistic abuse" to emulate what a person suffering from narcissistic abuse might search when seeking support. What came up on the first page of google were mostly resources tailored to support a person experiencing narcissistic abuse in all 5 locations.
Then I searched "NPD help" "NPD support" "NPD signs" "NPD recovery" and "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" to emulate what a person suffering with NPD might search while seeking support. What came up on the first page of Google were only resources tailored to support a person seeking treatment, information or diagnosis for NPD in all 5 locations.
It seems to me that when using the correct vocabulary for their disorder, people with NPD can find support, resources and information relevant to them fairly easily online. Even though they may share a common keyword that victims of narcissistic abuse may also be searching.
From the small test I did to see if your hypothesis held true, it doesn't look like narcissistic abuse awareness harms people with NPD by altering the type of information they may find online at all. My results suggest that the only reason a person with NPD may struggle to find resources when searching for them online is if they've been led to believe that narcissism is the correct term for their disorder.
If people with NPD are led to believe that "narcissist" and "narcissism" are synonyms for their disorder, they may be using these keywords when seeking online resources for diagnosis, treatment or support online. This could explain why people with NPD are reporting that when looking for resources for their disorder online, they're repeatedly finding resources better suited for people looking for information on narcissistic abuse.
The evidence suggests that actually, it's people like you, who are arguing that narcissistic abuse awareness harms people with NPD because narcissism and NPD are synonyms, might actually be the ones harming people with NPD in this way.
I'd love to know if these stats are repeatable, so if you'd like to do the same test and let me know your findings, get back to me any time.