Maarten Aalberse I think that "experiential avoidance" is a great behavioural term for what feelings of shame tend to make us do. (Shame can best be seen as the innate affect triggered by failure/inability. If shame could speak, it's key words would be "I can't"). Additionally, due to our inability to cope with anxiety-provoking triggers, we naturally try to avoid, deny, or negate those feelings. This may explain why self-acceptance statements seem to work so well, in the short term. These serve as momentary antidotes against shame and may temporarily sedate experiential avoidance tendencies ( = "reversal"?), and thus enable the exposure necessary for tapping to work. Problem is of course that "self-acceptance affirmations" themselves risk re-inforcing a more basic avoidance-pattern: the (in a narcissistic culture) very widely-spread tendency to avoid shame. So these affirmations may indeed bring a short-term relief for which one pays a price in the long term (just as almost all other avoidance patterns bring immediate relief and long-term suffering).
Whenever we use/cling to an affirmation of one experiential possibility, we run the serious risk of experientially avoiding the opposite of that which is "affirmed". Short-term reduction of tension may be possible (in those situations where affirmations seem to work), but like other forms of experiential avoidance, this can be a way of gaining short-term relief at the price of long-term pathology. If the inability of the client to accept himself because of a particular problem seems to interfere with healing, the use of "self-acceptance affirmations" is likely to deepen the problem rather than resolve it. Genuine and deeper healing is possible through exposure and BMSA on for instance: "I can't accept myself because I have this ... (problem)". Additionally, properly-designed and validated scientific studies have consistently shown that the use of affirmations is not correlated with achievement of desired outcomes. Since affirmations do not work, and may in fact be damaging to the client, there is no case for their inclusion in evidence-based therapy. | 
