All the inquiries are not holding your score back. After you get so many (profile driven) you stop being dinged for them. In my case, that number is nine. What it will hold back is approvals due to excessive credit seeking unless you have a very strong profile. You gain the points back after 1 year, they're deleted after 2. It's nearly impossible to have an inquiry removed. You have a better chance of having the lender recode it if it was an error or misunderstanding. In your case, the chances of either is basically zero.
In addition to the excellent comments above, how about this? Freeze your credit bureau reports. Immediately.
That way, if you get the urge to apply for something again, the inquiry won't go through unless you actively and consciously take action to let it, i.e., unfreeze the credit bureau(s) being used.
That's not foolproof, but at least it'll give you pause. Maybe the inconvenience of having to unfreeze your accounts every time you want to apply for something will be enough to remind you that, no, I really don't want to do that!!
Put all your reports on ice and leave them that way for at least 2 years. You've got a solid base for creating a good, thick file but now the *only* thing you need to do is allow time to go by while using the cards you have responsibly and making your payments timely. By the end of a couple years, you'll likely be able to get some nice CLI's on your existing cards as well! From that point forward, only go after a couple cards every 6 months at the MOST, while limiting your acquisitions to cards that are truly useful to your spending patterns. After about 5 years, your profile will be nice and thick and you may be able to play around a little more, but you've got to make it to that point first.
I get that this place can drive people to hit the app button. The approval section is kind of like seeing people that have won something and it's natural to want in on the gamble. But the long you wait between apps, the better your odds are on grabbing the proverbial plastic prize. I've had to pry myself away from this place a few times when the temptation was growing greater than I knew was good. I generally only take in 1-2 new accounts every 6 to 9 months at this point. I know I could likely pull in a few more, but I don't want to tank my AAoA and moreso, I don't want to make my current lenders nervous.
We do have The Garden section here, which is a credit healthy hangout where we talk about pretty much anything and everything that DOESN'T involve new accounts or anything which would result in a HP (Obviously, TOS comes into play as well.) There's good people in there and anyone on here is welcome to come join in.
There's no disputing legitimate inquiries. What's done is done and there's no legal way of removing them early. On the bright side is that they're only scoreable for a year and in two, they'll all be gone.
Best wishes and good luck!
