Peleke4, actually repeating the reminder phrase is necesary to get rid of the negative feelings, because its not only repeating a negative affirmation, its repeating an affirmation WHILE doing EFT to get rid of it, i recommend you to read the palace of posibitilies on
EFT Provides Impressive Health and Emotional Freedom--New Discovery Often Works Where Nothing Else on the resources section, there it says that this affirmation are like writtings in our internal walls, and what we do is to delete this internal negative affirmations, then after we delete them we can replace them with better ones, great isnt it?