For you, ISTJ, the reflexive apology rarely comes from feeling small. It comes from something you'd actually defend: good manners, proper conduct, not imposing on people who have their own work to do. You learned that the reliable person doesn't disrupt the established order, doesn't make others accommodate them, doesn't turn a simple interaction into a problem. So 'sorry' became the courteous prefix you attach to any request — the verbal equivalent of knocking before you enter. It feels procedural, correct, almost polite to a fault. That's precisely why you've never questioned it.
But a procedure that runs on every input stops being courtesy and becomes a signal. When you say sorry for asking a question, sorry for needing five minutes, sorry for standing where someone wanted to stand, you are filing a quiet report that your presence is an irregularity — a deviation from the smooth running of everyone else's day. You would never hold another person to that standard. You know exactly what a reasonable request looks like, and you'd grant it without a second thought. The work here is not to become careless about others. It is to extend the fair, consistent standard you already apply to everyone else to one person you've been excluding: yourself.
You filed your needs under 'irregularities'
You run your life on routine because routine works. The proper way, the proven method, the standard sequence — these keep things orderly, and order is how you stay steady. But somewhere in that system you quietly classified your own needs as exceptions to it. A colleague's request is a normal line-item; your identical request is an interruption you have to soften. A question someone else asks is just a question; your question is a thing you 'bother' people with. You apply one rulebook to the world and a stricter, narrower one to yourself, and you've done it so consistently you mistake it for humility.
Notice what that does to your own data. You're a person who respects evidence and dislikes sloppy reasoning, yet the conclusion 'my needs are an imposition' has never been tested — it's just been assumed and repeated until it hardened into routine. Audit it the way you'd audit anything else. List the things you apologize for asking. Then ask whether you'd consider the same request reasonable coming from a competent, conscientious coworker. If the answer is yes for them, the standard you're using on yourself isn't rigorous. It's just inconsistent, and inconsistency is the one thing you don't tolerate elsewhere.
Suppressed feelings don't disappear — they reroute into 'sorry'
You treat feelings as largely beside the point, and in many situations that serves you; you don't melt down, you don't make things about yourself, you handle what needs handling. But a need is not a feeling to be set aside — it's a fact, like a deadline or a measurement. When you suppress the small discomfort of asking for something, the need doesn't evaporate. It comes out sideways, attached to an apology, because 'sorry' is the only socially proper container you've allowed it. The feeling you refused to register still leaks, just in a form that diminishes you.
This is why dropping the reflex feels strangely difficult for someone as composed as you. Saying 'I have a question' with no apology in front of it can feel almost rude, because for you the apology was doing the emotional work you wouldn't do directly. It was the procedure that let you make a request without admitting you had a need. Take the feeling out of the sideways channel and put it where it belongs: a need is information, you state it plainly, and stating it is not an imposition any more than reporting a fact is an imposition. The composure you're proud of works better without the apology bolted to it.
Reflexive 'sorry' degrades the very reliability you trade on
Here is the part that should bother the practical side of you: the constant apology quietly undermines your credibility. You are the dependable one, the person whose word carries weight precisely because you're measured and exact. But when you preface routine requests with 'sorry to bother you' and 'sorry, this is probably a silly question,' you train people to hear hesitation in your voice even when you're certain. You are attaching a disclaimer of uncertainty to statements that are, in fact, correct and reasonable. Over time that erodes the clean signal your reliability depends on.
Think of it as a standards problem, which is a language you respect. A good report doesn't hedge every accurate figure with an apology for reporting it. Neither should you. When you say 'I need the file by Thursday' instead of 'so sorry, would it be at all possible to maybe get the file by Thursday,' you aren't being demanding — you're being clear, and clarity is a form of respect for the other person's time. The proper way you care so much about is not the most apologetic way. It's the most accurate and unambiguous one. Drop the reflex and your competence comes through undiluted.
Replace the reflex with a rule you can actually keep
You won't fix this through a vague resolution to 'be more confident' — that's not how you change anything. You change behavior by replacing a worn procedure with a better-specified one. So write the new rule precisely. Apologize when you've actually cost someone something: you were genuinely late, you made a real error, you stepped on a foot. In those cases 'sorry' is correct and you should say it without flinching. The rest of the time — asking, needing, occupying space, existing in a room — there is no transgression, so there is no apology. One clear line, consistently held.
Then practice it the way you practice anything: deliberately, in low-stakes settings, until it's the new default. Catch the 'sorry' before it leaves your mouth and swap it for the plain version — 'thanks for waiting,' 'I have a question,' or simply nothing at all. It will feel unmaintained at first, like a routine you haven't broken in. Run it anyway. You don't need to feel entitled or to manufacture some confidence you don't have. You need only do what you already do best: follow a sound rule, steadily, until it becomes the reliable thing it was meant to be.
You were never apologizing because you felt worthless — you were apologizing because politeness-as-procedure told you that needing anything is an imposition to soften. But you already hold a clear, fair standard for what's reasonable; you just never applied it to yourself. Do that now. Reserve 'sorry' for the times you've actually caused harm, and for everything else — the questions, the needs, the space you occupy — state the fact and stand on it. That isn't rudeness. It's consistency, and consistency has always been the most reliable thing about you.